(My Life – from my subjective point of view) ◆ Unfortunately, the individual course of study I had imagined as the norm only became possible after completing the third year—in practice, during the fourth year of studies. Since the “regulations” provided no other option, I felt obliged not to adapt to them, but on the contrary—to define for myself my own private, individual course of study, and moreover, on several faculties at once. ◆ In mathematics, computer science, and philosophy this was trivial, because formally I did not exist there at all. I only attended lectures as a free listener, that is, an informal observer. In physics I tried to pass everything that was necessary and not to get attached to mandatory attendance at tutorials. ◆ At that time my individual breakthrough occurred. My father managed, with the help of an acquaintance, to smuggle in an Apple II microcomputer for me—something that was first under embargo and second, whose price at the time was horrendously high. The computer had a beautiful design, two floppy drives for soft disks, a printer, plus additional graphics cards and a joystick. No one was thinking about a mouse or a touch tablet yet. ◆ For those times, and for many years afterward, it was a true treasure that pulled me faster into an unknown and fascinating future. This computer was located in my parents’ apartment, which is why during that period I was at home much more often, learning Apple BASIC, then Pascal and the graphic language Logo Programming. ◆ History was beginning to repeat itself a bit, because I remember how once, living on Broniewskiego Street in a long housing block, we were the first to have a television brought from the GDR—albeit a Soviet-made Rubin—then a color television from West Berlin, and whole groups of curious people came to us, asking to be shown what it looked like. ◆ I remember how in 1969 we were, as usual, on vacation in Poland, but with our new television, thanks to which I will always remember July 20, 1969 as the groundbreaking date of the Moon landing, when Neil Armstrong—the first human in the world—set his foot on the Moon. We had a whole crowd of guests at home then. Something similar happened now, when everyone wanted to see with their own eyes the forbidden fruit in the form of the computer.

(My Life – from my subjective point of view) ◆ I have not written anything so far about the pontificate of John Paul II in 1978 or about his first visit to Poland in 1979. We spent 1978 still in Berlin, and yes, I watched the pontificate itself with emotion, but it was such a distant world to me that I neither focused on it nor experienced the event particularly intensely. ◆ I remember the numerous congratulations from my friends and greetings in connection with the election of a Polish pope. Poland, together with the Polish pope, was building a vision of a clerical third world—somewhat like a religious-and-customary open-air museum in my view. ◆ I experienced his presence in Poland a bit differently once we had returned there. I went looking for some place along his route so that I could see him with my own eyes as he drove by in a car. I found such a place near the Poniatowski Bridge and indeed saw the pope as if up close, but somehow the excessively great enthusiasm did not rub off on me. ◆ Rather than he himself, what interested me more was the madness of other people, for whom Karol Wojtyła in papal robes was not merely the pope—the vicar of Christ—was not a saint before beatification, but appeared as the closest—outside the Trinity—messenger of the heavens, of God the Father himself. ◆ He himself behaved that way, after all. He was a media talent. Because on the one hand he behaved like a humble servant of God, but on the other—like the representative of the princely majesty of heavenly power. It was a specific kind of humility. Not the humility of an ordinary person in his intellectual sphere, but princely humility—the humility of a prince who moves the crowd by helping an old woman rise from her aching knees with a grand, showy gesture. ◆ On the one hand the unconditional adoration of the Polish pope fascinated me, but on the other hand it terrified me. After all, it was already clear then that Poland would become for many years a new open-air museum not only of clericalism, but also a vassal of the ecclesiastical authorities or of the Vatican itself. And above all, a kind of Golden Age for the Catholic Church in Poland was in the offing.

We are offering Performance Trainings Presentations Knowledge Workshops and Settings - Timoore Settings .

Part Twenty-Eight (My Life – from my subjective point of view) ◆ I start my studies at the University of Warsaw Physics Department at 69 Hoża Street. The first lectures don’t add anything new to my knowledge, but I still attend them eagerly. The physicists are well prepared and teach me the famous names connected with the field. I have classes with Professor Hoffmokel, Professor Woronowicz, Ajduk, Professor Dembiński, and also with the famous Professor Maurin and many others. ◆ Later I also get to know independent minds like Professor Białnicki-Birula, Professor Namysłowski, and Professor Rączka. I’m becoming more and more disgusted with the system of studying itself, which disturbingly resembles ordinary school rather than my own idea of real university study, where I choose the courses and the way I pass them myself. ◆ Besides the excellent lectures I have those miserable exercises run by teaching assistants who don’t hide the fact that they treat them as a curse or a ball and chain. Unfortunately the exercises are mandatory and you have to pass them on the basis of quizzes as a condition for being allowed to take the exams. ◆ Most of the time it’s just a waste of time and mutual pretending that we’re doing something useful. Often it’s just setting boring problems and then solving them in a not very creative way. The most important thing, though, is that these exercises with the assistants correlate poorly with the material covered in the lectures. ◆ Another weak point for me is the combination of Teacher Training Physics—preparing people to be school teachers—and Experimental Physics, for which we have to go twice a week to Pasteur Street in Warsaw. I’m interested in neither Teacher Training Physics nor Experimental Physics. I associated my future very strongly with Theoretical Physics. ◆ Independently I attend the newly emerging Computer Physics classes. There I first get acquainted with the archaic method of programming using punched cards, but at the same time I learn the programming language: Fortran IV, then the more efficient Fortran 77.