Lectures have finally returned to Swansea after months of absence, and I for one am more than happy to welcome my back professor overlords.
Over the summer, reading such essentials as The Iliad and Herodotus’ Histories, as well as cramming hours of historical content on YouTube into my skull, was very enjoyable and certainly taught me plenty of things about my desired topics, however I began to miss the timetables and modules of university. For me, attempting recreational learning over the course of a holiday almost always ends in a slump of unproductivity – therefore a return to the nail-biting assessments gave me something to look forward to and incentive to revise (or die)!
My first round of modules for this semester: Further Greek, Academic German, and Research Methodologies.
I was more than happy to return learning Ancient Greek, as my ambition to translate the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone from Greek into English didn’t really… happen. Armed with a girthy dictionary and plenty of spare time over the summer, I thought ‘surely, this will be a piece of cake’. It was not. This semester, the Further Greek class are moving away from the textbooks and diving into the texts themselves, starting with the Platonic dialogue of Crito. This was one of Plato’s earlier works, as well as one of his shortest, and takes place in Athens; focusing on the final hours of Socrates, as he waits in his cell, before he is condemned to death for famously ‘corrupting the Athenian youth’. His buddy Crito has turned up to rescue him (a bit like Varys and Tyrion in Game of Thrones) however Socrates begins questioning his morals, wondering if he should stay and die, or escape and be branded a fugitive for the rest of his life. At least that’s what I’ve gathered so far.
Research Methodologies is what it says on the tin: exploring at different ways of improving one’s research skills (which I’ll need in due course) and looking at ways of approaching ancient texts, such as fragmentary texts and epigraphy. It may not sound like the most interesting module in the world, but as far as I’m concerned it may be the most important one! Students like me need all the help we can get in order to write a top-notch essay at the end of the year, plus this is the part of the year where the brainstorming for topics begins. I already have an inkling as to what my final essay will be about, and am looking forward to the early research and developing on said ideas. It’ll be an interesting few months!
Academic German was a wildcard, an act of spontaneous choice – something I am not usually known for. When the time came to choose my modules for my Masters course, I thought I chose a balanced course of three modules in semester 1, three in semester 2. Unfortunately one of the modules changed it’s allotted semester, so I was imbalanced and encouraged to choose another module for semester 1 (or else I’d be bogged down with four high-intensity modules in semester 2). The choice I made was Academic German – sadly giving up a module on Greek Travel and Ancient Geographers – though I have never learnt German before, despite visiting Berlin for a week during secondary school. Coming to university and learning things like Greek and studying Indo-European civilisation gave me a much better taste for languages, a much deeper understanding of them rather than submitting to the whole ‘je voodray oon bagget’ routine while abroad. Deutsch will be a delightful thing to learn alongside Ancient Greek, and if I intend to continue diving deeper into Assyriology I may find myself eventually browsing through German papers when the English ones run out.
As far as non-academic activities go, I’m still running and taking part in Swansea’s weekly pub-quiz scene. Swansea recently hosted their annual Admiral Bay 10k run along the front of the city, which I’ve competed at twice already, and this year I had a minor injury leading up to it – IT band syndrome. It sounds scary but (according to smarter people than me) it just means a muscle has gone in my upper leg/bum and its affecting my outer thigh, which affects my knee and joints. The whole body is interconnected when running, so despite the problem being in my rear muscles, the result is an achy knee. Regardless of such an annoyance, I pushed through the pain (like an idiot) and got myself a 10k personal best of 50:56! The best way to cure IT band syndrome is to give it a rest, but no runner really wants to give up their hobby because they have to… they give up because they want to! Anyways I haven’t really been following this advice, yesterday having run with my friends at Parkrun, but hopefully the problem will resolve itself shortly.
And yeah, that has been my first week of the postgraduate academic year! Now to keep it up for the next eleven months.
Armchair Assyriologist 