Success

My talk yesterday was a success! I spoke too fast (not a surprise), but the discussion was good and I didn't go over anyone's heads. Yay!

Anyway, I have a Sallust paper to write. So I best get back to that.

Stage Fright

On Tuesday, I have to give my presentation to my research seminar. I'm really nervous. However, my nerves do not come from a lack of speaking skills (I was a nationally ranked debater) or a lack of preparation (my research is done, my talk will be done soon). So why the nerves? Well, it's the people.

When I gave parts of my thesis at conferences my senior year in college, I knew that some of the people in the audience would know my topic thoroughly, while others may have only had a passing acquaintance. In those circumstances, I tried to aim my talk directly at the middle; I included enough details to sound well-researched while providing enough background to make it interesting for everyone else. Here, I'm not so lucky. The audience is only about 15 people. They are all fellow students in various arenas of classics, but I have no idea what to expect in terms of their knowledge about Plato. If I assume too much knowledge, my Q&A will be embarrassingly silent. This is what happened when I gave a totally unrelated presentation in my Sallust class a few weeks ago [1]. Conversely, if I try to go to broad, my topic will look like a wild generalization rather than a careful and nuanced interpretation.

I'm just ranting, really. My topic is set...nothing I can do now except hope it goes well. And, at least, I get to run an interpretation of a couple of geometric art pieces past a couple of specialists (there are two girls who work on early Greek art in the seminar). And who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and someone will passionately disagree with my reading and we'll have a nice discussion.

I've got my fingers crossed...

Endnotes

1. I gave a presentation on an article by R. Sklenár called "La République des Signes: Caesar, Cato, and the Language of Sallustian Morality" (JSTOR). The people in my class had read the article, and I assumed they had a passing familiarity with Saussure (I didn't want to talk down to anyone). Anyway, most of the class had been confused by the article so even when I dissected it more thoroughly (after asking if people had understood the portion about Cato to which I got a resounding "no"), my discussion questions still elicited silence from almost everyone except my professor. As everyone in the class is intelligent, I worked really hard to come up with complex and interesting perspectives so that I would bring something interesting to the table, but I didn't consider my audiences' lack of sleep, etc and it backfired.

Grad School: The Reading List

One of the things that most classics grad programs (e.g. Berkeley, U of Toronto) seem to require from their applicants is a reading list of texts read in the original language. Presumably this is because classes are not standardized at different schools, and this replaces what might once have been a list of classes. I have read quite a few texts in their original language-- especially Greek texts. Some of these texts, given when I read them, I read or remember better than others. However, Berkeley's list was a little different. It gave examples of what it considered to be second and third year classes, and expected two more semesters on top of that. This was fine in principle, but the texts they provided as examples were kind of scary.

• Homer (3-4 books)  I haven't read Homer since highschool, and I only read Book I of the Iliad.
• Plato (1 short dialogue) I read the Phaedrus which is much harder than most of the short dialogues (although I have to admit, I had a lot of trouble with it) plus selections of a number of other Plato's texts.
• A complete Greek Drama I read the Bacchae back my freshman year, which was awesome, but a long time ago and I think it would be a lot easier to go back over it now. I also read about 90% of the Agamemnon.
• Aeneid (3-4 books) I read Book 8, and excerps from books 10 and 12 in my second year Latin class, but still, obviously not enough.
• Republican Prose (40-50 pages) Pro Caelio and selections from Caesar's Civil Wars, which I would think add up to about 40 or so pages.
• Horace (30 poems) none until yesterday-- and I read I.1, 5, 9.

My lovely friend Propertius II and I went over my readings of I.1 and 5 today, during which I think I enjoyed the poetry much better than the first time that I read it. It is so nice to have another classicist who is willing to patiently work and discuss with me (as well as provide, at least in theory, some mutual benefit because he has not read much Horace either).

However much I am enjoying my grad school prep, at least at the moment, I am already behind. The timeline that Princeton Review puts out really scared me. I am so behind.

At an alumni dinner tonight I met a lovely classics grad who is getting his PhD working on Homer. I only hope that I can get into grad school and move things forward in the direction that he did. I hope also that I can live up to my own expectations bot in getting into and doing well in graduate school.

Getting Paid to Read for Fun

I've been getting pretty behind on my reading, as is obvious from the dearth of books crossed off my reading list. This lack of progress comes from a combination of a number of factors. I have been busy preparing for teaching my own class at work. Cerinthus is here, which has impeded my progress. However, I would not give up having him here, especially since I will not be able to see him for another six months. Currently, I seem to have contracted a cold, which has been making me pretty lethargic and unable to think clearly enough to read some of the texts on my list.

Although I was sick yesterday, I had to proctor an exam. To begin with, I had to grade essays. The essays were of better quality than I was expecting. Some of the kids I'm teaching have the promise of being very intelligent and doing very well. I hope that I can help to guide them there. The rest of the time while I'm proctoring the exam, I am free to do as I please, provided that I make sure no one is cheating and that I call the time properly and read the script.

My most recent reading.

During this last session, I read How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space by Janna Levin. The book is a wonderful fusion between the personal life of a mathematician/cosmologist, the history of math, and lessons in cosmology and mathematical topology. Although the topics in the math are complex, they are explained clearly and deftly, as well as peppered with personal details that keep the reader engaged and never overwhelmed by the complex concepts. I highly recommend this to everyone with any interest in math or science.

In the book, Janna Levin comes across as an sweet, passionate, obsessive, quirky individual with sharp sense of humor and an easy, approachable writing style. She speaks of the loneliness that comes from working in mathematics-- at least the theoretical mathematics of academia. This worries me. Although I am a classicist now, theoretical math and physics was always my first love, my first passion. Some days I have dreams of going back there. Her book makes it seem as though the work is lonely but rewarding, but a living nightmare for the spouses/boyfriends/girlfriends/partners of the mathematician. Is classics going to be like this too? Am I going to ruin the life of Cerinthus and drive his career into the ground because I want to pursue a life in academia? I hope not.