Now that I am back from vacation and my grades are finally posted, I thought it would be good to kick off the new year with a reflection of my first semester as a graduate student at Villanova University. One of the pressures, aside from the normal wow I'm in grad school, how do I do this, help me!!! as I went through my first semester, was the fact that I am a Tuition Scholar. Although graduate students are required to keep a 3.0 GPA at a minimum, Tuition Scholars are encouraged to work beyond that, so they are not just meeting the minimum standard, but reflect the reason why they were chosen as Tuition Scholars. This makes perfect sense to me, and I was actually surprised that it was not just a requirement for me to have no less than a 3.5 GPA, so I set a goal for myself to try and keep the highest GPA I could possibly have; I've achieved 4.0 semesters before, so I thought it may not be that hard.
I was wrong.
It was definitely an achievable goal, but not without many late nights staying after work that ended in my office to read or type an essay, tears from frustration or stress or anger or all of the above, or from having to neglect other duties that I should be on top of but just could not do both my homework and that particular responsibility. It would not have been possible without encouraging friends and coworkers, a drive that many people have described as a little too much, and undying support from my lovely Folklore Fiancé, who put up with every meltdown I had this semester with an amazing amount of patience. Folklore Fiancé was also the one cooking my meals for me, doing laundry on their days off, and taking care of our cats when I stayed late at the office. I would not have made it through the first semester of this program without them, and I know that. I'm eternally grateful to everyone who has supported me throughout these past few months because I know it's been quite a time to be around me.
I work full-time at a museum as well as take courses full-time. It can be overwhelming. One of the advantages I have right now is that, for the most part, my supervisors are really supportive of me getting my education, especially because I'm a Tuition Scholar. If I weren't, I would have only been able to cover the first year of my program for sure, but I wasn't sure what I would have done for the second year of the program. Honestly, the Tuition Scholarship is really the only reason I was so keen on getting it done now and why I wanted to work harder on my course assignments. Luckily, as I said, I have a supportive wealth of people, and one of the advantages of my position at work is if we aren't too busy, I was allowed to read or do homework at the desk while I waited for guests and if I was not assisting a curator with something.
It was overwhelming. More than once I'd find myself staring at the readings and not absorbing anything. Some of the readings made me wonder how someone could take such a fascinating subject - such as Pompeii - and turn it into such a dry and hard-to-swallow text I had to trudge my way through. Many of the readings I had were interesting, but some days I was so burnt out from work that I just gave up and went home and told myself I'll try again tomorrow. I learned a lot of things about myself, though. I definitely know that there are better ways for me to study. I know how to speed read like a demon if I need to, even though I'm dyslexic. I got over my anxiety of highlighting directly in the books (I used to take notes by hand, but I found that now, I don't have the time for that - so, highlighting it was! I just didn't use to like doing it in case I sold my book back or wanted to read it later...but, I'm keeping all my books now, so I'll be doing that from now on).
I also learned that there was a lot I didn't know about Pompeii and Herculaneum and the more I explore the ancient world - like when I was in Bulgaria and was unaware that they had both ancient Greek and Roman sites to see - the more I realize I have so much more to learn. (Insert philosophy joke here). Even though I had been to Pompeii before, I hadn't really learned about Herculaneum in depth yet, and I didn't even know about other cities that were also buried by Mt. Vesuvius until I took this course. The History of Latin Literature had me read so much that I was unfamiliar with because I didn't go very far in Latin as an undergraduate, so I barely remember what I read aside from Catullus because he was my favorite when I first read him.
My Pompeii and Herculaneum class was a fun class, but it involved so much reading. My textbooks all together probably amount to nearly 1,200 pages. And we read most of them. (Well, we were assigned to read most of them; I may have fallen behind once or twice). That doesn't include the articles we had to read or the peer blogs we were encouraged to read. Each week, we made blog posts about the most interesting topic in the reading and discuss it - that meant I was reading outside material relevant to coursework that wasn't assigned as well. They were fascinating articles, though, and I don't regret it at all! But it was a lot of reading. We also had a report andPowerPointint presentation we had to prepare outside of our exams. We had a Midterm and a "Final Project" which was just a paper with an accompanying PowerPoint to reference the images we mentioned in our final paper. I was extremely worried about my final because I worked on it for a long time, but it still didn't feel right. I turned it in anyway because I worked on it for so long that I had to stop and make myself work on my History of Latin Literature final exam study guide.
