The bird
Lodged in the chest cavity, tears at his feast
And tissues growing again get no relief.
Showing posts with label latin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label latin. Show all posts
13 February, 2010
03 January, 2010
this is a good example of why I suck at college
Dear [Latin professor who is my advisor],
As you might remember (or maybe not; it was a while ago) you agreed to be my Winter Term sponsor. I'm going to read some Latin from late antiquity or preferably the middle ages. Since I've been abroad I didn't need to sign up for a project in the fall; I'm supposed to do it when I get back to Oberlin, which is the day after tomorrow. However I feel anxious because I haven't decided what I want to read yet. [Medieval Lit professor] was going to help me decide but I feel bad dragging two professors into my anxiety so I thought I would ask you first since unfortunately for you you are already involved.
if all else fails I might just read Augustine (or possibly Tertullian), but that's a bit early for me. I really would like to read something that's personal and religious, like someone's account of their visions/spiritual experiences, and things like that. I really love people like Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, but I think that because of the nature of that kind of writing it isn't very likely to be in Latin. Is there stuff like that in Latin?
apologies and happy holidays (and I totally understand if my query is too weird/nebulous to answer easily; I am looking for stuff on my own too, but figured it couldn't hurt to ask),
Amanda
[Normally I freak out more about this kind of thing and try to go over it a lot trying to sound more normal and/or I just don't send it at all, but on this occasion I was just like whatever. I don't know. I was noodling around on Wikipedia and I found out about this guy Emanuel Swedenborg who wrote books in the 18th century in Latin about his visions and revelations about God and the afterlife. Apparently Yeats and lots of other people I love were into him. So I'm thinking I might ditch the medieval thing and read one of his books instead.]
As you might remember (or maybe not; it was a while ago) you agreed to be my Winter Term sponsor. I'm going to read some Latin from late antiquity or preferably the middle ages. Since I've been abroad I didn't need to sign up for a project in the fall; I'm supposed to do it when I get back to Oberlin, which is the day after tomorrow. However I feel anxious because I haven't decided what I want to read yet. [Medieval Lit professor] was going to help me decide but I feel bad dragging two professors into my anxiety so I thought I would ask you first since unfortunately for you you are already involved.
if all else fails I might just read Augustine (or possibly Tertullian), but that's a bit early for me. I really would like to read something that's personal and religious, like someone's account of their visions/spiritual experiences, and things like that. I really love people like Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, but I think that because of the nature of that kind of writing it isn't very likely to be in Latin. Is there stuff like that in Latin?
apologies and happy holidays (and I totally understand if my query is too weird/nebulous to answer easily; I am looking for stuff on my own too, but figured it couldn't hurt to ask),
Amanda
[Normally I freak out more about this kind of thing and try to go over it a lot trying to sound more normal and/or I just don't send it at all, but on this occasion I was just like whatever. I don't know. I was noodling around on Wikipedia and I found out about this guy Emanuel Swedenborg who wrote books in the 18th century in Latin about his visions and revelations about God and the afterlife. Apparently Yeats and lots of other people I love were into him. So I'm thinking I might ditch the medieval thing and read one of his books instead.]
05 December, 2009
The End
I'm going home in 10 days. Before that I have two exams and a paper and I'm not very prepared. I've been doing almost nothing because I've been sick (or I've been using being sick as an excuse; I don't know that it really affects my ability to do anything, except on the first day when my hands hurt and I was really sensitive to water and cold).
I feel worried. It's funny because even though I frequently feel like an underachiever at home, I am capable of pulling all-nighters and stuff, but here I feel like I've forgotten to do work altogether. It doesn't really matter, I guess, since I just need to pass to get credit at Oberlin, and it's incredibly easy to pass here. But I'm worried that I've fundamentally destroyed an ability in myself. I hope things get better.
