Big old Saturday night! Yeah!

Spending my Saturday night at home...likely doing Latin. Woo!! Ha ha...

The week ended out nicely - the new book was helpful to have, though I've not got any of my handy penciled-in notes in the new one. Maybe one day when I'm really bored I'll go about adding the more important ones in, but for now I'll just keep both books at hand.

So guess what happened to me on Friday? I woke up at 7:30, had my shower, ate my breakfast and started reviewing for my quizzes that day. Nothing unusual here (unless you count the wake-up time!). Then I'm doing the dishes while watching Martha, just after 10 AM when it finally dawns on me - my Greek class started at 10!! For whatever reason, I had it in my head that it was 11:30. That was a shock. So I grabbed all my books and ran out to the bus. I made it to class half an hour late, but there was no way I wasn't going to show up at all! Thankfully the class is a little slow-moving right now and I had only missed going over the rest of the vocabulary list in our text. It's also a good thing that the quiz is always given at the end of class. No harm done.

Doug and I got the chance to chat after Greek, which was pretty awesome. He's in my Greek class too and we seem to have a fair bit in common (aside from him being American and currently sick). He's also got pretty good taste in music, a clever blog and a similarily low tolerance for stupidity in the classroom.

Latin was better for some reason on Friday. I think what we're going over now might be something that professor #6 taught us at Carleton when I took Latin II over in 2006. Or I'm just finally "getting it." Whatever it is, I'm thankful! The quiz wasn't too awful either...mind you, I haven't gotten it back, so it could really go either way. We'll see on Monday.

In the mean time, I thought I'd post some stellar marks I've been getting in Greek - one is a quiz and the other is my homework assignment. I suppose I'd really like to know how other people are doing in the class too, but I guess all that really matters is how I'm doing. Still...the competitive side of me is dying to know how many of my fellow classmates I'm trouncing in the marks department.

Latin III and the impossible silence

I have mixed feelings about Latin. It has become like a rotten child that I'm stuck babysitting. I can't stand it, but at the same time, I really want to love it and cherish it...even if it appears to be out to get me at times. Thankfully, a number of my fellow new classmates seem to feel the same way. There was an eerie silence when professor #7 asked how far they'd gotten in the text book. Everyone downplayed their knowledge (fine by me, I could use a refresher!) and we moved back three chapters. Professor #7 is brand new and I like her already. She seems to have a lot of patience as well, a plus!

The mark breakdown isn't as forgiving as Greek, but with my new part-time status (yes, that was in question - apparently they expected full time tuition paid for a part time course load....tricksy university!) should alleviate some stress where marks are concerned.

This weekend will be spent in relative solitude focusing on Latin. I have to get my vocab straight since class left me struggling with silly words that I've let escape.

So far I've avoided any feelings of doom or fear. I do, however, think I need to stock up on aromatherapy candles!

Fridays are the only day when I have two classes - both Greek and Latin. Remember how I did all that Greek homework to prep for class? Well, as expected, we didn't get anywhere near it in our 1.5 hours. So now I'm well ahead for Tuesday. Great, I guess. Ha ha. Totally my luck.
I have a nasty 1.5 hour break between my two classes on Fridays. I'm hoping I can use this time at the gym, not in doing Latin homework - I'd really rather have that done in advance. Doing homework in a rush has always been bad for me.

In all, first week down. Both courses attended and no real crises to report. Job well done!

Homework, episode 1

Alright, so after our first Greek class we were given homework that we'd be discussing in class. Knowing professor #2 and the law that stipulates you will always be asked to answer the question you don't have an answer to, I did hours of Greek last night. I'm talking hours. I was so paranoid that I'd make a bad showing in our first in-class drills that I did all of part 1. I began to fret that we'd do part 2 and 3 in class as well, but I was zonked, I had to sleep. More on this in the next entry.

I'm glad that I don't share an apartment or house with other people. Just James. James knows me well and ignores my quirks. This proved handy while doing my homework - I talked to myself the whole night. I'm trying to get to the point very early on where I can look at words and read out the Greek letters as quickly as I can our alphabet (I wish I could slip in a clever joke about alpha beta, but I've only had one week, give me a break). So all night it was omega, kappa, epsilon, alpha, etc. Isn't muttering to yourself a sign of genius? Anyway...

My study area needs some improvements. I'll work away on them this weekend. First of all, bad all purpose lighting has prompted me to use the overhead light, a stand up lamp and a spot lamp. Oh, and I was burning an aromatherapy candle in hopes of making positive connections between language study a pleasant mood. All this lightbulb burning, despite using compact fluorescent in the lamps, made the room hot. Options for the overhead light are being explored. The desk chair is a bad size. Now I'm carting my office desk chair into my study to work. Tedious, but I'm not dropping cash on another chair, that's just wasteful. The issue of time has also popped up - I have no idea what time it is when I'm in the study, away from the computer's clock. Granted, it might be nice not to know the time while studying. I suppose related, but not related to my study is my bag for going to and from school. I still don't have a clear front-runner in this area. I don't like backpacks, but I may have to break down - Fridays are heavy book days and if I add some gym gear too, well, that's just begging for sore muscles on my left side. Suggestions regarding uberhip and stylish yet practical bags welcome.

The one thing I've noticed is that I really, really enjoy doing homework on my new whiteboard. I'm so visual when I learn that it makes my life a helluva lot easier to be able to put everything up, deconstruct and make oodles of mistakes that wipe away. I think my love of the whiteboard is the reason I already adore Greek. Here's hoping I continue to adore Greek and that I feel as warmly toward Latin when I use the whiteboard.

Nothing further to report it would seem, unless you care about what I'm learning. So far just the alphabet, how to write the characters, accents, breathings, pronunciation etc.

Here's me and my beloved whiteboard: