Things Remain a Little Hectic

Calico, the kitten, 3 weeks old

Things are still crazy. I somehow thought that when the kittens got a little bit bigger everything would sort itself out, but it's just been a madhouse around here. If you want to see what I mean, the kittens have just learned how to get out of the box and explore. Here is a short clip of the first kitten who managed it. I honestly didn't expect it to be so much work, I just wanted to make sure the kittens were fostered and didn't have to go to a shelter. You can read the story here.

I had originally planned to try out doing my work in 90-minute blocks which is supposed to be quite productive (I've gotten very little done this summer). I read about the strategy here. I have PhD applications to attend to as well as keeping up my Latin, Greek, German, and French.I am crossing my fingers that I begin to manage some of my time a little better. I hardly have looked at any of these languages except Greek, and only at that for an hour or two once a week and I can feel it deteriorating.

Prioritizing Intellectual Projects

I only have a few weeks of summer left. I have to start prioritizing my intellectual projects. It seems I have had a number of weeks the seemed to evaporate with little progress at all. However there are a number of things that I simply must do before I finish the summer.

1. Review my Greek Grammar and vocabulary in Hansen & Quinn.
2. Review my Latin Grammar and vocabulary in Moreland & Fleischer.
3. Finish the Crito.
4. Read more Homer.
5. Finish the Medea.
6. Write a draft of my personal statement.
7. Work on thesis revisions (for graduate school writing sample).

This means that a lot of other endeavors will fall by the wayside including Xenephon, Infinite Jest, most of the works on my reading list, re-vitalizing my French, etc (although some short lived things I may do just for fun now and then).

I have only seven weeks to prepare for my Greek and Latin exams (to get into the classes I desire). Wish me luck!

Cerinthus is Here

Cerinthus is here. He came in yesterday-- the same day that I finished my second major German translation project. Things are going well-- although I still have a lot of work to do. I just calculated that I have to review 2-3 chapters a week of both Hansen and Quinn and Moreland and Fleischer in order to study for my exams this fall. I'm hoping to have Cerinthus quiz me on verb forms.

Also as Cerinthus is here, I am baking some more bread and pizza since Cerinthus is here. I will probably post some pictures.

Liminal Characters: A Group of Friendly, Intellectual Eccentrics

Indo-European Linguistics is a small, and not particularly popular, field. I once heard from a grad student in a history department that the historians thought the classicists were intense and intellectual in a way that was impressive, unnerving, and furthered their image as social misfits. She said that the classicists felt that the Indo-European studies students were impressive and unnerving in a similar way and never came out in the light of day [1]. In stereotypical fashion, I made the assumption that the IE people were going to be unattractive, socially-deficient, overly-technical misfits. I was pleasantly surprised at what I discovered.

Over the two days, there must have been about 70 people who were at the conference, although there were never more than 40 people in the conference room at any one time, and most of the lectures drew about 25. The group of professors in the room was diverse in specific interest, but they were primarily men over the age of 60 of European descent. In general, they were also sweet, although I think that they were a little suspicious of me [2]. The professors were split between those who were smartly dressed in suits, and those in shorts and t-shirts, which was amusing to me.

The rest of the room was made up largely of (I presume) graduate students in the field. Those of the students who were presenting could be divided into generative linguists and non-generative linguists and this correlated to hipster [3] and non-hipster (respectively). Even though I did not necessarily understand (or like) the methodology of the generativist hipsters, I found some of them charming and some of their presentations to be interesting. There was one by a particularly hipster student which used some kind of a crazy Apple-based web function that actually made me seasick because it was moving and changing sizes as he spoke, and he spoke very quickly. However, I found him moderately charming and I think I would have found his presentation interesting if he had not been speeding through it. Aside from the hipsters, there were a pretty diverse group of attendees from girls in tight suit-dresses to girls in hippie-style floor-length skirts to guys dressed like trendy business men to guys who looked as though they had hardly noticed their attires as they put it on. I noticed, oddly, that among the attendees and moderators, the gender split was about 50%-50% (surprising for an old-boys-club-style field), but the presenters were only about 20% female.

Overall, the conference was enjoyable and the people were eccentric and friendly.

Endnotes

1. At my alma mater, there were majors that were ranked in a similar fashion (although many majors such as chem, biochem, physics, classics, and history-lit seemed to all but themselves at the top of the "crazy" pyramid). There was also the opposite side of this chain, which were the majors that everyone made fun of for neither being difficult nor academically rigorous. Psychology (excepting the neuropsychology people who most people spoke of with respect) usually landed at the bottom of the heap as the most disparagingly-spoken-of major. However, above psych it depended on the person that you were talking to as to which way they ranked the departments.
2. They had some right to be suspicious. Not that I meant any harm, obviously. Rather, I overheard some one of the graduate students say that someone in the department had proposed the idea of having name-tags for the conference, but the proposal was roundly rejected on the grounds that "we all knew each other." The conference was free and open to the public, but I guess they expected no one new would show up. 
3. I find it pretty hilarious that my spell-check does not accept "Indo-European" or "neuropsychology," but it is perfectly happy with "hipster." What does that say?