Fall 2013 Season

[ciistai]

Not yet, but the committee met yesterday.

 

Also, anyone know if UT Austin has met yet?

Edited January 29, 2013 by ciistai

[Fockatar]

Hanbran, apt.

Also, do you guys check application checkers or just wait for e-mails?

[videro]

I admit to checking application interfaces of late. I delete my history afterwards every time. Shame, shame, shame.

[hanbran]

  On 1/30/2013 at 1:21 PM, Fockatar said:

Hanbran, apt.

Also, do you guys check application checkers or just wait for e-mails?

 Though possibly inaccurate, in a world of expensive, but effective, healthcare.

 

I check a few, because I know that some departments still send acceptances via post.  But I feel like most schools would send out an email on the same day on which they would update the online "status" of an application, if not sooner.

[hanbran]

I did think that there would be a little bit of action starting this week...

[Fockatar]

See, they're all tricking us. Bastardi!

[videro]

The day is still young on the west coast...

 

(I've had this thought every afternoon for the last 5-6 weekdays.)

[hanbran]

True.  And I'm on the East Coast.

[Fockatar]

I'm in the UK, so I don't even know....East Coast minus 5 or something I think we are. I'm going to go memorise the Theogony. I think thats the only solution to this madness. 

[hanbran]

Looking for some kosmos?

[lexjulia]

Not much to add here, just wanted to commiserate.  All this waiting is making me cranky and incapable of being productive.  I got an e-mail today from my MA thesis director entitled "Where are you?"  The answer: staring at my inbox and checking the GradCafe Results page every five minutes.

[ciistai]

Sounds like a familiar place to be... I swear I might be in the same place you are...

 

I know it's still kind of early, but this is getting nerve-wracking.

[lexjulia]

I know what will cheer everybody up!  The ultimate Classics-themed Lil' Wayne parody:

 

[hanbran]

I have found more typos in the Cambridge commentaries than I've found in OCTs, BUT the newer OCTs very poorly constructed.

[Fockatar]

The OCTs aren't so much as constructed as bad reprints in most cases, for cost purposes. Still often the best solution though, alas, with some exceptions. I like the Green and Yellows but they're far too simple for anything more than first year under-graduate in most cases. Yet the more suitable options for later years tend to be ugly as hell. The Oxon ones, the Cantab autantiaci etc.

 

I tell you which are pretty though, those old sixth form editions back in the 60s, the ones with the red binding, from MacMillan and stuff, they're so pretty and compact. I have a copy of Aristophanes Batrakhoi I've no use for other than the fact its pretty.

[videro]

This song is outrageous. I'm original from Green Bay, so I grew up in the shadow of Packermania. Glad to see Green and Yellow reappropriated to something more in line with my own interests. This reminds me of the time when I was an usher at the local movie theater, and I was chewed out by cornerback Al Harris after I told him to away (both of) his cellphones during a movie. Those weren't the days...

 

Also, I hate the Green and Yellows because the glossy page material is impossible to annotate. Whenever we're assigned one for a class I borrow it from the library and just use a print out of the TLG.

Edited January 31, 2013 by rsmease

[hanbran]

I recently inherited a cache of OCTs which were printed in the 60's and 70's, and they are my favorites by far.  Perhaps because they include notes written by my old professor from her days in grad school, and perhaps because they have that feel of aged splendor.  Or, perhaps, because they aren't printed crookedly and slapped together with a pound of glue.

[Fockatar]

Ah honestly if they're that far back they probably won't be the cheaper reprints we get nowadays, my modern Catullus is a bit...well its falling apart and I haven't touched it since first year. Ironically my best OCTs are from Greece, deliberately printed cheaply...yet they hold up brilliantly, they're paperbacks with weird card used for the covers, soft but also a bit springy. 