History of Latin Literature was another story. That course was difficult for me. One of the things that I think was the most frustrating and intimidating, as I have mentioned before, is that many of my classmates are already Latin teachers; they're getting their M.A. probably to further their education, and it might help them get a promotion or a pay raise, which is all very admirable! But I'm coming in right out of a Museum Studies M.A. program with three-five years without practicing Ancient Greek and Latin on the daily. So, I'm reading things in translation because that's honestly how I managed to be as good as I am because I don't struggle through hours of translation that I know will trip me up - do I read things in Latin later, just for fun, to see if I can do it? Yes, but I know the aptitude level I have would not allow me to do it as fast as I would like to during the semester, so I chose the Classical Civilizations track.
Even reading in translation, though, the History of Latin Literature was probably my most challenging course I have ever taken. There was so much information; we learned about so many authors, and if you read their writing, you have to know about their contemporaries and the politics of the time they were writing and the religious feelings at the time. Some of the writers were keen on writing about the gods, but others were atheistic to a point where their writing could be categorized as sacrilege to those who still worshipped the Roman gods. On top of the extensive readings we had, since I was reading in translation, one of my extra assignments was to write a one page summary of what I've read as well as a critique of the work. A lot of this was difficult for me as the translations were often from open sources, so the translations were a little out of date for me (I would have probably been better off just reading in Latin in some cases; at least, that's how it felt). Honestly, the most influential thing when reading some of these translations was "ugh okay, I'm adding this on things I'd like to translate in the future," which is something I've never done before. The other main assignments were probably what stressed me out most: a week where we led the discussion (that's getting its own paragraph), a midterm exam, a final exam, and a final paper.
That was probably the most overwhelming thing because I had gone through an entire M.A. program where we didn't really have final exams until we had our Comprehensive Examinations and it was all smooshed into one assignment that you only have two weeks to do. I had lost the skills I had at test-taking. Or at least, I was really rusty. So, not only did I have all of these assignments looming over me, but I had exams to worry about on top of them. One of the things I was looking forward to, though, was the week that I got to lead the discussion.
Each student had to sign up through OneNote for their discussion. I was so excited because I was one of the first people to sign up, so I got Catullus like I wanted. I was stoked to be able to lead the discussion with the article that we had to read, which addresses how Catullus presents himself as both male and female in his poetry (by Roman standards). As a non-binary person, I found this fascinating and wondered if this was part of why I always felt drawn to him over other Latin writers; so, for one of the questions I decided to address to the class, I asked if gender and sex affected their reading of Catullus's poems, because I could relate to Catullus on both fronts, from both a female aspect and a male aspect, since I'm non-binary and can be a little wibbly-wobbly on my gender. However, everyone skipped that question and went on to answer the other ones. Next time, I may do what a friend suggested and only have that type of question so that they will have to answer it. I just don't know if I'm able or ready to try and do that, though. It was super disappointing that no one addressed it, even though I did try and bring up during the actual class discussion (the first discussion was a post in Teams on Office so we could do a comment thread discussing the questions), but that was pretty much ignored, too. (Also, somehow, I didn't know the sparrow was a euphemism, but I learned me a thing that day in class when I was leading the discussion).
Either way, I'm still glad I got to talk about Catullus and was even more impressed that the professor took it upon herself to send me an e-mail to let me know that there may be triggering material in Catullus and Ovid. I've never had a professor do that without prompting before (one of my undergraduate professors I had for a fantasy literature course assigned a book about a child of rape, and I had to send her an e-mail saying that it was going to take me longer to read because it was triggering for me and she was very understanding), so I was thoroughly impressed that she took the initiative to warn us before we read the material, even though most of us had already read or been exposed to it. Anyway, I'm going to talk about the rest of the challenges in this course because writing all of that has made me Very Tired.
