Studia Generalia is a currently ongoing series of lectures at our school, with various well known and apparently renowned lecturers. The latter claim having been slightly defeated due to our second and most recent lecture turning out quite a dissapointment. It is hard for me to comment on the content however, as I was half asleep after the first ten minutes. Most of my friends seemed to have been equally oblivious to the content of the lecture.

The first lecture however was excellent. Given by the well known politician and active diplomat Pekka Haavisto, the lecture concerned the crisis in Darfur. He spoke to us of the diplomatic difficulties in regards to the huge variety of guerilla factions all squabbling with each other, most of which had such admirable aims to bring to the table for negotiation as "A formal apology from the president to <whoever they considered to have been offended>" That is if they got to the table, as many of the leaders would not take part in negotiation if another group whom they had a grudge against also took part in the negotiation. Pekka did indeed give a thoroughly enjoyable lecture with all the charisma expected of a diplomat, and left me eagerly awaiting the next lecture.

Lecture #2 was given by Marja-Leena Kultanen from the foreign ministry. Once again we were told about Nepal, this time on the developement aid given to it by Finland. My high expectations did keep my hopes up for about ten minutes, during which I assumed it would soon get better. Unfortunately Marja-Leena proved to be worthy of the dry politician stereotype, a fact I was forced to admit as one of my companions (nickname pending) slumped on the table to sleep.  Realising the futility of my efforts at concentration, I spent the time having a quiet conversation with the school's previous Japan exchange student, whom I had aquianted myself with in the hopes picking up some useful tips from the seemingly all knowing veteran. The lecture ended with the abrupt interruption of the lecturer's closing words by the applause of the relieved audience.

As part of the Studia Generalia course we are expected to make a lecture diary, and are advised to have group conversations to expand on ideas. To the genuine surprise of the present teachers, our group actually had such a conversation. After discussing the now several weeks old lecture on Darfur we proceeded to reflect on the day's mind numbing lecture and the sleep inducing nature of the lecture's speech, if only because none of us had actually made the effort to pay enough attention as to constitute a meaningful conversation. Such boredom does however inspire creativity, and we moved the discussion to the blue elephant a girl in our group had drawn in her notebook.