Allow me to start by introducing myself. My name is Ryan, I am a third year BA (hons) student\u00a0of Politics and Philosophy at Lancaster University. I am also\u00a0the captain of my\u00a0college pool team.\u00a0My blogs, which will be published\u00a0weekly,\u00a0will\u00a0hopefully give some insight into life as a Lancaster student.\u00a0As well as being a great place\u00a0to study, Lancaster\u00a0offers a wide range of social activities. So rather than focus strictly on academic life, I will try to strike a balance between the two.<\/p>\n
Although I am only three weeks into the new academic year, it feels\u00a0like so much has already happened. In week one, I had to select my new pool team.\u00a0As most of last year’s team have\u00a0graduated, this was a more difficult task than I’d anticipated. But luckily for me, we had an influx of first years adept with a cue. Last week we had our first league match. Playing your first match in front of a crowd of people can be nerve-racking, but everyone held strong, and we ended our first match with a 6-3 victory. Being part of a sports team has been an amazing experience, and Lancaster has a lot to offer for those considering joining one. Each college has their own sports teams, which host tasters and trials across Fresher\u2019s Week and into\u00a0Week 1. As well as this, there is the annual “War of the Roses” competition with our friendly rival York University.<\/p>\n
The bulk of my time so far has been taking up with studying and dissertation preparation. The philosophy modules I am taking this term include Moral Philosophy and The Philosophy of Medicine. I am finding both of them really interesting, albeit challenging. For moral philosophy, we are reading a book called Reasons and Persons, by Derek Partit. In this book, Parfit challenges the established orthodoxy on subjects ranging from rationality, personal identity and morality. He seeks to answer some of the\u00a0most important questions of philosophy, such as: what do we have most reason to do?\u00a0and what obligations do we have to future people?\u00a0I am only\u00a0a few chapters in, but as I progress I will\u00a0discuss some of Parfit’s views in my later blog posts.<\/p>\n
In The Philosophy of Medicine, we discuss concepts of health and disease. Most of us take concepts such as “health” and “disease” for granted, but closer inquiry leads to some difficulties. For example, is there a difference between an illness and a disease? And is\u00a0health an internal physical state or is it\u00a0dependent on something external such as a person’s environment? These are all interesting questions and I look forward to developing my answers when it comes to writing the essay.<\/p>\n
As much as I enjoy my subjects, I am looking forward to having a break at the weekend. On Saturday, I am meeting up with my pool teammates for some practice in our college bar. On Sunday, I have family coming to visit, which means –\u00a0as my family includes my dog Flynn – that I will have to find a dog friendly pub in town, as a pub meal is standard when my family visit. Last time I took them to The Three Mariners, which is situated near the Castle. Good food and real ale, it doesn’t get much better than that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Allow me to start by introducing myself. My name is Ryan, I am a third year BA (hons) student\u00a0of Politics and Philosophy at Lancaster University. I am also\u00a0the captain of my\u00a0college pool team.\u00a0My blogs, which will be published\u00a0weekly,\u00a0will\u00a0hopefully give some insight into life as a Lancaster student.\u00a0As well as being a great place\u00a0to study, Lancaster\u00a0offers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":586,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5DvUs-7s","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/586"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":464,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions\/464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}