The exams were nerve-wracking to me because I had to study and make study guides for so many different authors and I wasn't sure what I wanted to include. My exam guides were super long (I believe my final exam study guide was a little over 100 pages) and I was a wreck the entire time I was studying. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well, moreso than anyone else does, and I know that, but I don't know how not to do that, you know? So, once I had finished and turned in my final project for Pompeii and Herculaneum, I started to work on my final study guide. I took the final and freaked out the whole time because a couple things happened that made my anxiety skyrocket: 1. I couldn't remember the secondary sources for the second question prompt; I'm never good at remembering them, so I was worried the whole time it would take too many points away. 2. My internet connection lapsed, and it kicked me off for a minute or two, so I got scared and startled that I wouldn't be able to reconnect. And 3. I realized that my final exam paragraphs were shorter than my midterm paragraphs, so I wondered if I had written enough (spoiler alert: I had). As soon as I finished the exam, I tried to pull all my stuff together for my final paper.
Writing the final paper was one of the more difficult things I've done. I was trying to write something about parenthood of the gods being represented differently in the different genres and how their attitude towards their godly children and mortal children differed using Plautus, Vergil, and Ovid as my prime examples. I felt like I said so much and nothing at the same time and I was terrified when I turned it in, but I was told that the material was good, so I just let it go. The only thing left after that was to wait around for my grades because what else was I going to do with myself?
One of the problems I had the entire semester, however, was that I didn't have any grades to reference, so I actually had no idea where I stood (officially) in either of my classes until near the end of the semester. I had e-mailed my Latin professor to ask her where I stood and she told me I was doing well, but I still didn't actually know my letter grade. I got the majority of my grades posted right before my final paper was due for Pompeii and Herculaneum. Then, I got to see how I was doing in Latin. I had an A in both classes; but, I still didn't know if they would be my final grades, but I prayed that they were.
Three days ago, my final grades were finally posted, and I kicked off my Classical Studies M.A. with a 4.0 with A's in both courses. I was ecstatic. I was both relieved and not as surprised as I expected to be, but thinking you're going to have an A and actually seeing it on your student record are two very different things and very different feelings. Now, all I have to do is wait [im]patiently for my course books to be posted so I can buy them for the upcoming semester.
My next courses are Roman Elegy and Historiography. I have all of my Historiography books already, and I've printed out the 88-page article my professor wants us to read before class starts. I have a couple weeks to dig into it, so I'll be trying to do that over the next couple of days. I have no idea about my Elegy course, though, so I suppose I'll just obsessively check the textbook website to see if anything was listed. Here's to a new year, a new semester, and hopefully, another 4.0!
20% to M.A. in Classical Studies Complete
I was wrong.
It was definitely an achievable goal, but not without many late nights staying after work that ended in my office to read or type an essay, tears from frustration or stress or anger or all of the above, or from having to neglect other duties that I should be on top of but just could not do both my homework and that particular responsibility. It would not have been possible without encouraging friends and coworkers, a drive that many people have described as a little too much, and undying support from my lovely Folklore Fiancé, who put up with every meltdown I had this semester with an amazing amount of patience. Folklore Fiancé was also the one cooking my meals for me, doing laundry on their days off, and taking care of our cats when I stayed late at the office. I would not have made it through the first semester of this program without them, and I know that. I'm eternally grateful to everyone who has supported me throughout these past few months because I know it's been quite a time to be around me.
I work full-time at a museum as well as take courses full-time. It can be overwhelming. One of the advantages I have right now is that, for the most part, my supervisors are really supportive of me getting my education, especially because I'm a Tuition Scholar. If I weren't, I would have only been able to cover the first year of my program for sure, but I wasn't sure what I would have done for the second year of the program. Honestly, the Tuition Scholarship is really the only reason I was so keen on getting it done now and why I wanted to work harder on my course assignments. Luckily, as I said, I have a supportive wealth of people, and one of the advantages of my position at work is if we aren't too busy, I was allowed to read or do homework at the desk while I waited for guests and if I was not assisting a curator with something.