[hanbran]

Do you have any of the old Italian paperbacks?  I forget who publishes them, but they're black with painted covers.  I got like, twenty in Rome for about 3 Euros each.  They're probably the shoddiest (and definitely the cheapest) that I've ever seen.

[Fockatar]

As in editions of the OCTs? nope sorry. 

[videro]

Today I realized that my school now has a gmail.xschool.edu, and it's been forwarding all my school email to that account for a week (I found 125+ messages, some of them pretty important). There was nothing graduate school related in there, but it turns out it's now impossible to forward mail sent to that address.

 

Ergo.. I now have two inboxes to check and recheck throughout the day, rather than just one.

[lexjulia]

  On 1/31/2013 at 4:42 PM, rsmease said:

This song is outrageous. I'm original from Green Bay, so I grew up in the shadow of Packermania. Glad to see Green and Yellow reappropriated to something more in line with my own interests. This reminds me of the time when I was an usher at the local movie theater, and I was chewed out by cornerback Al Harris after I told him to away (both of) his cellphones during a movie. Those weren't the days...

 

Also, I hate the Green and Yellows because the glossy page material is impossible to annotate. Whenever we're assigned one for a class I borrow it from the library and just use a print out of the TLG.

 

Fabulous anecdote-- two cell phones indeed!  Now that's the way to roll. . .

 

Regardless of whether I'm reading from an OCT or a Green and Yellow, I inevitably have a moment when I show up to class with Pindar instead of Plato or something ridiculous because I just grabbed the nearest example of whichever one I'm supposed to be grabbing.  At least if you're prone to leaving the covers on the OCTs you know if you're randomly grabbing a Greek or Latin text. . .if you're as absent minded as me. . . maybe no one else has this problem. . .

[videro]

  On 1/31/2013 at 9:46 PM, lexjulia said:

Regardless of whether I'm reading from an OCT or a Green and Yellow, I inevitably have a moment when I show up to class with Pindar instead of Plato or something ridiculous because I just grabbed the nearest example of whichever one I'm supposed to be grabbing.  At least if you're prone to leaving the covers on the OCTs you know if you're randomly grabbing a Greek or Latin text. . .if you're as absent minded as me. . . maybe no one else has this problem. . .

 

As someone who is hopefully a rising member of the Classical academy, let me state plainly that I haven't the slightest aesthetic affection for any of the popular 'sets' of Greek and Latin texts. The Green and Yellows look like they were modeled on two nicely mowed fields of bleached grass. The Bristol Classical press consistently chooses the cheapest possible graphic images for their editions, and the OCTs are motley array, the kind of family that you'd swear was just adopted. The Loeb library has a nice look, and I appreciate the small size, but their consistent coloring gives rise to the problem that lexjulia has just brought up! I'm guilty of the same mistake. Finally, I'll add that the new volumes that Oxford released are all the same sharp blue with gorgeous (yet illegibly fine) gold lettering.

 

Also, I'll add that digital books are about to make all of these quibbles quite irrelevant. We're sitting less than 10 years from the day when readers can customize their Green and Yellow's to feature any shade of putrid grass that their minds could possible imagine. Just imagine a digital Loeb text in Times New Roman or Helvetica—reader's choice. We're on the brink!

[ciistai]

I'm a big fan of the Kindle lately so I'm looking forward to that day... although to be honest that's just for portability purposes! I think at my home base I'll still have shelves and shelves of books (if I have the room for them, that is).

 

Also, that's awful about two inboxes, rsmease! I'm going mad checking just one! I keep thinking of reasons why today's going to be the day I hear from someone. Oh, it's a Monday! Oh, it's midweek! Oh, February 1st is coming, surely I'll hear from someone!

[hanbran]

I applied to a few history departments, and they're even worse with responses.  The applications are due sooner, the responses come later, AND they tend to come in waves, so you could be admitted or rejected in January or March!  Maybe we'll get some nice news tomorrow, since Friday tends to be a popular bureaucratic busy work day in my office, at least.