Tell us, O Muse, of the man...
I was just sitting in my C311 classroom. It was bright and sunny, and one of the previous classes had cracked the window, so there was a nice breeze, and outside the trees showed all green and gold and lovely. We were reading the Odyssey.
For a moment, I was a child again, reading the Odyssey for the first time in the late spring or early summer: the story was old and new at once. I knew what I wanted to be then. It would have been easier, perhaps, if I had never left that assurance, that absolutely unshakable knowledge that this, and this only, was what I was made for. But perhaps that security would have been less precious if I had not had to fight to win it back.
Sadly, but perhaps not unpredictably, I appear to be the only C311 student actually interested in the translation exercise. The general consensus of my group was OMG LIEK SO HARD!!1!one!. And I can understand it--the prof is, shall we say, less than pulled together, but still, the assignment was pretty self-explanatory. Ben told me she was a bit, uh, neseryoznaya.
It reminded me of a talk with Ben yesterday; he asked me how long it took for me to do Caesar. I said about 40 minutes, and he complained that he spent hours on it (and still didn't get it). I said I didn't pretend my translation was right (although by all appearances it seems to be), and driving home, it occurred to me: I started to study Latin when I was 13. I had it for three years in high school (so it wound up being the equivalent of 4 years of high school Latin), and I tested out of 3 semesters of college Latin. By the time I finished L250 in 1998, I'd had the equivalent of 2 years of college Latin. Even when I haven't had Latin, it has still, in some way, been part of my life for 10 years. I don't claim to be the greatest Latinist, and I'm certainly no philologist; I like words but I study them for what they can tell me and not for their own sake. But all the same, he can't compare himself to me when I've had Latin (in some form or another) for 10 years, and he's only had it for the equivalent of 2.
For a moment, I was a child again, reading the Odyssey for the first time in the late spring or early summer: the story was old and new at once. I knew what I wanted to be then. It would have been easier, perhaps, if I had never left that assurance, that absolutely unshakable knowledge that this, and this only, was what I was made for. But perhaps that security would have been less precious if I had not had to fight to win it back.
Sadly, but perhaps not unpredictably, I appear to be the only C311 student actually interested in the translation exercise. The general consensus of my group was OMG LIEK SO HARD!!1!one!. And I can understand it--the prof is, shall we say, less than pulled together, but still, the assignment was pretty self-explanatory. Ben told me she was a bit, uh, neseryoznaya.
It reminded me of a talk with Ben yesterday; he asked me how long it took for me to do Caesar. I said about 40 minutes, and he complained that he spent hours on it (and still didn't get it). I said I didn't pretend my translation was right (although by all appearances it seems to be), and driving home, it occurred to me: I started to study Latin when I was 13. I had it for three years in high school (so it wound up being the equivalent of 4 years of high school Latin), and I tested out of 3 semesters of college Latin. By the time I finished L250 in 1998, I'd had the equivalent of 2 years of college Latin. Even when I haven't had Latin, it has still, in some way, been part of my life for 10 years. I don't claim to be the greatest Latinist, and I'm certainly no philologist; I like words but I study them for what they can tell me and not for their own sake. But all the same, he can't compare himself to me when I've had Latin (in some form or another) for 10 years, and he's only had it for the equivalent of 2.