Here's what I think about me and school: I like systems and closed spaces. This is why I love riding trains because I feel contained. In the UK, at least at the University of Edinburgh, I feel like I'm floating around in a void. No one knows whether I do any work or not. In the US, you have to take tests and write papers all the time, and your teachers might call on you in class. Here, no one can tell if you're doing any work, and then they judge you on one paper and one exam that suddenly appear in the middle of the endless days of coming to class and spacing out because no one seems to care.
I'm not proud of the fact that I don't do work unless someone notices whether I do it or not. I know that makes me sound like I'm not a person who has a passion for learning, or anything. But, if you can believe it, when I'm being forced to learn I love learning. When I think about last year, about how much I was incredibly interested in all my classes and thought about them all the time--I mean, I am lazy, but I'm not apathetic, I just have a really hard time making decisions and planning and getting down to business.
I think a lot of the reason I have lost interest in Latin gradually since high school is that in high school we had to turn in a translation and my tenth and eleventh-grade teacher always praised my translations. I put effort into translating things not just correctly, but in a way that sounded good. Both at Oberlin and at Edinburgh, you have to write a translation on the test, and at Oberlin you have to translate in class, but it's about reading, not writing. I miss being able to create something. I'm supposed to be doing a medieval Latin project for winter term, and I'm thinking of asking my adviser if the focus of my project could be producing a translation, instead of just reading.
I feel worried. It's funny because even though I frequently feel like an underachiever at home, I am capable of pulling all-nighters and stuff, but here I feel like I've forgotten to do work altogether. It doesn't really matter, I guess, since I just need to pass to get credit at Oberlin, and it's incredibly easy to pass here. But I'm worried that I've fundamentally destroyed an ability in myself. I hope things get better.
Here's what I think about me and school: I like systems and closed spaces. This is why I love riding trains because I feel contained. In the UK, at least at the University of Edinburgh, I feel like I'm floating around in a void. No one knows whether I do any work or not. In the US, you have to take tests and write papers all the time, and your teachers might call on you in class. Here, no one can tell if you're doing any work, and then they judge you on one paper and one exam that suddenly appear in the middle of the endless days of coming to class and spacing out because no one seems to care.
I'm not proud of the fact that I don't do work unless someone notices whether I do it or not. I know that makes me sound like I'm not a person who has a passion for learning, or anything. But, if you can believe it, when I'm being forced to learn I love learning. When I think about last year, about how much I was incredibly interested in all my classes and thought about them all the time--I mean, I am lazy, but I'm not apathetic, I just have a really hard time making decisions and planning and getting down to business.
I think a lot of the reason I have lost interest in Latin gradually since high school is that in high school we had to turn in a translation and my tenth and eleventh-grade teacher always praised my translations. I put effort into translating things not just correctly, but in a way that sounded good. Both at Oberlin and at Edinburgh, you have to write a translation on the test, and at Oberlin you have to translate in class, but it's about reading, not writing. I miss being able to create something. I'm supposed to be doing a medieval Latin project for winter term, and I'm thinking of asking my adviser if the focus of my project could be producing a translation, instead of just reading.
23 September, 2009
Victi sumus
My first big obstacle has appeared. I'm not really sure how to try to Write a Post about it, because I don't know whether I will succeed in what I want to do or not, and I don't know how to characterize the nature of the obstacle. To me, it seems indicative of the difference between UK and US attitudes towards learning. In some ways, the UK version is better for an Autism Spectrum Disorder person, and in some ways, the US version is better.
One of my two majors is Latin Language and Literature. I started taking Latin when I was in tenth grade, because I liked the idea of it and I wanted to take something I wouldn't have to speak. My teacher in tenth and eleventh grade was an extremely eccentric woman who played favorites to an insane degree. I got in her good graces early on, because my writing ability produced translations that she thought were "extraordinarily sensitive." In twelfth grade, I got a new teacher, and had to deal with the fact that after two years I had almost no knowledge of Latin grammar. But he was really easy to relate to, and willing to give me extra help. Even though I now did worse in Latin, I still liked it and started to consider the idea of being a Latin teacher. It was more interesting than math or science, but more objective than English or history.
