On An Exegesis

I spent two and a half hours in the library today, doing preliminary source-searching and getting a bit of information for a paper/ presentation. I'm doing research for an exegesis - an in-depth analytical study of a certain passage (in this case, the Greek version of the death of Judas from the book of Matthew in the New Testament).

Also, it's not due for three weeks.

Usually I'm not so excited about paper topics. I will freely admit that I have started writing papers within 24 hours of the due date. Not every paper, but... some.

The abnormal thing about this is that I very rarely begin the researching process three weeks before the deadline. 10 days is usual for me, if it's a research-heavy topic. Three weeks is pushing the limit of what I consider a 'normal paper-writing time frame.'

So what's different about this paper?

LET'S MAKE A LIST!

1. Exegesis-writing is not to be messed with. I've never written an exegesis. My professor handed around a "general outline of basic exegesis-writing goals" in class. The outline had four sections, each with a few bullet points of Things You Should Say About This Section. The outline, with bullet points, easily fit on one side of the page. In my notes for the outline, I gave each section a full page in my notebook, for five pages total. I might need more pages for notes from my sources.
2. The page count is nerve-wracking. When the "exegesis-writing outline" was handed out, the professor didn't specify any minimum or maximum page count. He was very vague when other people asked about the page count; eventually, he said that if you write fewer than five pages, you're not giving the topic enough depth. This should not be a problem, especially if I'm doing two weeks of research and one week of writing. Given that I only got three books with a few pages of information among them, hitting the minimum page count may be worrying.
3. I've never written a paper on a language topic before. I'm surprised I made it this far, because many of my peers in modern languages have had to do papers in and on the language. I've done a few essays about Greek works, including how Xenophon's Anabasis fits into the historiographic tradition. I've never done a paper where I've had to take a close look at seven verses and concluded something about them.
4. 5 pages of analysis on 10 lines of prose is intimidating. Usually, I don't have to do a paper on so short a passage. HOWEVER, a good exegesis is comprised of a lot of research into linguistics, history, and culture of the time in which the passage was written. When was Matthew writing? Why did he include Judas's suicide? Why is he the only one who talks about Judas dying, except for Acts, which says he keeled over from internal disease? These are the things that I need to talk about.

On the planning of zombie apocalypses

Today in Greek class, we started out talking about Thucydites the historian and ended up discussing a hypothetical zombie apocalypse in Athens.

See, Thucydites survived a plague in Athens and wrote about it in a very clinical way. In class, we decided that this plague was the thing that started the Peloponnesian wars - that Sparta had to wipe out the Athenians in order to stop the zombies. Thucydites recovered from his bout of zombieness in order to write about it. Others, however, were not so lucky. Either Socrates or Plato (I don't recall which) became a full zombie but was cognizant of it, which inspired the quote, "I know that I know nothing."

We also decided that the classmate that came up with the idea is going to write the bestselling novel based on the premise. Our professor is going to adapt it into film, and Samuel L. Jackson is going to play someone important.

This is what we do in class, in case you were wondering.

Post #200/ birthdays

Sooo I definitely forgot to do a post on Friday... oops... I'll probably do a Wednesday post at some point... Hopefully...

Anyway, last week I hit two milestones: my birthday was last week (and I hit a new decade!) and this is my 200th post. Both are fairly big, so I'm going to ignore both and tell you about Lipsync. That, after all, is what kept me from doing a post on Friday. Our routine was based on The Hunger Games - we did a bunch of songs based on all the districts (we skipped a few, like water, because the general theme was hip-hop and the first song that comes to mind when think of water is probably Disney related).

Other things that happened since my last post:
- job interview
- long essay
- service hours
huzzah!

(If you can't tell by the conciseness and apathy in this post, I've spent the last four hours writing an essay due tomorrow. Part of the time has been spent procrastinating, yes, but I still need at least a page and a half by 10 AM tomorrow.  I'm going to go do that now).

Spring Semester

Today is our first day of spring semester, and it has been interesting.  I've only had two classes today, which is nice, but I'm not looking forward to having an 8:00 AM class every single day.  Well, I might.  My history professor seems cool enough, so I might be looking forward to his class.  The other class I had today was the Greek Epic - in other words, Homer.  This is going to be a challenge and a half.

I'm definitely not looking forward to his 18-page final paper, though.  The last time I had a long paper, it was 10-15 pages for an honors class last semester, and I had 12 pages counting the bibliography (with a large-ish 12-point font... IT'S IN THE PAGE RANGE, OKAY).  This, on the other hand, is a History 101 course.  I understand that the 101 portion is designed to help the students with their writing, but I'm not sure if I can come up with 18 pages about the sexual revolution and/ or the LGBTQ+ movement in the 1960s.  Those are topics I like, but still - Masau'u and other factors of Puebloan death mythology and their influence on Blood Meridian and its character of the Judge was also an interesting topic for me, but I could still only come up with eleven double-spaced pages on the topic.  To be fair, there is probably more up-to-date literature about the sexual revolution and/ or the LGBTQ+ movement in the 1960s... and I can probably read it all the way through... (I didn't even finish Blood Meridian. Does that make me a bad Honors student?)

