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rushthatspeaksSo far, this semester is treating me pretty well. Mind you, this semester is not yet three weeks old. My 'I am so delighted' course of the semester is of course Ancient Magic. Facets of history that have been completely ignored! The most interesting evidence of the ways religious syncretism works, ever! Proof that human nature does not, in fact, change over the millennia! Plus sheer coolness in many other directions. Because yeah, I knew a fair quantity about ancient magical practices already, probably more than the average person, and I know a genuinely absurd quantity about the medieval and Renaissance magical practices, and there's the most interesting not-quite continuity of tradition, and I am just delighted. Yeah. Although some of this stuff is pretty twitchy.
Herodotus is also treating me-- well, pretty well. He varies sentence-by-sentence from so clear that I can just sit down and read him as I would English to so convoluted and obscure that I must look up every single word in the sentence and every single form and sit there feeling like I am putting together a jigsaw puzzle without being able to look at the picture. However, the readable bits dominate, which makes me very, very happy, because maybe by the end of the semester I'll feel like I can actually, you know, deal with Greek prose. Or at least simplish Greek prose.
History of Philadelphia is not a course I would have chosen to take if it didn't apply to my thesis, so of course it turns out that it will not, after all, apply to my thesis. I think it will be good for me to try to find something interesting and/or likable about the city of Philadelphia itself, as opposed to this small collegiate enclave. So far, the more I find out about the ethics behind the planning and development of Philly and the more I find out about the way the city and the people who live here seem to work, the more I want to get the hell out of here when I graduate.
My senior seminars are fine, I guess. The Cities one is basically the thesis, the 'here's how we want you to write it, any questions' course. The Classics one is kind of disjointed but very interesting. At the moment we're doing the history of the book as a physical document and the history of the transmission of text, which are things classicists generally do not consider deeply enough. One cannot trust one's texts, but one can't *not*, either. One just has to keep the time and the copying vagaries and the possible emendations and ideological bowdlerism and lost bits in mind. Without going nuts about never being able to have the original or having proof that one has the original. It's an interesting balancing act to try to develop.
Lifewise, well, my hair is bluish, but still needs some significant contact with bleach before I can get it its actual color. I miss my fiancee with a deep pain that I attempt not to think about too much-- I swear long-distance relationships get more difficult as the years go by. My hormones beat me up this month, TKO, so I'm not noveling at the moment because I need some frickin' sleep. I hope to be back to it by the end of the week. The interview with the Bi-Co reporter went fine. Chorale is easy. Renaissance Choir has upped the difficulty (yay). I am nervous as hell about grad school apps, my theses, and finding time to do all the administrative stuff for the GREs. At least this is going to be hopefully my last school application process forever and ever amen.
So all is well, really, except for my tendency to put Tori on repeat and then start twitching wildly because I've forgotten to take 'Me and a Gun' off the playlist and then I put 'These Precious Things' on repeat, which is a really bad habit that I should do something about, possibly by changing which CD is in my alarm clock. Thing is, I've rotated through about everything that is reasonable to have wake one up in the morning, and the next step is things like the Yami no Matsuei soundtrack, which would probably do the most fascinating things to my mood and it would not be fair to the rest of the universe. Must think on this. Maybe buy more music.
Must go to Herodotus.
Herodotus is also treating me-- well, pretty well. He varies sentence-by-sentence from so clear that I can just sit down and read him as I would English to so convoluted and obscure that I must look up every single word in the sentence and every single form and sit there feeling like I am putting together a jigsaw puzzle without being able to look at the picture. However, the readable bits dominate, which makes me very, very happy, because maybe by the end of the semester I'll feel like I can actually, you know, deal with Greek prose. Or at least simplish Greek prose.
History of Philadelphia is not a course I would have chosen to take if it didn't apply to my thesis, so of course it turns out that it will not, after all, apply to my thesis. I think it will be good for me to try to find something interesting and/or likable about the city of Philadelphia itself, as opposed to this small collegiate enclave. So far, the more I find out about the ethics behind the planning and development of Philly and the more I find out about the way the city and the people who live here seem to work, the more I want to get the hell out of here when I graduate.
My senior seminars are fine, I guess. The Cities one is basically the thesis, the 'here's how we want you to write it, any questions' course. The Classics one is kind of disjointed but very interesting. At the moment we're doing the history of the book as a physical document and the history of the transmission of text, which are things classicists generally do not consider deeply enough. One cannot trust one's texts, but one can't *not*, either. One just has to keep the time and the copying vagaries and the possible emendations and ideological bowdlerism and lost bits in mind. Without going nuts about never being able to have the original or having proof that one has the original. It's an interesting balancing act to try to develop.
Lifewise, well, my hair is bluish, but still needs some significant contact with bleach before I can get it its actual color. I miss my fiancee with a deep pain that I attempt not to think about too much-- I swear long-distance relationships get more difficult as the years go by. My hormones beat me up this month, TKO, so I'm not noveling at the moment because I need some frickin' sleep. I hope to be back to it by the end of the week. The interview with the Bi-Co reporter went fine. Chorale is easy. Renaissance Choir has upped the difficulty (yay). I am nervous as hell about grad school apps, my theses, and finding time to do all the administrative stuff for the GREs. At least this is going to be hopefully my last school application process forever and ever amen.
So all is well, really, except for my tendency to put Tori on repeat and then start twitching wildly because I've forgotten to take 'Me and a Gun' off the playlist and then I put 'These Precious Things' on repeat, which is a really bad habit that I should do something about, possibly by changing which CD is in my alarm clock. Thing is, I've rotated through about everything that is reasonable to have wake one up in the morning, and the next step is things like the Yami no Matsuei soundtrack, which would probably do the most fascinating things to my mood and it would not be fair to the rest of the universe. Must think on this. Maybe buy more music.
Must go to Herodotus.