It was overwhelming. More than once I'd find myself staring at the readings and not absorbing anything. Some of the readings made me wonder how someone could take such a fascinating subject - such as Pompeii - and turn it into such a dry and hard-to-swallow text I had to trudge my way through. Many of the readings I had were interesting, but some days I was so burnt out from work that I just gave up and went home and told myself I'll try again tomorrow. I learned a lot of things about myself, though. I definitely know that there are better ways for me to study. I know how to speed read like a demon if I need to, even though I'm dyslexic. I got over my anxiety of highlighting directly in the books (I used to take notes by hand, but I found that now, I don't have the time for that - so, highlighting it was! I just didn't use to like doing it in case I sold my book back or wanted to read it later...but, I'm keeping all my books now, so I'll be doing that from now on).
I also learned that there was a lot I didn't know about Pompeii and Herculaneum and the more I explore the ancient world - like when I was in Bulgaria and was unaware that they had both ancient Greek and Roman sites to see - the more I realize I have so much more to learn. (Insert philosophy joke here). Even though I had been to Pompeii before, I hadn't really learned about Herculaneum in depth yet, and I didn't even know about other cities that were also buried by Mt. Vesuvius until I took this course. The History of Latin Literature had me read so much that I was unfamiliar with because I didn't go very far in Latin as an undergraduate, so I barely remember what I read aside from Catullus because he was my favorite when I first read him.
My Pompeii and Herculaneum class was a fun class, but it involved so much reading. My textbooks all together probably amount to nearly 1,200 pages. And we read most of them. (Well, we were assigned to read most of them; I may have fallen behind once or twice). That doesn't include the articles we had to read or the peer blogs we were encouraged to read. Each week, we made blog posts about the most interesting topic in the reading and discuss it - that meant I was reading outside material relevant to coursework that wasn't assigned as well. They were fascinating articles, though, and I don't regret it at all! But it was a lot of reading. We also had a report andPowerPointint presentation we had to prepare outside of our exams. We had a Midterm and a "Final Project" which was just a paper with an accompanying PowerPoint to reference the images we mentioned in our final paper. I was extremely worried about my final because I worked on it for a long time, but it still didn't feel right. I turned it in anyway because I worked on it for so long that I had to stop and make myself work on my History of Latin Literature final exam study guide.
History of Latin Literature was another story. That course was difficult for me. One of the things that I think was the most frustrating and intimidating, as I have mentioned before, is that many of my classmates are already Latin teachers; they're getting their M.A. probably to further their education, and it might help them get a promotion or a pay raise, which is all very admirable! But I'm coming in right out of a Museum Studies M.A. program with three-five years without practicing Ancient Greek and Latin on the daily. So, I'm reading things in translation because that's honestly how I managed to be as good as I am because I don't struggle through hours of translation that I know will trip me up - do I read things in Latin later, just for fun, to see if I can do it? Yes, but I know the aptitude level I have would not allow me to do it as fast as I would like to during the semester, so I chose the Classical Civilizations track.
Even reading in translation, though, the History of Latin Literature was probably my most challenging course I have ever taken. There was so much information; we learned about so many authors, and if you read their writing, you have to know about their contemporaries and the politics of the time they were writing and the religious feelings at the time. Some of the writers were keen on writing about the gods, but others were atheistic to a point where their writing could be categorized as sacrilege to those who still worshipped the Roman gods. On top of the extensive readings we had, since I was reading in translation, one of my extra assignments was to write a one page summary of what I've read as well as a critique of the work. A lot of this was difficult for me as the translations were often from open sources, so the translations were a little out of date for me (I would have probably been better off just reading in Latin in some cases; at least, that's how it felt). Honestly, the most influential thing when reading some of these translations was "ugh okay, I'm adding this on things I'd like to translate in the future," which is something I've never done before. The other main assignments were probably what stressed me out most: a week where we led the discussion (that's getting its own paragraph), a midterm exam, a final exam, and a final paper.
That was probably the most overwhelming thing because I had gone through an entire M.A. program where we didn't really have final exams until we had our Comprehensive Examinations and it was all smooshed into one assignment that you only have two weeks to do. I had lost the skills I had at test-taking. Or at least, I was really rusty. So, not only did I have all of these assignments looming over me, but I had exams to worry about on top of them. One of the things I was looking forward to, though, was the week that I got to lead the discussion.
