Friday, February 10, 2012

Blah............

This week has been tough...
Not fun...
Emotionally frustrating...
Physically discouraging...

My new class is impossible...I know, I know I say that at the beginning of each class but this class is HARD!!!!!!! (yes I'm whining, can you hear it?) I realize I should not of complained about the other two!

Ever heard of...

Ludovic Muratori
Giambattista Vico
Pietro Giannone
Leopold von Ranke
Herodotus (he that sounds familuar)
Sima Qian
Thucydides
Polybius
Auguste Comte
Benedetto Croce

This is a very short list from the first 9 pages of the 80 I have to read for next week (a drop in the bucket compared to you Jill!)

My assignment this week is to write 500 words on the following

"Imagine you had a time machine that only had two settings on it, BCE and the present.  You step in and are transported back in time. You have only an afternoon to find and talk to any historian of your choice (China or Greece). Who do you seek out and why? what do you ask him (keep it history related)? What do you tell him about the history profession today?"

There are few problems I'm facing
1.  I am completely unfamiliar with this BCE time period other than Bible stories I am unaware of anything else happening BCE!  Can I pick Adam?  Can I ask him how he remembered all the names of the zillion animals he named and did he remember to give Eve flowers and chocolate on VDay?

2.  I hate "creative" writing when dealing with history it seems oxymoronish to me...

3.  With all of the stopping to look up words I've never heard of before (Ethnography, Othering, Diachronistically, to name a very few) and taking notes of people I've never heard of before (see list above) it has taken me 2 hours to read 9 pages!  I wish I were kidding...

4.  So as a result I have lost my flow...

5.  Last week I had flow, I was running, I was doing my Bible study, I was out taking pictures, I was teaching, it was flowing...

6.  This week it was not flowing...


I guess this is the bumpy transition period. 

Thanks for listening...
I feel a tiny bit better...
Mostly because Jeff is cooking me supper :)

Frychik

1 comment:

  1. Wow! Nothing like a little perspective. I'm up to my eyeballs in pharmacology, but I'll take drug and bugs over what you have going on! Even though I agree that creative writing on history seems a little odd, I'm sure you will do great because that's just how you do things. Enjoy your dinner!! (and thanks for posting)

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