Talmid

Update on Nerdy Classics Majors...
2 years later, we’re well over 200 members. Come Join us on Facebook!
https://m.facebook.com/groups/1188003901262141?ref=bookmarks
 

ClassicsCandidate, thanks for your courage to share your work, and I REALLY enjoyed your story. I knew I could count on you to join this discussion. Unfortunately, this forum is not very active or else everyone is shy.  Hopefully others will chime in. Let's keep our fingers crossed.
Keith

I just saw the e-mail that I was accepted into Villanova for the MA program! I withdrew my UGA application so that I could get started on all of the things I need to prepare for Villanova. I didn't manage to secure the funding for it since there were so many applicants, but the head of the department sent me a list of other funding opportunities through the school that I could apply to; a lot of them are due tomorrow, so I guess I know what I'm doing tonight! I'm super excited now and feel like a lot of weight has been lifted! I hope more people hear from schools they're waiting for soon! 

Hi @ClassicsCandidate.
I'll be honest. The lack of interaction with my classmates was a let-down, but that's because I had only 1-2 other students in my Greek classes who weren't very active in the message forums. I would post my comments and questions, and they wouldn't interact with me until the very last week before the class ended. Small classes killed the dynamic of having a vibrant online learning community. Thus I felt all alone going through the course, but thankfully Dr. Corrigan was always there to engage my ideas and offer professional advice about the discipline. 
Over the past 2 years, I've had a couple of opportunities to visit the department at UGA in person and sit in Dr. Platter's classes. The students and faculty really seemed to enjoy their community and have fun learning together. Though I can't be there in person more often, I've had to find ways to overcome the disadvantage of not being on campus. One thing I've done was to have my employer, the U.S. Army, send me to the SCS meeting last year in Toronto. That helped me to hear what ideas were currently being discussed in the discipline as well as make connections with scholars from around the world. Additionally, now that I live in Germany, I'm using this once in a lifetime opportunity to learn conversational and literary German as I'm sure it'll be necessary if I ever go to grad school. I also make it a point to network with any Classicists that I come across where ever the Army sends me for job training or duty stations. Most professors will let you visit their classes if you contact them ahead of time and ask to be an observer. 
I think an advantage older folks in the online program have over most university students is that we have more job and life experiences, which have a positive impact of instilling wisdom. Campus environments become very insular--such as Evergreen State College--leaving students out of touch with the real world and not knowing expectations for entering the work force outside of academia. As an online learner, we have to work two and three times as hard to find answers since we don't encounter peers or mentors on a daily basis to help with questions. Thus we become stronger autodidacts and can learn new disciplines without teachers (that's how I"m currently learning German--to say nothing of being self-taught in Hebrew, Latin, Sanskrit, Mandarin, Spanish, and Euclid).
Anyhow, I highly recommend you pursue UGA's online program. Perhaps I'll have you in class when I resume in the fall with Latin.
If you wish to keep in touch, you can send a FB friend request to Keith Saare.
Vale, amice (or amica?).
Keith

Not research, but something related to our interests. As a homeschooling father, I'm getting three of my kids (ages: 7, 7, 9) started in Pharr's Homeric Greek. My 9-year just audited my college course last spring and was my top performer (he obviously had an advantage of learning everyday at home with dad). Some wonderful news is there's a new edition of Pharr's book edited by Paula Debnar which makes it much more appropriate for starters.
This challenge for learning may seem audacious, but it's not. Some 150 years ago this was normal stuff for kids, and in our generation a lot of homeschoolers are now rediscovering what levels kids are really capable of performing at. When my son was 7 he read both of Homer's epics (Fagles) and Virgil (Fitzgerald). At 8, he read the Oxford History of the Classical World cover to cover. Now he's almost finished with Don Quixote (all 900+ pages in the Penguin Classics series). I think he knows more about the Romans than I do. My 7-year old daughter is currently reading Jane Austen's Emma with me, and we're having so much fun together loving Austen's wit. A 7-year old reading Austen with pleasure, imagine that! Not Dick & Jane. All three kids have been doing Mandarin too, and with my youngest son (7 yrs), since he's adopted from China, I've been trying to help him learn about his heritage. He's getting excited about being Chinese and loves everything pertaining to the culture. 
Anyhow, I better stop here, but for you future parents, I encourage you to consider homeschooling as a viable option. You'll love it as much as I do.
 

Not research, but something related to our interests. As a homeschooling father, I'm getting three of my kids (ages: 7, 7, 9) started in Pharr's Homeric Greek. My 9-year just audited my college course last spring and was my top performer (he obviously had an advantage of learning everyday at home with dad). Some wonderful news is there's a new edition of Pharr's book edited by Paula Debnar which makes it much more appropriate for starters.
This challenge for learning may seem audacious, but it's not. Some 150 years ago this was normal stuff for kids, and in our generation a lot of homeschoolers are now rediscovering what levels kids are really capable of performing at. When my son was 7 he read both of Homer's epics (Fagles) and Virgil (Fitzgerald). At 8, he read the Oxford History of the Classical World cover to cover. Now he's almost finished with Don Quixote (all 900+ pages in the Penguin Classics series). I think he knows more about the Romans than I do. My 7-year old daughter is currently reading Jane Austen's Emma with me, and we're having so much fun together loving Austen's wit. A 7-year old reading Austen with pleasure, imagine that! Not Dick & Jane. All three kids have been doing Mandarin too, and with my youngest son (7 yrs), since he's adopted from China, I've been trying to help him learn about his heritage. He's getting excited about being Chinese and loves everything pertaining to the culture. 
Anyhow, I better stop here, but for you future parents, I encourage you to consider homeschooling as a viable option. You'll love it as much as I do.
 

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.

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!

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.