h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hope you got the grades you needed

I went there a while ago (long enough to have just been invited back for the free meal - 8 years since leaving!) and had a great time - its a good college - make the most of it!

Any useful tips would be very very useful (please tell me good stuff!) cos I leave on 5th Oct.

I'm not sure I can give you much to help, as I guess a lot has changed but...

Get a bike - it's a bit cliched but very useful!

Remember there is a university outside the college - sometimes it's very easy to forget

Don't get too bored with discussing what you did in your A levels/gap year

Get stuck in and do it - if there's something you've always wanted to try/do more of, give it a go (providing it's at least vaguely legal/moral of course!)

Get used to the potential of lectures on Saturday and lectures and or exams on bank holidays

Drink beer

Those are my immediate thoughts, I'll come back if I have any more - not least because I am visiting the place before the end of this month

In the meantime, good luck!

longy

Is there an alternative to beer?

Also do not think am going to be able to get a bike up there, have very small car.

There's always an option to beer, I just learn't to be wary of the 'cocktails' that get offered - never have been one for spirits!

There are plenty of cheap bikes there if you find you want one

I don't expect I will.
I'm used to walking (had to catch bus to college, bus stop at bottom of long hill, not steep, but long).

Cocktails, mmm. There's a "bop" of some sort the sunday night, then we have to be matriculating the next morning. I might be on the orange juice at least part of that night.

I can understand your feelings about beer, the both of you. I learnt to drink at Caius (Special Brew! which was treated - at least by me - as a post-prandial, came in bottles and went well with a cigar). But this was in the days when the LateNightBar shut after midnight and the buttery bar opened at 9.00 in the morning. The spirit of Dionysius was certainly alive in those days, as long as he got his 7 hours.

Further, I have taught a gentleman Braille who functioned better after a pint of mild; a fellow undergraduate would do the Times crossword in about 15 minutes, inebriated (although that was the only way he could function normally); and as far as a glimpse of meaning of the word 'joy' is concerned, the description of CJ Jung's first experience of drunkeness in Memories, Dreams, Reflections is hard to beat (although SpecialBrew is better).

There is more - this what PsychoHeresy Awareness Ministries, 4137 Primavera Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93110 have to say:

"Jung's AA Influence

Jung also played a role in the development of Alcoholics Anonymous. Cofounder Bill Wilson wrote the following in a letter to Jung in 1961:

This letter of great appreciation has been very long overdue. . . . Though you have surely heard of us [AA], I doubt if you are aware that a certain conversation you once had with one of your patients, a Mr. Roland H., back in the early 1930's did play a critical role in the founding of our fellowship.9

Wilson continued the letter by reminding Jung of what he had "frankly told [Roland H.] of his hopelessness," that he was beyond medical or psychiatric help. Wilson wrote: "This candid and humble statement of yours was beyond doubt the first foundation stone upon which our society has since been built." When Roland H. had asked Jung if there was any hope for him Jung "told him that there might be, provided he could become the subject of a spiritual or religious experience - in short, a genuine conversion." Wilson continued in his letter: "You recommended that he place himself in a religious atmosphere and hope for the best."10 As far as Jung was concerned, there was no need for doctrine or creed, only an experience.

It is important to note that Jung could not have meant conversion to Christianity, because as far as Jung was concerned all religion is simply myth - a symbolic way of interpreting the life of the psyche. To Jung, conversion simply meant a totally dramatic experience that would profoundly alter a person's outlook on life. Jung himself had blatantly rejected Christianity and turned to idolatry. He replaced God with a myriad of mythological archetypes.

Jung's response to Wilson's letter included the following statement about Roland H.:

His craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness; expressed in medieval language: the union with God.11

In his letter Jung mentioned that in Latin the same word is used for alcohol as for "the highest religious experience." Even in English, alcohol is referred to as spirits. But, knowing Jung's theology and privy counsel with a familiar spirit, one must conclude that the spirit he is referring to is not the Holy Spirit, and the god he is talking about is not the God of the Bible, but rather a counterfeit spirit posing as an angel of light and leading many to destruction."

Make of that what you will.

More advice from [email protected] or at this site - if I ever fly back.

MrCrow

So your advice is to drink?

It really depends what your aims are - I have a friend who got a first-class degree in Physics from London and a nervous breakdown into the bargain. He was shy, didn't go to the bar and therefore did not drink. But he did start drinking when he had his exams.
Blake says that the road to wisdom is paved by excess, and excess means excess in any language (except perhpas that of JH Prynne), so you takes your money and you pays for your choice.
I once advised my teenage sister to take up drinking and she did, and has never got over it - in other words she is reluctant to take my advice on anything now. On the other hand I advised myself to take up drinking, and although the recovery period has been a long one, it has done me the world of good.
So, if you'd care to describe your aims, perhaps I could be a bit more specific.
MrCrow.

Much as I hate to say it, the LNB has gone and is now no more than a dusty store room, and the buttery bar does not open till 6pm or at least that was how it was last Friday!

*hopes there is somewhere left with cheap drinks*

I'm sure you will find somewhere - the prices didn't seem too bad but them I am too used to city prices now!

All the very best of luck to you - I am sure you will enjoy it!

Is the internet always this dull?

yes.

The we must liven it up! Er.... Back soon.
MrCrow

do you like this loobrush?