In college, I decided to start again at the beginner level because I felt I still had such a bad grasp of grammar. I learned a lot more, but my professor was so good that I decided I could never be a Latin teacher. But I kept taking Latin courses. I liked the classics department at my school--the office, the professors, how small and friendly it was. For these not especially great reasons, I declared a Latin major in my second year. (My other major is Creative Writing and always has been; it's why I chose to go to the college I did.)
The problem is--and this is my big problem with the college I go to, and probably most colleges in the US, except Colorado College, which I wish I'd considered more seriously--learning is interesting. Professors, by and large, inspire respect. And every professor tells you to read a chapter of a really dense book, or read almost all of a really dense book, or translate a certain quantity of Virgil or Horace. And they tell you to do this by the next time class meets, which is usually in about two days.
But how can you do all this reading and translation in two days? Especially when, besides that, one or two or three of your teachers has sometimes charged you to produce a paper, a story, or a passing grade on an exam? Well, the short answer is, you can't. They tell you to do things that you simply can't do. I have never found a solution to this problem, and frequently, in the past two years, I have just ended up putting the measurable first--papers, stories, and studying for tests. I have gotten bits and pieces of reading done, and on lucky occasions I have finished a whole book, but that only happens half the time, or less.
A really unfortunate result of this is that I often end up working less hard in the courses that relate to my majors. Most of the time, last year, I got away with not always doing the Latin translations; I'd translate frantically in class, trying to catch up by the time I was called on to speak. I didn't revise my plays and stories as much as I wanted to, because I was writing papers and studying, and my teacher couldn't exactly fail me for not revising enough.
This makes me really depressed. I like my school, but I feel like I don't get to concentrate on the things I really love. I wish I could take one Latin course and one creative writing course, and have both courses every day.
In the UK, people only take three classes a term, and they only take classes related to their majors. So in my third-year Latin course, everyone else is a lot more advanced than I am, because they've been able to focus on Latin much more. I think I'll be able to keep up, because this is the only third-year course I'm taking. It will take a lot of very intense extra work, but I would really relish the experience of putting Latin first for once.
Now, in the US, if the professor expressed doubts about me taking the course because I didn't have as much experience as other people, and I told him really sincerely and passionately that I wanted to take the course and would work really hard, then that would be it. I'd get to take it.
In the UK, this is not the case.
In the US, you would never give someone a test without telling them first. You would never, ever tell someone to come to your office to talk to you about whether they were qualified to take a course, and then hand them a placement test and make them take it right then. What if I had ADD and needed extended time? What if (as happens to be the case) I get very anxious when I have to do something I haven't prepared for emotionally? What if I need to follow the schedule in my head telling me "this is what you're going to do today" or I get so overwhelmed that I just guess on a lot of the test answers because I want it to be over?
Well, fuck me, then, I guess.
The professor invoked the difference between the US and UK educational systems to prove that I wasn't as advanced as my classmates, and he was correct. But also, the difference between the US and UK educational systems means that I will have much more time than I am used to, and have much less trouble worrying about which homework to do and which homework to pretend to do. I really think the relief that this will cause will make it possible for me to work really hard to keep up in a class that is very challenging.
Right now, I'm at a loss for what to do. I might delete or edit this post because it isn't very organized and is overemotional. I'm waiting for an email from my Director of Studies, a professor from the US, who will hopefully be able to help me make my case to the professor. I don't know to proceed in the meantime--whether to go to his class, the class he wants me to take where they're reading something I've already read, neither, or both. Why did this have to happen? I did everything I had to do before classes started, because I didn't want to be caught off guard. Now I have this huge, baffling problem.
