Must be through some lack of kindness

This morning I skipped the tutorial. I hadn't meant to - I had every good intention of grabbing a quick breakfast downtown then heading up the hill early. But by the time I was settled with my bagel and coffee and essay reading, it just seemed pointless to go up and waste an hour of my life in a cold room listening to the fat man being stupid. Even allowing for the chance that something might be said that may be pertinent to my essay, I still calculated a much better profit from staying where I was and finishing the article I was reading, so I did.

In the lecture we had Garth McVicar from the Sensible Sentencing Trust. He was the first guest speaker we've had from a movement whose aims the majority of us oppose. Being students and believing above all in tolerance, followed by good grades, we heard him patiently and then asked him a number of intelligent questions. He was very good - polished and practised as a speaker, ready to take on any type of audience, with all his information at his fingertips and all his answers expressed in the vocabulary of his own social movement, meaning his audience is forced to engage with him on his own terms. Never once in our half-hour of questioning did he answer a question that he didn't want to answer. Brilliant. Seeing him under the (very gentle and understanding) fire of the class was a lesson in the art of political performance.

Essay-wise, I veer uncontrollably between optimism and despair about the quantity of reading still to do.