I Have No Idea

Oh God guys not Ajax, I wrote my thesis on that play...must not return to it.

This is all pointless? I honestly can't visualise getting in anywhere and its crippling my ability to work through this annoying process and I'm just finding myself reading Sophocles over and over and staging a 2 man (well..1 man 1 cat) production of the bloody Antigone in my living room. I

This is just a running chat thread if anyone feels like talking beyond the application stuff. Talk about books you like, why you do what you do. What you do. Whatever you want. I, for example, only recently discovered pumpkin pie and so I've spent my evening eating that and punching Tacitus.

Ah all right, well to be honest the programme I went through was rather rigorous in getting a lot of literature down rapidly before preceding onto philological analysis and then there's the fact that there is always going to be a lot of overlap between subject areas, e.g Herodotos and Homer give you, pound for pound, such a powerful scope. And thank you. And, honestly, since I'm not an American any help or guidance you feel like throwing my way would be very much appreciated re: university choice and, especially, those bloody application essays! Also, wow, 700 lines of Agamemnon a week is pretty fast depending on how many hours. I really hated that play you know, it was so...difficult in places. To this day I've only read it once and doubt I'll go over it again without duress.

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.

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.

Does anybody have any experiences what it's like coming from the UK to study in the US? I know this is sort of general...I'm in an odd state now, I'm tempted to apply to a few programmes but at the same time my family, friends and significant other are all in the UK. How easy is it to go back and forth? I...ought to have thought this post out a bit more I see.