 All right, thank you for being here, for giving us our attention for Mark in a couple of seconds. So I'll start with a disclaimer. This isn't Mark's actual last lecture, he's going to hopefully keep teaching for many years and enriching the LAS program as he always has, but this is a format inspired I think it's Randy Pouch from Carnegie Mellon University who started the format of, well, who hosted the last lecture, which essentially have the themes of sort of essentiality that one finds in their studies and in their fields where they say, well, this is the last lecture I'm giving, and this is something that I deem important, and it's sort of, I won't say cumulative because I think we have many more years to get some of research information, but yeah, I think it is on standardization and originality in the quest for excellence at university. I'd also like to mention that this is an event that's a collaboration between Exeter Moros and Studium Herrera, which is an association on university that hosts these types of events, lectures, debates, and cultural events. I will pass the mic over to Mark. Thank you. Well, thank you. There's a few things I can say as an introduction. The first is that I I chose this topic because they said this, you know, if you had to give a last lecture, what would you talk about? And I figured I'd talk about something that I can't seem to shut up about and no one would be able to stop me because it's my last lecture, so there. But the other thing is I wanted to find something that was representative of what I do at this university because on the one hand I teach, but on the other hand, I also have a lot to do with, in that sense, policy. I work with the university, I'm on the university council. This moment I also am currently involved in assessment in our department. So there's a lot of different things going on, and I thought it would be really cool if I could mix those things together. But then I started thinking about this, and I thought, what am I really, what I really want to talk about? And I realized that there was something that's been on my mind for quite a while, and it's actually because of something that's also on someone else's mind, and that is my boss has thoughts. And one of her thoughts is, and it seems to be a recurring thought because she mentions it quite often, is that she regularly thinks about me getting hit by a truck. Now, this may seem disturbing to most people, and I can understand that I'm also not the easiest guy in the world to work with, so maybe there's a certain fantasy level involved in this, but the truth is that's not where this is coming from. This is actually coming from a place of concern. The first being probably in the more literal sense of the word, I'm a bit accident prone. So things do sometimes happen to me. I had one, because of that I had one memorable occasion where I was running home through a storm with a colleague of mine, and she kept a respectful distance from me saying, if anyone is ever going to get hit by lightning, it's going to be you and I don't want to be with you when it happens. And you know what? I can respect that. But the truth is where this is really coming from is not just personal concern, but a very real concern that we have in any institution, and that is with continuity and standards, because what are we talking about here? Why does the truck keep coming up in my life, and why does this keep getting mentioned? Because it is part of a business concept. It's part of a management concept strangely enough, something called the truck number. Now, what's the idea of a truck number? Well, managers have to be aware of the redundancy of the people who work for them, the ability to be able to replace people. It really comes down to just that. So if you have, in essence, a truck number that's too low, that means you're very, very hard to replace. And what are we really talking about? Is it about people getting hit by a truck? No, it's about anything that can happen to you. Anything that can knock you out of the system. So, I mean, think about it. Look at the last two years. We suddenly had COVID. That was basically like the truck number deluxe. Everyone around you was, they'd call up, I got them. I mean, even if they weren't that sick, and I got the two bars on the test, so you won't see me for several weeks. And so there was all this stuff going on. And if you have a truck number of one, that means you're the only person in your unit or your organization who can do something. So all that needs to happen is for one truck to hit this one person. And this thing is, whatever you do is gone. Now, clearly, managers are afraid of this. They want truck numbers that are higher than one. They want people who can be replaced. And you know what? I get it. You want people who can be replaced. You also want people who can be duplicated. You want to be able to say, well, what if we have more people to cater to than one person can handle? We want to have you times two. So they're always looking to duplicate. And as I said, I get it. This is a means of guarding against breaks and continuity. I mean, think about it. What was it the old, back in the day, holiday in in the United States, they always had as their slogan, these are like the most boring hotels in America. And their slogan was, our surprise is no surprise. Wherever you went, the holiday in was exactly the same, which was a little surreal because this meant whether you were in Boston or in the middle of Arkansas or in California, when you walked into a holiday and you were just in this like little holiday and world, it was always exactly the same. But there's a certain reassurance there. Because