Each student had to sign up through OneNote for their discussion. I was so excited because I was one of the first people to sign up, so I got Catullus like I wanted. I was stoked to be able to lead the discussion with the article that we had to read, which addresses how Catullus presents himself as both male and female in his poetry (by Roman standards). As a non-binary person, I found this fascinating and wondered if this was part of why I always felt drawn to him over other Latin writers; so, for one of the questions I decided to address to the class, I asked if gender and sex affected their reading of Catullus's poems, because I could relate to Catullus on both fronts, from both a female aspect and a male aspect, since I'm non-binary and can be a little wibbly-wobbly on my gender. However, everyone skipped that question and went on to answer the other ones. Next time, I may do what a friend suggested and only have that type of question so that they will have to answer it. I just don't know if I'm able or ready to try and do that, though. It was super disappointing that no one addressed it, even though I did try and bring up during the actual class discussion (the first discussion was a post in Teams on Office so we could do a comment thread discussing the questions), but that was pretty much ignored, too. (Also, somehow, I didn't know the sparrow was a euphemism, but I learned me a thing that day in class when I was leading the discussion).
Either way, I'm still glad I got to talk about Catullus and was even more impressed that the professor took it upon herself to send me an e-mail to let me know that there may be triggering material in Catullus and Ovid. I've never had a professor do that without prompting before (one of my undergraduate professors I had for a fantasy literature course assigned a book about a child of rape, and I had to send her an e-mail saying that it was going to take me longer to read because it was triggering for me and she was very understanding), so I was thoroughly impressed that she took the initiative to warn us before we read the material, even though most of us had already read or been exposed to it. Anyway, I'm going to talk about the rest of the challenges in this course because writing all of that has made me Very Tired.
The exams were nerve-wracking to me because I had to study and make study guides for so many different authors and I wasn't sure what I wanted to include. My exam guides were super long (I believe my final exam study guide was a little over 100 pages) and I was a wreck the entire time I was studying. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do well, moreso than anyone else does, and I know that, but I don't know how not to do that, you know? So, once I had finished and turned in my final project for Pompeii and Herculaneum, I started to work on my final study guide. I took the final and freaked out the whole time because a couple things happened that made my anxiety skyrocket: 1. I couldn't remember the secondary sources for the second question prompt; I'm never good at remembering them, so I was worried the whole time it would take too many points away. 2. My internet connection lapsed, and it kicked me off for a minute or two, so I got scared and startled that I wouldn't be able to reconnect. And 3. I realized that my final exam paragraphs were shorter than my midterm paragraphs, so I wondered if I had written enough (spoiler alert: I had). As soon as I finished the exam, I tried to pull all my stuff together for my final paper.
Writing the final paper was one of the more difficult things I've done. I was trying to write something about parenthood of the gods being represented differently in the different genres and how their attitude towards their godly children and mortal children differed using Plautus, Vergil, and Ovid as my prime examples. I felt like I said so much and nothing at the same time and I was terrified when I turned it in, but I was told that the material was good, so I just let it go. The only thing left after that was to wait around for my grades because what else was I going to do with myself?
One of the problems I had the entire semester, however, was that I didn't have any grades to reference, so I actually had no idea where I stood (officially) in either of my classes until near the end of the semester. I had e-mailed my Latin professor to ask her where I stood and she told me I was doing well, but I still didn't actually know my letter grade. I got the majority of my grades posted right before my final paper was due for Pompeii and Herculaneum. Then, I got to see how I was doing in Latin. I had an A in both classes; but, I still didn't know if they would be my final grades, but I prayed that they were.
Three days ago, my final grades were finally posted, and I kicked off my Classical Studies M.A. with a 4.0 with A's in both courses. I was ecstatic. I was both relieved and not as surprised as I expected to be, but thinking you're going to have an A and actually seeing it on your student record are two very different things and very different feelings. Now, all I have to do is wait [im]patiently for my course books to be posted so I can buy them for the upcoming semester.
My next courses are Roman Elegy and Historiography. I have all of my Historiography books already, and I've printed out the 88-page article my professor wants us to read before class starts. I have a couple weeks to dig into it, so I'll be trying to do that over the next couple of days. I have no idea about my Elegy course, though, so I suppose I'll just obsessively check the textbook website to see if anything was listed. Here's to a new year, a new semester, and hopefully, another 4.0!
20% to M.A. in Classical Studies Complete