Anyhow, the other class I had today was The Greek Epic - we're translating The Odyssey from its original Greek.  Greek is my fun-challenge course (except for the verbs), but apparently Homer is one of the more difficult writers to translate, especially coming from intermediate Greek that focused mainly on the Attic dialect. The reason for this will take a bit of explaining.
So, basically, there are a few major dialects of Greek - Ionic and Aeolic are two of them.  I'm not sure where Ionic was dominantly spoken - I assume that it was more on the mainland of what we now call Greece, because Attic (from Athens) is a sub-dialect of that.  Aeolic is more from the coast of what we call Turkey; it is, strictly speaking, the same language, but there are several differences in the rules for syntax and verbs.  In The Odyssey, the Ionic and Aeolic styles are all jumbled up into lines that fit the meter.  Since we're not actually sure who wrote the work down, it's easy to think that certain books of The Odyssey could be more dominantly Ionic and others could tend towards Aeolic - but it's not like that at all.  Ionic rules and Aeolic rules are mish-mashed together into something that fits the meter.  That's going to be a royal pain in the butt for me, because I've only recently gotten the hang of all the Attic verb indicators - the letters that indicate that a verb is imperfect or perfect or aorist - and now I'm reading Homer, who doesn't actually use any of those.  Well, maybe I shouldn't throw away my Greek notes and textbooks yet - I might need them.

Tomorrow I have two honors classes (one involves yarn and one involves King Arthur, so that should be fun) and Journalism, which should not be fun because its textbook is expensive.

Anyway, I'll write again on Friday.

On writing things

I'm pretty sure I'm brain-dead for ideas right now, and it's not fun.  I have to write a script for my First-Year course, as I mentioned, and five pages are due later this week.
The five pages aren't the problem.  The problem lies in the fact that I'm not really sure where I want to go from those five pages.  I have a general idea of where I want to go, but I keep wanting to change it and fix it and make it not suck as much as I sometimes think it does.
This, I believe, is what is called the 'creative process.'  Or, rather, 'procrastinating on the creative process.'  Once you get the idea, go for it, I'd say.  If you stop, you start to doubt yourself.

So, as a piece of advice for all those who are undertaking any sort of major writing project in the immediate future: start, don't stop, and keep going at all costs.  Your muse will thank you later.  Even though your sleep cycle may be messed up (as mine currently is, thanks to a Greek test), and your writing might suck, it's easier to work on continuity and such if you have everything there.

On that note, I need to go to the library and study some Greek and write a play.

Singing and Greek Philosophy

The Greek language is one that will eternally frustrate me - not necessarily because verb conjugations and noun declensions are particularly difficult (though that is a majorly contributing factor) but because of the damn philosophy of it (also, I can no longer say or type 'philosophy' without thinking 'philo sophia' - 'I love wisdom').  It's quite interesting, don't get me wrong, and we had quite an interesting discussion this morning about it, but still - sometimes it's too philosophia-y for its own good.
For example, the Ancient Greeks had no past tense.  The aorist tense is what we would normally translate as an -ed verb (I walked), but that is not necessarily the case.  The difference between the aorist tense and the present tense is a one-time action versus a continual one - the difference between paying rent for one month one time and paying it several times over the course of the year.
And then there's the difference between the active voice and the middle voice (I walk versus I am walking).  Many verbs don't get philosophia-y, but there are some that do.  The verb for "I obey" is "I persuade" in the middle voice, for example; at its heart, "I obey" is really "I am persuaded."  Though this sort of philosophy is kind of cool, it gets frustrating when translating stuff.

This afternoon/ evening, I also had the amazing pleasure to work with Deen Entsminger and the chamber singers from Belmont University (it's in Nashville).  Let me say this: THE CHOIR IS F*CK*NG AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!  Their blend was awesome, and they do all of their pieces a capella - they're actually training to be able to find a pitch from a single note.
But Entsminger.  That man is a 70-something-year-old ball of happy, excited, wonderful, positive energy; he's the sort of man who seems like he has a good thirty or forty years left, and he probably does, even though it'll put him past age 100.  He dances when the music dances; and feels when the music feels.  I'm pretty sure he might not actually have real emotions, but just feel through music.  When he does feel, it's almost always some form of joy.  He composed a piece for the R-MC Concert Choir a few years ago, and he worked with us today on it - and it was the most unbelievable thing I've experienced, possibly ever.  There was such an energy in the room - you can't get it at just any time or just anywhere.

finals week

I know that finals week is perhaps the worst week in any college student's career - there is a lot of stress, and you realize how much you should have been studying (I know I have), and the prospect of the train/ car/ bus/ plane home is the only thing that might be getting you through the end of exams.

As this is my first finals week ever, I don't know how much I can relate to the feelings of going home being great - does the prospect get better?  Worse?  Stay the same?  Obviously, I'll be excited to go home, but the only thing I'm really stressed about is my Greek final, as Greek is my hardest subject and writing "It's all Greek to me" instead of a verb I forgot is probably going to get me a failing grade.  Of COURSE it's Greek to you, dummy! This is a Greek test! The professor will think as she grades the exams.  Sometimes I wonder how many first-semester Greek students she teaches would dare to put that on one of the tests or quizzes.
The first quiz?  Maybe.
The final?  Never.  Unless you WANT to fail.

Anyway, finals week could make a good climactic sequence for some story - the story of one's first semester of college, most likely, or the story of one's final semester.  Each are equally admirable - for one, it is the conclusion of a new adventure, and leaves the door open for many more to come; the other  is the conclusion of the adventure, and is probably a story about moving on.

You know what would be really interesting?  To write a series of eight novels (or twelve, if your school does a January term), about the eight (or twelve) semesters of college.  Same characters, different stories, and the end of each is finals week; the finals are the Final Test (see what I did there?).

Maybe I should do that.  That would be really cool.  I like that idea.
Now, if I only didn't have about five other novels going at the same time, and a Greek exam to study for, I would totally be willing to keep going with it.

But I have a Greek final to study for.  And then I'll work on it.