that means if you knew you wanted a certain thing and you wanted, you know, a kind of safe, whatever going on, then you went to the holiday in, right? So, and this also helps in our world in guaranteeing standards. So indeed, if I refer someone to a holiday and I know where I'm sending them, now you kind of maybe have an idea where this is going. We are in an institution that has to maintain standards, where we say things have to be continuous. I mean, we can't just say, for example, if, you know, so-and-so gets hit by a hit by a truck, well, no statistics this year. You know, I mean, that it doesn't work that way. Although I know that within certain departments, such as clinical psychology, if they said no statistics this year, there would be a certain degree of rejoicing. But nonetheless, we have to provide these courses also because the mandate of society is that if we train someone to be a psychologist, they have to have certain skills. So these things all have to be there. So I completely, you know, I get this. And it also makes altogether sense in the business world. Of course, you know, as I said, I go somewhere, I expect certain things to happen. I expect if I buy a certain car, it will have certain attributes. If I get certain type of service, I expect it to always be very similar or if not the same. But you know what? This has its limits. You can only take this so far, because let's face it, you don't always want the holiday experience. Sometimes, sometimes you want something different. And sometimes you want something that's not standard. More importantly, sometimes we need this. But I will get to that momentarily, because first, I have thoughts too. Now, I'm going to tell you something. People who've taken any of my classes know this, that this is a habitual part of my teaching is I tend to drag my obsessions into my lectures. So I figured in my last lecture, I'm going to do the same. I tend to talk, for example, you have to know, I mean, I teach English and rhetoric and argumentation. And yet somehow, I often wind up talking about architecture. So suddenly you're sitting there and you're hearing about Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan and the first skyscraper in Chicago, and you think, what the hell is this guy talking about? But it always has a point. Similarly, I sometimes regularly bring up guinea pigs. Don't ask me why. Or rather ask me why. Guinea pigs are great. I just can't seem to avoid them. The how of the matter is the relevance is a little less so. I will grant you that. Food is also a regular obsession in my teaching. That kind of speaks for itself. Today, however, I want to talk to you about drummers. Now, I'll admit, I'm also going to talk a little bit about food. And I may bring up the occasional guinea pig. So this is all part and parcel of what's going on. So drummers, the ones in the back, the guys and gals, that you watch a performance and there's always some people in the front with their attitude and their singing and the solo guitar and it's great and everything. And then there's someone in the back there hidden by all this machinery, the whole drum set and everything. And they're doing something there. And you know what? I find those people highly intriguing. Which is odd because the truth be told, not a drummer. I've tried it and I'm, you know, incredibly bad at it. Acoustic guitar is more my thing. I'm more incredibly bad at that. So that's a better thing. And yes, luckily for me, I grew up before the internet. I also sang. But as I said, luckily, there was no internet. But what is this fascination with drummers? I think in part because a couple of things come together here. And they will relate, I promise you that, to what we're discussing today. And that is, I think a lot of, I think we underestimate what they do. I think first of all, a lot of people kind of think, well, there's this band. And then they mentioned singer so and so and guitarist, this one and the bass guitar, this and the keyboards. And then they say, Oh yeah, and there's this drummer, you know, and that's kind of it, you know, and, but this is wrong. And what that leads to is that we tend to underestimate their contribution. We think of drummers as having a very high truck number. Those are the people in the band that you figure, dude gets hit by a truck, band will go on. But we can't lose the singer, you know, that kind of thing. And I think there's something going on there. Because, I mean, look at it, look at the, if you look at the world of drummers, you look at these people who are out there. You have people like John Bonham and Led Zeppelin, this guy set not just the beat for what they were doing, he set the tone in that band, so much so that when he died, he was not hit by a truck, by the way, but when he died, the other people, and I mean, and when we talk about the other people, we're talking about people like Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, these are big rock people, they said, screw it, band's over. And they just stopped. I mean, they went on to do other stuff, but Led Zeppelin, as my boss would say, went poof, it was gone. That's how important he was. They have people like Roger Taylor and Queen, he composed, he sang, but he also, he composed the rhythms that went with what Queen was doing. So, when you think about Queen's sound, in part, you're thinking about the way that those rhythms were laid down. Rick Allen, Def Leppard, they were so desperate to keep Rick Allen as their drummer, when he was in a car accident and lost an arm, now you would think for a drummer, losing an arm has to be a really big deal, right? They retrained him and they set up his drums so that he could play with one arm and both legs, and he did it. That's how important this guy was. They didn't say, ah, truck number, get us a new drummer. No, they wanted that sound. They wanted someone who understood their compositions. And then finally, there's a good old Keith Moon of the who. The who went on after Keith Moon died. They were never really the same. It was kind of the who too, as it were. By the way, interesting and somewhat macabre note, Keith Moon was married to a woman at a certain point and they got divorced because he's Keith Moon. And she remarried and then at the age of 57, which for some reason strikes me as significant because that's how old I am now, she died. And I'm not making this up. She was hit by a truck. I mean, so yeah, life is odd. These things happen. I just wanted to point this out. But then there's the big one, Ringo Starr, the Beatles. Now, first of all, I'm again, I'll admit this, I am a Beatles. I'm obsessed with the Beatles. This is a big thing in my life. What can I say? I have way too many books about the Beatles, the CD sets, all this stuff, and a very patient wife, luckily. But here, this illustrates my whole point. So how does the narrative go? He famously replaced the original drummer of the Beatles. They had a different drummer for two years. Pete Best was very popular. People like Pete Best. They thought he was a cool guy. But the rest of the Beatles said, this isn't working. We want that guy. And he'd already played with him in a couple of sessions. He said, we want this Ringo Starr guy. And what happened is, in 1962, he joined the Beatles and Pete Best got fired. And then they became famous. And the narratives is, they threw out Pete Best just before they became famous. Now, people who've taken my courses know something in my mind clicks. No. They didn't throw out Pete Best and become famous. They added Ringo Starr and became famous. That was the last thing they needed. The one link. They needed someone who was just not a competent drummer, but a creative drummer. A drummer who understood all this crazy stuff that Lenin and McCartney were putting out there, and the even crazier stuff that later George Harrison was putting out there, and he could compose the rhythm sections to go along with it. So they said, in their case, they were saying, basically, we're going to run over one guy with a truck because we want someone who is truly unique. So in this sense, post-hoc, ergo, proctor-hoc, indeed, they became the Beatles and they became famous when they hired Ringo Starr, not despite hiring Ringo Starr. So there's a conflict here. There's clearly, if you look at my mind and you look at my boss's mind, there are two things going on here. The truck number is clearly about continuity. This is about putting something out there and saying, we want to be safe. We want to always have the same thing going on. Continuity demands standardization. And again, look at universities. Look at our life here. Look at what's even happened in the last 20, 30 years. Once upon a time, when I first started here as a student, even as a teacher, we didn't even have the same diplomas or programs. We all had different stuff. In fact, I've since gotten a PhD, which now is the universal thing. But before that, my master's degree wasn't called a master's degree. I got something called a doctoral, which, by the way, interestingly, the term doctor on this in Latin means someone who's not a doctor. That was an interesting degree to get. It's like, congratulations, you're not a doctor. Wasn't I not a doctor? No, but it's different now. Now you're really not a doctor. Although I think more of the idea behind it is now become a doctor. I guess that was the idea, so me being the guy that I am, I did. So there you go. But continuity demands this standardization, demands that we look at the world and say, we want to constantly replicate what we're doing. So you're always looking to then, well, hire people who can keep doing what other people have been doing, who can do what their colleagues are doing in lock step, who can come up with, in essence, the same drum rhythms as all the other drummers. But at the other end, you're looking at this and you say, we think of drummers as being standard. As I said, I think we underestimate what they do. We all think they're just standing there pounding on the drums and blah, blah, blah. But the truth is, they can make or break a band. And in the same way, there are people who can make or break a university. There are those individuals that you bring in and you say, yeah, this makes a difference. But there's a danger. They could get hit by a truck and then you won't have them anymore. So you're taking a risk. Similarly, the truth is, we're being asked to do two things at the same time. As a university, we welcome you all. You come in here and we say, this is what we're going to do. You come in, you want to get a law degree? We say, you come here and get a law degree. But the truth is, you get a straight up law degree, civil effect, the whole thing. You can look up exactly what we're supposed to do. Do you know where you can find this? This is written into law. The law actually dictates to become a lawyer in the Netherlands. And there are articles and you can look in this up and they'll say, you'd have to have so many courses in this and so many courses. And that's actually a little bit eerie. But you look that up and it's all very predictable. And we say, come here, we can guarantee this. We have all these teachers on staff. They know all their stuff. They can do intro to civil law. They can teach you criminal law. They can do this. Same thing. Accounting. Do the