About

Well hello there, welcome to my very humble piece of the internet.

What is this blog about? Yeah…I could have maybe come up with a more relevant name for the blog. Oh well. Topics here will generally revolve around the Classics. Though my posts can and do focus on a variety of aspects of this field, I am primarily interested in Classical linguistics and the teaching of Classical languages and culture.

Who am I? I’m currently pursuing a teaching cert at Ursinus College because I am seriously passionate about teaching. I am more passionate about teaching Latin than I am about Latin itself. I left a free ride in an MA program at Villanova to do this. I might be insane.

I started Latin in 7th grade, attended the PA Governor’s School for Teaching, and took the AP Latin exam my senior year of high school. I did my Undergraduate degree at Ursinus College where I majored in Classics and created a student-initiated major in Linguistics. I did a year abroad in Edinburgh where I got into more intense theoretical linguistics and did most of my Greek reading. I graduated in 2011 and went to Cambridge for my MPhil in Classical Linguistics. I learned while there that I do not have the patience for Classical Linguistics, but somehow I managed to pull of a first on my Thesis. Go figure. I still think they mixed up some papers during the application process. Since my Greek & Latin are still sucky, I decided to do an MA in Classics at Villanova. After having not done Greek for 2 years and not having a good foundation in it to begin with, I had the pleasure of translating Aeschylus’s Agamemnon. My personal opinion is that he deserves to be punched in the face repeatedly. I cried every time I looked at my homework. I left this program in 2012 to pursue my original passion for teaching. Eventually I hope to do a PhD in Edcuation with a focus on Second Language Acquisition and the teaching of non-spoken languages.

So stuff about those things is what you’re in for when you read this blog. If you’re really curious about my credentials, here’s my LinkedIn

OLD “ABOUT”:

I’m not quite certain what I want this blog to be about yet, though ‘the Classics, Language, Linguistics, and Miscellanea’ is a start at least. I imagine I will post about those topics most frequently. Mostly I expect this blog will shape itself, acquiring a theme over time.

However, here are some important things you should know about me before you believe a word I’ve written:

1. I am a *student*. Nothing I have to say is authoritative, or even vaguely guaranteed to be correct. Please keep this in mind, even when I posts sentences like, “I know I said ‘Nothing I have to say is authoritative or even vaguely guaranteed to be correct’ in my about page, but you can totally ignore that when I say X because this is definitely 100% true”. It may be, but I’m not an expert, you should take everything I say with a large helping of salt because…

2. I’m not even particularly good at the subjects I talk about. i) Linguistics: I have at total of 3 semesters worth of actual intensive theoretical linguistics courses, 3 independent studies on topics in linguistics, several language courses which were linguistically oriented, and some audited historical linguistics courses taken this past year. ii) Classics: I have spent quite a long time studying Latin, but it has been a while (3 years ish) since I have actually really done some honest to goodness translation; I am very rusty. My Greek was at a low intermediate level last year, and it’s gotten rusty since. ii) Other Languages: I can read some romance languages (French with relative ease, Italian and Spanish with significant aid); my German is elementary. Note ‘read’. I use these languages for research. I can’t remember the last time I’ve conversed with anyone in French. It’s been at least 2-3 years.

Bearing these things in mind, I hope you think of this blog as more of a sounding board than a lecture podium. Some of the thoughts that come out of my head are utter lunacy at times, and I hope that you call me out when the are.