cognitive dysfunction

[rushthatspeaks]

So I spend three hours in Carpenter reading about the palaeographical and lexical problems inherent in the transmission of classical Greek and Latin texts to the present day, with special attention to the most common forms of scribal error present in the medieval tradition and the ideological changes wrought on most pagan texts by the introduction of metrical differences in Byzantian Christian scholastic tradition, and then I get my stuff together to go read/translate Herodotus for another hour-and-a-half before going to class, and I hear the following conversation on the Carpenter stairs:

First girl: 'Yeah, so my prof assigned this play for us to read, right, and it is so completely abstruse. I couldn't understand a word of it, I swear nobody could if they weren't, like, from that culture or something. I was so confused.'

Second girl: 'What was it?'

First girl: 'Uh, I can't pronounce it, but it began with Or... Or something. Anyway, it's by Sophocles or one of those other Greeks.'

Me: *quietly dies in background* *mentally: Oresteia! Oresteia!*

Am I overeducated, or is there something wrong with our high schools?

Anyhow, I am amused at all parties, including myself for my instantaneous desire to catch up to them and start quoting and footnoting.