same thing. If you go in Nijmega to Robbout University, that's my alma mater there. Medicine. Same thing. When they train you up to be a doctor, medical doctor that is, which ironically in the Netherlands is also not a doctor. You actually get a master's degree. See in the US, the doctor thing is different because there you get an MD, which I still don't think is a doctorate, but that's a whole different issue for another last lecture. But then it wouldn't be, then this would be my penultimate lecture. So I'd be sabotaging myself. But as I move on, standards. But what else do we tell you? We also tell you this is special. We say, don't go to Leiden or University College London or Antwerp. We say, come to Tilburg because we're different. We're unique. We're special. So it's a high wire act because we're saying on the one hand, predictable, but on the other hand we're saying lower kind of special. So to cater to that, we have to be very careful. Now look, this is not my diatribe against standardization. There's nothing wrong with McDonald's. I'm going to say that right. I told you I was going to talk about food. Here it comes. You know, people may have some issues with it, but there's no problem with a desire for standardized products. Sometimes you go in and you just want a Big Mac or a McMuffin. Or why am I talking about this? No, I need to eat. So standardized product. Sure, why not, right? We all want certainties in life. We don't want to always be surprised by everything. In this respect, sometimes we need these things. We need these moments in our life where we say, you know what? I want to have the experience go exactly as it went every time before. And in this respect, education is a product. We need standards of predictability. After all, we also have a responsibility. If we tell you we're going to train you to be a lawyer or an accountant or an economist or a psychologist or any of these things, the world expects you to do certain things. They expect us to impart certain types of knowledge to you. So when you walk out that door, we can say that's psychologist and everyone will agree. So again, we do a lot to guarantee that we build in redundancy. We make sure that there's not just one teacher who can teach a specific subject. We cross train people. We take all kinds of efforts to make all these things happen. And we need continuity. So we do this across time. So as some of us get a little bit older, we bring new people in and train them to do what has been done already before they came. But you know what? Sure, I like McDonald's. I also like my local Italian restaurant. But why do I like that? It's one of a kind. Nunzio's place in my neighborhood, Taormina restaurant, there's only one of it in the entire world. And I go there and I don't know what I'm going to get every time because the menu changes. Hell, his mood changes. And sometimes they get different stuff. Now I will admit the last name they give it away. My father's side of the family is originally from Sicily. Nunzio is also from Sicily. So there's a lot of I sit down and sometimes if he's in a really good mood, I'll order a certain dish and it'll be way more elaborate than it should be. But it's different. Every time you go there, you don't really know exactly what you're going to get. You just know it's going to be interesting. And you know it's going to be good. But outside of that, in a funny way, kind of all bets are off. And I can't find this anywhere else. So if I have a taste for a certain type of food, I have to go there. There's not loads of other places I can go. And you know what? If Nunzio gets hit by a truck, I'm screwed. It'll be gone. And the truth is, one day he will, he won't get hit by a truck per se, he's going to get old and he's going to retire and the restaurant's going to stop. Or someone will take it over and it'll be a different restaurant. But while it's there, there's going to be a whole lot of people who experience that food. There's going to be a whole lot of people who experience that particular ambiance. And I believe that in a small, small way, it changes us. It makes us a little bit different. We gain an experience from these places that you don't get at McDonald's or Burger King or even Five Guys, which is probably the closest thing to a transcendent hamburger there is. But even there, that's different. And I look again at education. And I say, okay, education is a product. But you know what else it is? It's a catalyst. We're not just here to deliver products. We're not just here to provide continuity and predictability. We're here to create original thinkers. When I go into my classroom, I have two agendas. Always. I need to teach you certain things in the program. I need my students to understand things, pass their courses, get good grades. What is it? Timbukh Three Song used to say, your future's so bright, you got to wear shades of that level. Yes, I do that. But you know what else I want? I want people to look and say, really? Is that true? Are you certain about that? I want them to walk out with some predictabilities, but also with some uncertainties. I want them to walk out into the world and I can say that person is not predictable. That individual is an individual. This is someone who hopefully is going to go out into the world and change things. McDonald's is great, but it doesn't change our tastes. It doesn't alter our sensibilities. That, you go to Nunes, you say, I've never had something like this before. What is this thing? I want to have more like this. I want to learn about this. That's what I think a university needs to do. But in order to do that, you then have to have different drummers. We can't all