Conscia Fati
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Posts posted by Conscia Fati
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The classics department at Columbia has 6 accepted students coming in for visits. If you applied for straight classics and didn't get word hope may lie in a waitlist. The Classical Studies MA will hold interviews and be decided a few days to a week after the deadline, around the same time as Columbia and UPenn admit post-baccs. Good luck to all who applied/excited to meet those of you visiting for Classics and CLST!
Just to set the record straight: these six students are being interviewed, and are not yet accepted. I believe the classics department plans to make offers to two of these six prospectives. They have already made one offer to a current classics post-bacc at Columbia.
I cannot speak to the admissions process in CLST.
- ΧΕΛΩΝΗ and ScipioAfricanus
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New Sappho! (if you haven't already seen it - enjoy!)
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/30/read-sappho-new-unknown-poem-papyrus-classical
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actual_entity, congrats on your interview, and best of luck!
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I am reading Ovid's Ars Amatoria -- some of the worst love advice I've ever come across, lol!
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I applied in fall 2012. I started hearing back in late January. The latest request for an interview I got was sometime mid-February…
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Well, I recently bought a nice, hard-back edition of Pride & Prejudice and only made it into the third paragraph when my leisurely reading came to an abrubt halt. One of my four little kids needed daddy to wipe up some spilled milk. I tell you...with kids, you can't get any reading done. Impossible. Grad school is not meant for parents.
Haha. It's not easy, but it's definitely possible!
Just get ready to have a two-year-old who reads Pindar. YMMV. -
Do not retake it. Your scores are past the minimum threshold.
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IA with the OP. I got a 6 on my AW and I totally made stuff up. Citing an imaginary New York Times article is always a great idea.
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avoid cliches at all costs. be professional and demonstrate to the committee that you are a good fit for the school. keep the statement concise, clear. and compelling.
good luck!
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No real idea yet, I know it's late in the day but I've yet to finalise a list. I'm sort of a little lost there, ha.
Fair enough! Sounds like you have read quite a lot, so I was curious as to where you hope to end up for grad. studies. Best of luck!
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Hi George -- I am referring to the OCT (Oxford Classical Text). Per week: 1000 lines of poetry is pretty standard in my program, or about 25-30 OCT pages of prose. For super difficult texts, like Aeschylus' Agamemnon, the amount drops down to about 600-700 lines. IMHO, you should have two years of upper levels before tackling survey, and should have experience with both prose and poetry authors. Good luck -- and feel free to ask any other questions.
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Hi, please forgive me if my tone sounds brusque, I do mean to help. Basically I've looked at a few survey lists online since I'm thinking of applying to US universities and...it really doesn't look like too much. Certainly much less than what I've had to read for my BA.
Here is my advice: Fundamentals are key. Reading Greek is easy when you adopt a breezy pace but how much are you taking in? I thought I was awesome at first until I started composition classes at the end of my first year and...well it was embarassing! searching for the right register of vocabulary, using the wrong construction and so on. Believe it or not, these lapses effect reading ability. So make sure you're VERY tight on grammar and vocab (memorise frequency lists) and try to get some practice each day away from your reading list. E.g it can be just reading or practising your comp skills.
Re-read! I disagree with the idea of reading with a translation but whatever you prefer. Set an amount of lines to be read and then review. After a while you get a feeling for how often you need to review. For example if I'm reading Tragedy I just re-read the whole thing, whereas with comedies I tend to review via episodia since they don't stick well in my head...
"Reading Circles" for lack of a better name, basically certain texts are best grouped together in terms of genre, themes or shared vocabulary. You need to pin these down. Seriously don't read in isolation, you won't retain vocab nor will you be sensitive to illusions and what not.
Final tip since I'm boring you. It often helps, as counter productive as it sounds, to have one text...even just one text seriously...per genre or per author that you know REALLY well. Like, have gone over with a fine tooth comb sort of thing. I don't know why, it just really really helps. I would never have got through lyric poetry without taking time away each term just to really master a handful of poems. Somehow it just works.
Where are you applying?
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I'm in Greek survey right now, and we read anywhere from 600 lines to 1200 lines a week, averaging about 1000. It IS possible. Greek is my weaker of the two languages. In my experience, the trick is to break it down into several small bits and do it consistently throughout the week. I'll do sixty lines in the morning, sixty lines at night, and do that daily. I also write on the text and try to read it with a friend when I can -- that way I'm engaging as many senses as possible and will have a better chance of remembering it. Mastering all of the vocabulary is impossible... you should work towards memorizing a core vocabulary, but there are so many words that fall into the category of hapax legomenon that you just can't master them all. You need to have a good basic understanding of the grammar. You should have at least a couple 4000 level classes under your belt before trying survey. And when you begin studying for your PhD reading list exam, you start to realize how little you actually covered in the year of survey. One of my profs recommended to read it three times: once without any lexical aids, once with a commentary and dictionary, and once against a translation (to check yourself). I confess that I don't often make it to a third reading (although I do try to read it at least twice). Using online resources, like the TLG, is also really helpful.