One of my two majors is Latin Language and Literature. I started taking Latin when I was in tenth grade, because I liked the idea of it and I wanted to take something I wouldn't have to speak. My teacher in tenth and eleventh grade was an extremely eccentric woman who played favorites to an insane degree. I got in her good graces early on, because my writing ability produced translations that she thought were "extraordinarily sensitive." In twelfth grade, I got a new teacher, and had to deal with the fact that after two years I had almost no knowledge of Latin grammar. But he was really easy to relate to, and willing to give me extra help. Even though I now did worse in Latin, I still liked it and started to consider the idea of being a Latin teacher. It was more interesting than math or science, but more objective than English or history.
In college, I decided to start again at the beginner level because I felt I still had such a bad grasp of grammar. I learned a lot more, but my professor was so good that I decided I could never be a Latin teacher. But I kept taking Latin courses. I liked the classics department at my school--the office, the professors, how small and friendly it was. For these not especially great reasons, I declared a Latin major in my second year. (My other major is Creative Writing and always has been; it's why I chose to go to the college I did.)
The problem is--and this is my big problem with the college I go to, and probably most colleges in the US, except Colorado College, which I wish I'd considered more seriously--learning is interesting. Professors, by and large, inspire respect. And every professor tells you to read a chapter of a really dense book, or read almost all of a really dense book, or translate a certain quantity of Virgil or Horace. And they tell you to do this by the next time class meets, which is usually in about two days.
But how can you do all this reading and translation in two days? Especially when, besides that, one or two or three of your teachers has sometimes charged you to produce a paper, a story, or a passing grade on an exam? Well, the short answer is, you can't. They tell you to do things that you simply can't do. I have never found a solution to this problem, and frequently, in the past two years, I have just ended up putting the measurable first--papers, stories, and studying for tests. I have gotten bits and pieces of reading done, and on lucky occasions I have finished a whole book, but that only happens half the time, or less.
A really unfortunate result of this is that I often end up working less hard in the courses that relate to my majors. Most of the time, last year, I got away with not always doing the Latin translations; I'd translate frantically in class, trying to catch up by the time I was called on to speak. I didn't revise my plays and stories as much as I wanted to, because I was writing papers and studying, and my teacher couldn't exactly fail me for not revising enough.
This makes me really depressed. I like my school, but I feel like I don't get to concentrate on the things I really love. I wish I could take one Latin course and one creative writing course, and have both courses every day.
In the UK, people only take three classes a term, and they only take classes related to their majors. So in my third-year Latin course, everyone else is a lot more advanced than I am, because they've been able to focus on Latin much more. I think I'll be able to keep up, because this is the only third-year course I'm taking. It will take a lot of very intense extra work, but I would really relish the experience of putting Latin first for once.
Now, in the US, if the professor expressed doubts about me taking the course because I didn't have as much experience as other people, and I told him really sincerely and passionately that I wanted to take the course and would work really hard, then that would be it. I'd get to take it.
In the UK, this is not the case.
In the US, you would never give someone a test without telling them first. You would never, ever tell someone to come to your office to talk to you about whether they were qualified to take a course, and then hand them a placement test and make them take it right then. What if I had ADD and needed extended time? What if (as happens to be the case) I get very anxious when I have to do something I haven't prepared for emotionally? What if I need to follow the schedule in my head telling me "this is what you're going to do today" or I get so overwhelmed that I just guess on a lot of the test answers because I want it to be over?
Well, fuck me, then, I guess.
The professor invoked the difference between the US and UK educational systems to prove that I wasn't as advanced as my classmates, and he was correct. But also, the difference between the US and UK educational systems means that I will have much more time than I am used to, and have much less trouble worrying about which homework to do and which homework to pretend to do. I really think the relief that this will cause will make it possible for me to work really hard to keep up in a class that is very challenging.
Right now, I'm at a loss for what to do. I might delete or edit this post because it isn't very organized and is overemotional. I'm waiting for an email from my Director of Studies, a professor from the US, who will hopefully be able to help me make my case to the professor. I don't know to proceed in the meantime--whether to go to his class, the class he wants me to take where they're reading something I've already read, neither, or both. Why did this have to happen? I did everything I had to do before classes started, because I didn't want to be caught off guard. Now I have this huge, baffling problem.
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