be the same. We can't just be people who lockstep, march, and play our little music. There have to be John Bonham's. There have to be Ringo Starr's. There have to be these people who say, okay, I can do that, but it's going to make your music different. You're not going to be like the other bands. You're going to be Led Zeppelin. You're going to be the Beatles. You're not going to be playing weddings ever again. What else do we need to do? We need to foster those differing opinions. So on the one hand, yes, sometimes I need you to provide the answer. Here's the textbook. Read this. What does the textbook say? It says that correct answer. Give the man a cigar. But sometimes I want you not to give me that answer. Sometimes the good teachers will tell you, show me what is not there. Show me what has not been said yet. Write, as Toni Morrison once said, the books and stories you want to hear, but no one has told you yet. You on the one hand have to have skills that are replicable, but you have to be different drummers too. The truth is you have to go out there. If we're going to do anything about anything in this world that really matters, you're going to have to say different things, come up with different rhythms, and we have to be able to provide that. So in that respect, we also need to stimulate new perspectives. What did I say before? Look at this music that I'm talking about. Why do I listen to the Beatles? Why do I listen to Led Zeppelin? Okay, there's a lot of stories about why I listened to Led Zeppelin, but it's different. It's not auto-tuning. It's not what you hear on an elevator. It's something that gets me thinking. If nothing else, it gets me moving. It does something to me. Why do I love gimme pigs? See, told you they come back. They're odd little creatures. I don't know what it is about them. They don't do what you expect them to do. I love this. I also love it about cats, but for some reason, I think that gimme pigs, gimme pigs are a cool mix. Gimme pigs are everything I'm talking about here, because on the one hand, you give them vegetable, I don't know, carrot, whatever. You own their hearts. So they'll give you love and predictability and everything you want. But every once in a while, they've got real attitude. I had a guinea pig that hated my wife. I have no idea why. It was jealousy, I think. The thing would sit on my chest and she would come in and it would make odd noises. I never heard it growled. I didn't know they could even do that. Yet, we also had two guinea pigs who thought my father was God. And I still to this day have no idea why. I could feed the things, I could take care of them, I could do whatever I want. You know, it's Mark, whatever it is. Oh wait, he's got a plastic bag, quick. Act fun, he's going to give us food. But my father would come in, their eyes would glaze over. It was like they'd seen the coming of the Messiah of the guinea pig world. I have no idea why. You've got to love this, right? I mean, so you've got on the one hand a little bit of predictability, a little bit of stability, but also that little bit of craziness. And I think we need both of those things. So we need different drummers. Yes, universities need standards to satisfy the needs of their markets. Of course we do. We're in a sense, in that respect, but in a very limited way, we are like a business. We have a commodity that we're putting out there. You're getting it from us and you have to have, it has to have value. If we give you this thing, you have to be able to go out and say, I've got a degree from Silver University and it has to mean something. But look at what I'm saying there. Universities need standards to satisfy their needs with their market. But you know what? They need to be originally unique to satisfy the needs of humanity. If we're supposed to mean anything as an institution, the way we say we mean it, understanding society. We always have these great noble modos. What is it? Harvard is just, I think, truth. I think the veritas is their thing. We always have those things. Yeah, because that's not the market that's speaking. That's us looking to posterity saying, what do we mean in the longer term? In the bigger picture, in the bigger sense of things. So if we look at this, then we can say, yeah, sometimes we need to be McDonald's. We need to make the hamburgers. We need to provide you with those products that are predictable, that everyone understands, that are there for you. But sometimes we need to be the local Italian restaurant. Sometimes we need to provide something that makes you go, bah! And think differently about this stuff. And want to go out into the world and find out more about what made that dish happen. But you know what? The latter comes with a risk. It is unique, which means it's not always going to translate for everyone. Not everyone's going to understand immediately what you've done. Sometimes you'll have to explain it. I was in Naimege, when I got my, you're not a doctor, the first of three graduates in that program, which is actually really cool because later they brought out a who's who book, and it had all the graduating classes, and it's a class of 90, and there were just three names, and I was one of them. I was like, yes. By the way, interesting little thing. The university understood this was going to be a problem. We were the first people to get degrees in American Studies in our program, and when I went to do the graduation processing things, you have to do this whole thing with all the paperwork, I got this huge package, and it's all this information about what you can do as a graduate. It was a really interesting message they sent because it had two things in