Explosions of the mind. (BSDA #8)

For the last few hours, while reorganising my history revision notes into things of true beauty, I've been watching Rory McIlroy, the 54 hole leader and favourite, implode mentally in his fourth round at the Masters. He never really got going and after a freak tee shot at the tenth, which hit a tree branch and ricocheted to the left, leaving him out of position and able only to get a triple bogey, he collapsed over the next few holes, missing easy putts left right and centre to put him well back on the leaderboard. It is all too similar to his second round 80 at the Open at St Andrews last year, after his record-equalling 63 the previous day. What can we learn from this? Only, I think, that it is a mental issue, nothing to do with ability.

I have experience of this myself, though naturally not on the scale of McIlroy today. In exams, interviews and other important events, I have found myself vulnerable to mental collapses when considering the scale of what I am attempting. This year, with exams approaching apace, I am trying to fully relax myself by only revising when it feels right to do so, rather than forcing myself into it at inopportune times, and by organising my notes into something I am totally confident with, rather than the confusing mess they ended up as last year. Clearly whether this will work is something I will only discover on results day, but I am far more confident as a result of these measures that I hope I can realise my goals and prevent a recurrence of previous explosions of the mind.

Finally, congratulations to Charl Schwartzel, whose composure has been in my view the deciding factor in his Masters success.

Antidisestablishmentarianism. (BSDA #7)

Today in my sociology class a guy known only to the world as Fonzie, for reasons very complicated to explain to anyone who doesn't know him, randomly shouted out the world antidisestablishmentarianism during a game of Pictionary. I can't really remember why - and often with him one simply cannot understand, one can only accept - but it was nonetheless hilarious and, more importantly, gave me something to talk about here. Since no-one I have ever met, seemingly, seems to understand what it means, I would like to attempt to define the word antidisestablishmentarianism now. Because it is an agglutinative construction, built from adding prefixes and suffixes onto an original verb, it can easily be broken down to aid understanding. GO.

Begin with establish, a word everyone knows, meaning to begin or create something.

Add -ment to create establishment, a word used to describe the act of setting something up, or the thing that has been created, or, in this specific case, the concept of having a state religion which is tied to the national government of a country.

Add dis- for disestablishment, the idea of, in this case, removing the legal connections between religion and government - something which happened in Ireland in 1871 and in Wales in 1920 but has still not happened in England.

And anti- to create antidisestablishment, the word for opposition to disestablishment.

Add -ary to create antidisestablishmentary, which means of or pertaining to antidisestablishment.

Add -an (and change the spelling slightly) for antidisestablishmentarian, or one is an opponent of disestablishment. Now to finish the pudding...

Add -ism to end your word. You now have antidisestablishmentarianism, which clearly means, as this staged procedure has shown, the movement or ideology of opposition to disestablishment.

There. That wasn't so hard, right? (Many people within this movement are hard-right, however.*)

I think I should finish this blog now, because I have hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.**

*That was a very little pun.
** And that a very little joke.

Follow this blog for more pathetic jokes and pointless stuff you could have found out on Wikipedia. I will not see you and you will not see me, but you will read me (maybe) next time on antmoorfield takes on the world. Goodbye.