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You might want to send a message to the user Late Antique (who is in the program), although I'm not sure if he/she logs on here much anymore....
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What are your questions?
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Professor Chiu at UVM is an incredible mentor, scholar, and teacher -- and has an incredible sense of humor to boot. Ever heard of Classics Ryan Gosling? She's the mastermind behind it.
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I really like the Learn to Read Latin/Greek texts by Keller (Yale University Press). The workbook exercises are outstanding. To gain fluency, I think it is important both to read and to compose. Also, it is beneficial to read texts aloud, and to aim for understanding the text before translating it. Building up a strong vocabulary is invaluable. I personally use FlashCard Machine (http://www.flashcardmachine.com) to keep track of important vocabulary for various authors. To gain fluency, I also recommend Hoyos' Latin: How to Read It Fluently. Also, be sure to check out the news broadcast, Nuntii Latini; It's free on iTunes. (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/radio-bremen-nuntii-latini/id155728473). If you can afford it, I'd recommend doing an immersion program, such as The Paideia Institute (http://paideia-institute.org). Bonam fortunam!
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My husband and I have two small children. Which graduate student apartment complex would be most suitable for a family of four? Proximity to the train station is important, since my husband will commute to NYC two days each week. Any advice is welcome!
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b-pleb,
I'll share my story, since it's similar to yours, and what's helped me as a self-learner.
I was about 2/3 done with my seminary education when I discovered the world of classics as a scholarly discipline. Fortunately in seminary I learned a lot about Greek and Hebrew, so I was able to learn Latin on my own before I graduated. After graduating, I set aside further theological studies to pursue this new passion on my own. I'm married and have four small kids, and I have a pretty good job as a military chaplain, so I can't afford to become a starving student all over again to study classics formally. I'll have to wait until I retire and put my kids through college to jump back into school to pursue this incredible interest.
So over the past several years this is what I've done to learn as much as possible without the benefit of a classics faculty to mentor me:
- Attended some professional meetings (APA, CAMWS, ACCS)
- Joined a Great Books community book club which met at a local bookstore
- Listened to iTunesU as you have
- Read everything I could get my hands on (original sources, commentaries, grammars, lexicons, archeology, biographies, etc.)
- Studied Clyde Pharr's Homeric Greek and the Wheelock's Latin series
- Purchased a gazillion grammars and dictionaries (you can often find great deals at used book stores)
- Taken up some studies in Sanskrit and German
- Visited several university bookstores and graduate advisors to ask questions about admissions and graduation requirements (UCSB, UCLA, KU, UC-Boulder, Mizzou, TTU, Georgia, Vanderbilt, St John's - Santa Fe). Some have even allowed me to visit their classes.
- Exegeted and translated from original languages
- Started homeschooling my children through the trivium. In fact, I'll be teaching my 6-year old son about the Iliad soon, and he'll be my buddy to have fun with discussing classical literature and teaching him Latin.
Every advisor I've spoken to has told me the same thing about self-learnig and preparation for a grad program: read everything you can about the classical world. Thus, while I wait to apply, if God wills, I've designed my own self-study program after typical MA & PhD programs. And this should keep me quite busy with fun stuff for the next 10-15 years, and it helps me to cope with being disconnected from a community of classics students and professors.
Good luck!
You are a rockstar.
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I've been reading/hearing a lot about the problematic state of the Institute of Fine Arts in terms of funding students. Is this the case for PhD students (and not just MA's)? Any specifics? I've been unable to find any info, especially since the dept's website says "The Ph.D. program is designed for six years of full-time, fully-funded study."
Being new to the graduate game — is it common to expect to be fully funded + a stipend for most PhD programs or are there any notable exceptions? Any advice that one should consider financially before embarking on a PhD? Thanks!
I have not heard that the IFA has had problems funding its PhD students, although I do have friends in their MA program who did not receive funding. Everyone whom I know who is in their PhD program has full funding.
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I broke down crying in my advisor's office today.
I'm a first year graduate student, and this weekend I just finished up a huge project that required me to work at 200% capacity for over a month. I had a quiz today that I studied for, but I was so tired that I didn't retain anything I read. Tears welled up during the quiz, and I kept my head down for the duration of the class period.
After class, I went into my advisor's office to apologize for my poor performance on the quiz. He looked at me very kindly; I burst into tears at his hint of compassion. He then took the quiz from my hands, crumpled it up, and threw it in the trash bin. After giving me a hug, he told me to enjoy the beautiful day with my family and not to crack open a book for the rest of the day.
I greatly respect my advisor and deeply admire his work, but I have always been intimidated by him and rather shy around him. I never expected this kind of response from him.
I knew people in my department were human, but this level of understanding astounded me. I am so thankful that THERE IS GRACE IN GRADUATE SCHOOL, and you DON'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT!
I hope this story encourages others who are going through tough times in school -- we all do.
congrats in advance!
Fall 2014 Season
in Classics
Posted
Don't worry about it! No big deal.