Saturday, August 3, 2019

Graduate School #5 (Summer Edition): Final Grade and Reflection on the Summer Session

     Folklore Fiancé and I both ended up taking summer courses over the past few weeks, which is why I have been less than attentive to some of my social media until recently. We were both working nearly every day on our lessons and assignments, so the summer has gone by much quicker than usual. The reason I ended up taking a summer course was that I had only taken two classes during my first semester at Villanova, with permission to have the third course I would have had that semester during the following summer. The courses that were offered over the summer were only Latin-based courses, one of which I would have taken (an accelerated Latin course for a refresher, which I definitely need at some point) if it had counted towards my Master's program. Alas, it didn't, so I was in the course Roman Drama.
     Since I focus specifically on the Civilization aspect, I take most of my courses in translation, so part of the class was reading Seneca's Medea in Latin and translating as they went. All the other plays we read, everyone read in translation, though, because we had to read them before the following week and no one would have had time to translate that much material in so little time. (If you can do that, please tell me your secrets.) I thoroughly enjoyed all of the plays (despite how gruesome some of them were - yikes) and I had never read any of Seneca's writing, so this was all new for me.
     The whole time was a blur, really. My class was during one of the days I have off (since I work in a museum, my "weekend" is Monday/Tuesday) so I was basically not home the entire seven weeks I had class. The summer consisted of me waking up with my Fiancé, making breakfast, and getting ready for the day. There was a lot of Starbucks stops, then library trips, and sitting in the computer center at the college while I waited for my Fiancé to be done with their classes.
     This worked out particularly well for me, as I would do my homework and readings while I waited for my Fiancé to finish class; my class overlapped with the time they were in Political Science, so often I would be finished at the same time. The only issue we ever had was when they got out of class early - so what I would end up doing is sign in to the Zoom meeting on my phone so that we could go home, and I'd keep my internet signal the whole way there while my classroom was essentially in my pocket while I wore earbuds (our house is just down the street from their college). I was able to attend all the meetings with relative ease, save for a couple of internet connectivity mishaps.
     The most frustrating part of this course was having to try and fit in time to research and write a 7-8 page paper in less than a week. At first, I wanted to focus on the crime and punishment aspect of the plays, tie it into law, and see if the law was reflected well in the plays with a comparison of ancient Greek laws and ancient Roman laws in the corresponding Euripides plays with Seneca. Unfortunately, the lack of time or the lack of resources made this an impossible route to take, so I ended up meeting with my professor (who I adored and hope I get to take another course with again), and changed the main idea of my paper. So, I essentially had to begin my research all over again.
     After I had changed the subject matter, I took to Twitter to ask for recommendations, and as always, Classics Twitter came through, and I had plenty of references to use for my paper. The paper I wrote ended up focusing on Medea's position as a metic woman and how this affected her actions in both the Euripides and the Seneca plays. I speak extensively about this in an upcoming YouTube video, so I won't outline it here, but the gist of it is the way that Medea's status as a metic woman and how women were expected to act created a prejudice against Medea before she was even really a "monster." The aspects I covered were marriage, motherhood, and murder; it was challenging to squish all of it together in a 7-8 page paper, and I would like to expand it at some point.
     Once the class was officially over, the worst part was yet to come: waiting for my grades. I try to be patient, but I'm such an anxious mess over the grades I get in coursework, not knowing what they are for the entire time of class makes waiting for the final grade so much worse for me. The past week I was an anxious mess, knowing my grade would be posted by Friday. Everyone around me was very reassuring about how they were certain I would have an A in the bag, so I shouldn't fret, but because I didn't have any check-ins on the way, so until it was a sure thing, I was going to be anxious. On top of that, I applied to a potential new paid position, and I should hear back from them soon as well. A lot of the end of July and early August has been me waiting to see how things are going to end up.
     My grade was posted yesterday.
     I got an A. 

50% to M.A. in Classical Studies Complete

Sunday, May 26, 2019

YouTube #1: Introduction

     I am excited to announce that I have finally begun my YouTube channel, as I announced on Tumblr a while back. So far, I have only posted an introduction video, but more videos are to come in the near future! I would like to know what people want to see, so please leave a comment about your interests, and I will add it to my list for upcoming videos. Thank you for watching!

