I finished my last class of the term today; now the grading continues, I have to submit my grades officially, and also go out of town this weekend. So if anyone's waiting on any responses (like Occam), it will probably be the middle of next week before anything substantial emerges.
I've increasingly over the years been irritated at the sheer arbitrariness of the term length; nobody went around and asked, "OK, what would be a good length of time for having an introductory algebra course?" or whatever other course is on the table, and then came up with the term lengths to match it. But I was thinking today that it's perhaps a good thing; if anyone had come to me with the question, "What would be a good length of time for an introductory course in philosophy?"I think I would have said, "Five years, although I probably could compress it down to four."
