B. U. G. S.

LibAnon says,

“this is a seminar, not a lecture”
Then call it “Bob’s Seminar”! “Bob’s Moot” sounds too much like “Bob’s Irrelevant”, which Bob clearly is not.
“I feel terribly let down.”
You’re not going to find equals here, Bob. You are an authentic genius, and since there’s only one of those per two million or so, the odds are unlikely that another one is going to turn up here. Geniuses are always let down by their followers.
So what keeps our race going forward, to the extent that it DOES go forward, is not genius but the Golden Rule. Simple, but not easy. If you’re going to ask us to make a greater EFFORT to understand you, you’re going to have to make an even greater effort to understand US. One of the biggest problems here is that your responses to people are often so out of line with what they actually SAID that it simply boggles the mind.

Comment by LibAnon

MY REPLY:

LibAnon has just explained the problem I have, but he has also justified my coming to you for help.

“Bob’s Seminar” is perfect!

It is also something I would not have come up with, but it is an exercise in the basics I am talking about.

I am a genius, and that is a problem.

I am a genius in the area I cover because I was not only born with a lot of mental equipment, but I have added half a century of hard thought and hard-won experience in the area I am trying to teach to my mental endowments.

I have repeatedly apologized for misstating what people say.

I MEAN those apologies.

I am very often ashamed of what I said.

But you put up with it because you know that what I am doing is very, very hard. It is WORK to explain all that I have done, and I often screw it up.

I will try to do better. You will put up with me.

I always want more out of my students than they can do. I certainly always want more than you can do EASILY.

No dedicated teacher has ever done the job perfectly. The best teachers at our level are almost invariably a pain in the ass.

No one but a professorial bully WANTS to be a pain in the ass.

But every successful student is always glad his best teacher WAS a pain in the ass.

A great postgraduate-level teacher will be a pain in the ass. So naturally the half-wits conclude that if you are a pain in the ass you are a great teacher.

I am not self-righteous about misinterpreting you. It is a failure on my part.

I don’t LIKE failure like that.

I will keep trying to overome that failing. My hope is that what you get from me makes it worth the grief.