Getting more settled in, academic edition

Oof, how has it been more than a month since I last posted here? Oh yes, I've been diving headfirst into my studies. I am having a wonderful time, but I've taken on a couple of extra classes, and my schedule is quite full. On one level it does feel as though I don't have any time to do anything other than study and keep up with the basics of life admin and keeping myself healthy. But this doesn't feel like an imposition because I don't really /want/ to do anything other than study. There are a couple of compulsory courses which I would drop if I could because they're mostly covering stuff I already know pretty well, but only because that way I'd have space for more elective modules that would be new to me!

Possibly my favourite taught course is one that I'm attending but not actually being examined on - Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic spoken in some Christian communities from the first century CE, and still used as a liturgical language today. It's not exactly the same language as was spoken by Jesus, and in which parts of the books of Daniel and EstherEzra are written, but close enough to be mutually intelligible. It's also moderately closely related to Hebrew, so the wisdom of trying to learn them both at the same time is perhaps questionable, but at the moment I seem to be getting more re-enforcement than interference. I am also really enjoying both History of the Church: Middle Ages, and Introduction to Islam, both of which are giant fire-hoses of information, but taught by really engaging professors.

As well as the taught courses I'm doing two modules that KU calls seminars, and which make particularly clear the extent to which KU considers the Bachelor as the first step towards a research career. The modules consist of 5-6 classes with content related to a fairly broad topic (in this case, Synodality for the Systematic Theology seminar, and the Books of Kings for the Biblical Studies seminar), after which we'll be mostly left to ourselves to come up with a research question and write a short (~4000 word) paper with intermediate stages of feedback and support throughout the year. At the moment I've got a fairly clear idea of what I want to do with Kings (looking at the roots פלג and קדש and exploring the conceptual space that links sex work and the sacred), whereas for Synodality I've got a vague idea which is more 'book' than '4000 word paper', so I'm going to need to narrow it down somehow.

I am having so much fun you guys. So! Much! Fun!