Saturday, May 18, 2019

Graduate School #4: Final Grades and Reflection on the Second Semester

     A lot has happened this past semester. A lot of good, and a lot of bad. My uncle passed away at the beginning of the semester, and I was devastated. I had seen him when I went home for Christmas, and I am glad I decided to go with my family for the visit because that was the last time I would ever see him. It was impossible for me to do anything from Las Vegas because he was in New Jersey, and I couldn't afford to fly back home again. He was one of my biggest allies for both my gender identity as a non-binary transgender person and for my sexuality as a pansexual person. He was one of the people who finally got my family to use "they" pronouns. I'm going to miss him terribly. It took a lot out of me, and I decided to throw myself as much into my work and coursework as possible to distract myself.
     This semester was particularly challenging because Ancient Historiography was the most challenging course I have ever taken. I thought History of Latin Literature was difficult, but I found Ancient Historiography to be far worse for me. The subject matter was not the issue in particular, but it was the sheer amount of information that I was expected to take in for each week. The course load was overwhelming to me, and I felt like I did not retain a lot of it because there was just so much to read and absorb, both primary and secondary sources, that I felt buried under the assignments. Each week was over 100 pages of reading, and as much as I am interested in the content, the presentation of the content made it tough to get through without frustration. The most foreboding message should have been the fact that I obtained a lot of my historiography textbooks from a co-worker who gave them to me with the statement, "My historiography course was when I discovered that I didn't want to be a historian." Yay free books! was probably why I didn't heed her warning as much as I should have.
     The course itself was enjoyable. The professor was helpful and made the material engaging during the lectures; it was the homework that really did me in with this course. We had a lot of different things to do, but I was just relieved when I did not have to do more than a final paper (we had four assignments total for it: an annotated bibliography, a presentation, a rough draft of our final, and the final paper) due for the course. I find it much more difficult when I have to worry about both a final paper and a final exam. I also find I'm much more likely to retain material we focused on in the class through a final paper because I'm working on it over a more extended period of time, whereas with an exam, I feel like my anxiety makes me forget everything as soon as the final exam has been completed.
     The topic I had for my final paper was epic and historiography. This was a broad topic in general, but I thought I had found a way to narrow it down with fate and hubris of the players in both epic and historiography in relation to how they interpreted the oracles and prophecies given to them. However, this was still apparently too broad because I did not focus intently on only a few texts and ended up having a pretty frazzled paper that jumped between too many sources, according to the feedback of my professor. I had even taken a week off of work to be able to focus my energy on finals, and I was spending the majority of my time in both the college library by my house and the public libraries in other parts of town.
     Roman Elegy was far more interesting to me, and although there was a lot to read, I was able to handle the assignments much more easily. The assignments were a lot of poems and secondary source readings, but the poems weren't too difficult to get through. The only real issue I had was reading the poems in translation and not knowing for sure what the meaning of the poem was; sometimes the translations are using language that is supposed to evoke the original Latin meaning, but it took a lot of analysis and finding extra complimentary readings to help me understand the material better. I could have also read the original Latin, but as I was taking the course in translation, I found it to be less time-consuming to find other analyses in addition to my assigned readings.
     The final for Roman Elegy ended up being one of my favorite papers thus far: it was an analysis of the offerings to the goddess Venus in Roman elegiac poetry, for which I only found four specific sacrifice or offerings mentioned explicitly in all of the elegiac poetry (all of which I read through in case we did not go over the poem during class) and then compared it to how and what sacrifices and offerings the Romans gave to the goddess Venus according to their religion. As religion in the ancient world is one of my main research interest, I was excited to pursue this as I had not really come across any publications thus far with a similar subject, so most of my sources were material culture reports, books, textbooks, and only a few articles. It took me a long time to get it finished, but overall I was pleased with the final result of the paper, which is more than I can say about the Ancient Historiography paper, which I was just relieved to be finished and never have to think about again (at least, probably, until I either tried to rework the paper for publication, or when I begin my Ph.D. program).
     The real challenge towards the end of the semester was trying to catch up on my Tuition Scholar work because I fell behind due to nonsense at work on top of trying to keep up with my assignments in general. I managed to do a gargantuan amount of work in a few weeks (one assignment left that I will be tackling tonight or tomorrow) because of the other obstacles. Once I had 99% of that completed, I felt extremely relieved.
     The wait for my grades for this semester was not as long as it was in the Fall because my Ancient Historiography course ended on a Thursday and the grades were posted on the following Monday. I was anxious the entire time because again I did not know where I stood in the courses because there were no grades along the way, but I managed to end the semester with an A in Roman Elegy and an A- in Ancient Historiography (a higher grade than I expected, to be quite honest). So, I did not manage to preserve my 4.0 that I began my Classical Studies program with, but a 3.92 is not that bad to have!
     My next course is Roman Drama, which I'm taking over the summer, after which I'll officially be halfway done my degree! I'm excited to see what that course will be like and I think it'll be a little easier for me to tackle as the only course for that semester. The most challenging semester will be Fall because I will be taking three classes and working full-time. I think I've gotten used to what I need to do with my courses and work life to make it balance and taking the vacation time for my research was a good idea. I think what I need to do when I have the courses in the Fall is I might have to take a little bit more vacation time than I'm used to taking, but because I don't really take vacation time off, I should be able to handle it. I just have to plan everything for it. I'm excited and anxious, as always, and am [im]patiently waiting for the course materials and textbooks to be listed so I can get started on the next part of my education adventure. 

40% to M.A. in Classical Studies Complete

Saturday, February 9, 2019

University List #2: Colleges & Universities with Degree Programs in Classics or Related Fields in the United States of America

*Long Post Warning*



[This list first published on Tumblr as separate posts on February 6th, 2019 at 8:42 a.m. and February 7th, 2019 at 6:45 p.m. PST. If I have missed any schools, please let me know. I will update the list as necessary and this will be an ongoing project. American colleges and universities are organized by state. Note: this list will not include anthropology/archaeology/history if it does not have a specific concentration in the ancient world. Also, if the school only has minors and no major available, it won’t be listed, either. Both undergraduate and graduate programs will be listed.]