Getting more settled in, academic edition

[wildeabandon]

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!

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

This is so good to read!

[ewt]

I'm so glad :-)

[radiantfracture]

Great post! Am I right that Syriac is the liturgical language in the Assyrian church?

[wildeabandon]

Yes, along with several other Eastern churches.

[hilarita]

Eh, if you're reasonable at languages, learning multiple ones at once isn't too bad, particularly in cases where the teachers are aware that you're learning both, so will tend to flag up differences. So when learning Old English and Old Norse, the lecturers would usually say stuff like "you may have met this in OE/ON, but in this language, it's a bit different", or "this is exactly like the OE/ON thing, but with some sound changes".

[wildeabandon]

I feel like it has the potential to get quite confusing, but the fact that they're in different scripts definitely helps me keep them apart. Also I think I still haven't entirely internalised the idea that I'm reasonable at languages, because my auditory processing is rubbish which means my early experiences of learning modern languages was Not Good(tm)

[liv]

Yay, I'm so glad you're enjoying learning! I would be really interested in your essay on Kings when it's done. Maybe we should compare notes, I have to write a 2000 word essay on something in that region of the Bible by January, so half the length but half the time. Similarly broad spec, I basically have to pick a topic.

PS it's Ezra, not Esther, that is written partly in Judeo-Aramaic.

[wildeabandon]

I will definitely keep you updated once it gets past the drawing board. And thank you for the catch on that mix-up. I'm not quite sure how I managed to get that muddled - it was definitely a case of me genuinely thinking it was Esther, rather than just typoing two similar sounding names, but on reflection it makes more sense that the obviously composite document is the one with bits in another language!

[rmc28]

Ahh I'm so glad you're enjoying it :-) wishing you all the fun studying

[barakta]

Loving hearing about your studying and how happy it is making you!

[ludy]

Yay! This is really lovely to read

[sfred]

I'm so glad you're enjoying it!

[the_elyan]

Glad to hear you are filling your brain with Fun and Interesting Stuff. Being in a state of neither needing or wanting to do anything except what you are there to do is fairly ideal, I'd imagine.