there that I'll never forget. One was an entire guide to how to set up my own business, and the other thing was all the forms I needed to apply for unemployment, and it was like, you guys don't see a bright shiny future for me, do you? But the thing is, I had to explain to people what I did. When I went to job agencies and stuff, they'd say, American what? And it said, American Studies. I had a whole shtick, and at a certain point it was like stand up. I was like, okay, well, what I did is because they didn't get it. It took a while for people to understand, but then at a certain point certain people said, yeah, but you know, that's kind of interesting. That makes you different. And one of the people who said that, if I can call them a person, Stilberg University, they said, you know what, we've got a lot of English teachers, but you know what, we don't have an American Studies expert. We don't have anyone who really understands that region. So let's hire this fool. Okay, they didn't say quite like that, although the fool thing came up later in my career, but again, you know, issues. So the unique, but it's also the irreplaceable. For a long while, I was the only guy who did American Studies here. If I'd been hit by a truck, I actually, one of the first courses I helped to really work on and develop was a course called Aspects of American Culture. As you can imagine, truck, not have done that course a lot of good, but it did add something. And there were a lot of people who took the course and they walked away with that little bit of an edge. They got something out of Tilburg that you couldn't get in a lot of other places. But also the non-replicable, the truth is I could teach a bunch of this stuff to other people, but I couldn't make them me. I couldn't turn them into, if we wanted to have more American Studies experts, we had to hire more American Studies experts. And if we wanted to be more like me, that would take a lot of effort. But sometimes you have to have a little bit of faith and hope that that drummer that you hire doesn't get hit by a truck. And then you're on the right track. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening. If you have any questions, fire away. So what do you got? Yes. But the trend is really going the other way, because for example, when I was in Faculty Council and basically seeing it from the inside of at least TSHD, loads of money were put into online culture and computer science, artificial intelligence, etc., just quantifying everything and such. But not so much towards liberal arts, philosophy, etc. The things that, you know, where basically you have loads of really good people, for example, I don't know, do Asian Greek philosophy, but they have to teach you to people something that they're not good at, but that they still have to do because there's not many people who, you know, can do that on the faculty and they want to, you know, save money, etc., to give the 5 million to its CSI and then, you know, well, develop that new shiny building that they have, you know, that they want to develop. So like, sure, it's nice to talk about this uniqueness, etc., but like how to actually, you know, protect yourself from the standardization, how to say that some, like, you know, have this, you know, capability to say, hey, now maybe, you know, we shouldn't be in the McDonald's, maybe let's go the other way, because that's not really happening right now, fortunately. So you think we're over-standardizing or we're moving away? Oh, yeah, no, yeah, no. Yes. And see, that's what got me going. And see, you know, what's interesting is you mentioned, for example, you mentioned stuff like the liberal arts program, and the funny thing is that sometimes people think, for example, if you set up certain programs, that somehow that's the different drummer aspect, etc., but I can point out that there are now, I think, something like over 100 creative writing programs in the US, but you know what's happening to them? They're all becoming the same. I used to get Paris review. You get it like every, you know, quarterly thing. I gave up on it, because a lot of the stories are not the same. All these people are going to like these creative writing programs that all teach the same thing, and they're all writing like the same story. And I'm like, I don't want a McDonald's short story. I want a short story that's going to blow me out of my seat. And that's hard. It's really hard to maintain that balance. It's so, you know what? You know what the problem is? There's a certain ease and comforts McDonald's. If you've got a formula that you can just run with it. And as I said, look what's happening, I mean, all over the world. I mean, every time someone comes up with a good restaurant idea, it seems to become a huge chain really quickly. That's the nature of the thing. Everyone wants it. They all want it to be the same. They all want it to be this. But as I said, if you look at the things that really matter, they're often not like that. And the things that change us are certainly not like that. So yeah, it is a challenge, but it is also a challenge because we can't also divorce ourselves from standardization. We can't just say to hell with it, we'll be original all the time and we'll just do whatever the hell we want. No, because we do have a responsibility. And so that pull is always there. That concern of the truck number, that concern for continuity, that concern for standardization is there for a reason. But so is the other thing. As I said, market humanity. There's two elements playing into this. Does that answer your question or at least line up with what you're saying to some degree? I mean, yes, but I do agree. Like, you know, we need more humanity in education, etc. But the problem is rather that, yeah, this is being kind of done away with more and more and more and more. As far as I mean more of my time in university and seeing things. So it's rather not about maintaining the basic, so it's not rather about like, okay, no, let's not just completely go original, etc. And, you know, let's standardize a little bit and keep the middle road, but it's rather like, okay, how to stop from the onset of over standardization. Because it's, well, one current is much more stronger than the other, you know. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And that's what I'm saying. And that's why this comes up. And that's why I talk about these things. And that's why I'm always looking and trying to find that balance. But the other thing that I can say is, you know, it's like the adage that you hear a lot of activists say, starts small. I can't change the entire university system. But I can do what I can in my classroom. Because I'm the boss there. So, yeah, I can follow certain standards, but I can also hopefully draw people out and say, hey, you know what? There are different rhythms out there. It's not all music. It's not all autotune. There's Led Zeppelin. There's the Beatles. There's whatever you want. You can be that drummer too. And maybe the more that we do that, at least we can, if nothing else, perhaps limit some of what's going on there. Anyone else? I stunned them. Yes. Ah, you will be wired for sound momentarily. If you say that we need like a certain level of standardization and originality to like keep up and also keep up with the competition in a sense, isn't like this whole quest for originality also some kind of standardization in its own way? If like everyone wants to be special, everyone has to like, okay, I'm from Tyson. So you want to have this unique selling point in a way. Like you want to have something that makes your university special and sets you apart from the others. But if in the end everyone just wants to be special and you know, like original, isn't that like that a standard in the end as well? Yeah. Now you're thinking and see this is what I'm talking about. This was the problem that I just mentioned with creative writing programs is all these universities said we need an edge. We need to be different. We can't just train lawyers and psychologists. You know what? We'll set up creative writing and then they all did it. And then they all came up with the same ideas as to how to do it and they all have the same so-called edgy alternative modern programs. Yeah, that's a problem too. But that's what keeps us on our toes. But what I think is more important here is what you just did there. That's what I'm talking about. You didn't listen to what I said and said, oh, that makes a lot of sense and walk away. You listen and said, yeah, but wait a minute. Is that really the case? And what about this? That's what I'm talking about. That's a little bit of what I'm aiming for. You have to be able to, in that sense, not always think along certain lines. And you're trying to think along different lines. I am curious though, why'd you say, I mean, clearly it's the truth, but I mean, you're just claiming a stating effect. But why did you say I'm from Tysim? So I have the feeling everyone else here is from the humanities program, the liberal arts program. And I have the feeling that probably we have a bit of different background knowledge. So I just wanted to introduce this fact to make clear that if I use certain vocabulary, everyone knows where I'm coming from and not try to be like super pretentious asshole-ish person. Okay. What's interesting about that is basically what you're doing is you're staking claim as a different drummer. You're saying, I'm not like everyone else in this room. I'm coming with a different perspective, which is very good. What I also liked is that you made clear one of the things that I have also been a proponent of in this university. And that is, I think we need to sometimes think beyond our own walls a little bit more as schools and faculties. One of the things I've always said is what I love about this place is it's small and it's specialized. And a lot of the things can be interrelated. There's a lot going on that connects the humanities to economics, that connects law to economics, that connects law to psychology, that connects psychology to the humanities. And we need those connections more. If you ask me, what would I say is one of the things that I think makes our place really unique and funky would be to break down those walls and say, hey, you know what? You're going to train to be a lawyer, but you're going to be a lawyer who understands what's going on in some of these other worlds as well. You'll meet the demands of the market, but you'll have a toolkit that will help the challenges that society and humanity face. And that I think would be really cool. So in that respect, if you are indeed the only person here from Tysim, welcome. Can't see more enough of that. Anyone else? Then ladies and gentlemen, I will yield the floor back to the organizers of the last lecture program. As I want to say in my classroom, and I'll say it again here, it's always a privilege to have the opportunity to stand before you. And I hope that you have gained as much from this as I've enjoyed doing it. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mark, for your time. I think now we've been invited to the Grand Café Espinada for a coffee on behalf of Studio Mahiralla, if you'd like. So if you'd like to join us, Mark, if you'd like to join us, well, you're more than welcome. Thank you.