Life is Exciting
Some of you may have heard crazy rumors about my pulling up stakes and taking to the road yet again. Alas, it is all true. So here is the story. This Fall I’m going to start a post-baccalaureate in Classics at U Penn, in Philadelphia. It is a one-year program intended mostly to prepare people for a Ph.D. All the Classics Ph.D. programs out there say, “If you didn’t major in Classics, definitely do a postbacc first. And maybe you should do one anyway!” Basically you just read Greek and Latin all day long. My idea of a great time!
Then two Mondays ago (the day before I went to Boston for a week) I got a surprise. Since I’ve only had one year of Latin, they want me to come out early and do an intensive second-year Latin course from July 2 to August 20 (or 10?…). It is 16.25 hours of Latin a week, and that’s just the class time. Yikes! But it sounds like a great opportunity, so I’m going to go. My Latin does need a lot of work.
During the Fall I’ll begin applying to Ph.D. programs. I’ve only done a little research, but I know that Berkeley, UCLA, and U Chicago are all top-rated schools with Byzantinists on staff. Fr. J wants me to apply to Oxford. I’ll send them an application, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to afford it. If my computer work keeps up—and it sounds like it will—then I think fifteen hours a week will just about cover me. Oxford would be pretty amazing.
My teaching interests are fairly traditional—intro to Greek & Latin, Homer, Sophocles, Cicero, Seneca, et cetera—but my research interests are more in Byzantine and patristic studies, especially philology and translation. I’m still not quite sure which sort of Ph.D. would be best. I’m inclining toward Classics, but perhaps patristics, theology, or Byzantine history would be good fits, too. Mostly you just need a good advisor. The advice I keep getting is “Do whatever you’re interested in, and find the program that lets you follow your interests.”
It is pretty exciting!