Talmid

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!

Hi everyone. I'm a self-learner aiming to get up to speed to apply for a grad program. Finished seminary and want to change directions in my studies since I find classics so fascinating. That said, I could use your recommendations for a good Greek font and advice about unicode. What do your professors recommend for cutting edge fonts? What works well and is fairly user-friendly? Do you have advice on Sanskrit fonts? I looked through an old website called fontsforscholars.com, but last I checked, it hadn't been updated in quite a while. Thanks for your help.

I'm looking for a graduate classics program in which I'd be able to integrate my interest in Sanskrit for comparative grammar and mythology. I have found that SUNY Buffalo offers some Sanskrit and Indo-European linguistics as part of its classics program. Do you know of any other schools out there? I'm mindful of UCLA's I-E Linguistics program, but that's in Los Angeles, 405 Freeway traffic, education bubble, unaffordable living, Crips, Bloods, MS-13, ughhhh, no thanks! Thanks for your help.

Seeing that California is a bubble, is anybody else reluctant to apply for programs in this state? The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to fear starting a program, and then having it shut down due to budget cuts. Fact is the humanities are always the first to get axed. Your thoughts? Does anybody have insight to share from talking with CA professors about the stability of their classics departments?

"Post-bacc degree," really? Post-baccs are for those lacking undergraduate classics degrees. Your background looks quite fine to get you wherever you'd like to go. Keep up the good work!

I'm about to starting reading on the history of classical scholarship, and I'd like some advice on resources to consider. I've come across Sir John Edwin Sandy's work and R. Pfeiffer's on Amazon--both appear to be classic works for the subject matter, but are there other good resources to consider? Please share your comments if you have insight to offer on the quality of these and other similar works. Thanks.

I had a good boss who used to say, "If you win the rat race, you are still a rat!" Unfortunately "rat racers" are in every career field, and I suspect there is a higher concentration of them in academia because of the political atmosphere on university campuses. When I served in the Air Force, they were despised and deemed as non-team players. We gave them the pejorative nickname of "careerists" -- because they sought to advance their own careers by trampling on others in the process. Whereas being a buddy in the military is essential for saving lives, the careerists or rat racers get promoted by snubbing everyone else. That said, I wonder what your experiences have been dealing with rat racers in the Classics department (if you have any). Tell me you story. Is there a high concentration of them showing off how much they know, or how good they are at parsing verbs? Do your professors despise them? How do they manipulate others to their own advantage? Do their schemes work for matriculation into grad programs? Etc. I hope this will generate some interesting and enlightening discussions. Thanks!

St. John's College in Santa Fe has an "Eastern Classics" graduate program. Students have the option to learn Sanskrit or Classical Chinese. Maybe you'll have luck finding Malaysians there.