It seems I begin every entry with an apology for slow activity. I’ve fallen very far behind in my correspondence with home, and other “internet obligation” type things. Part of this is due to having my last three papers due in a week.

I handed in two on May 12th – one on Tom Jones and one on Much Ado About Nothing. As mentioned previously on this site, I saw Much Ado at the National Theatre here in London, and I feel that it greatly shaped my opinion and understanding of the text.

The last paper was handed in on Monday the 19th, and I had quite an adventure with it. Carelessly, I assumed that I would be able to select my topic from the list of essay questions as had been the practice for the first one. So, having perused these and begun collecting sources, I checked the details of the assignment in my Affiliate Handbook on Sunday night – the night before it was due. It turns out that the second paper had an assigned topic, which was posted in the History department on the bulletin board. Now, this is where I see big differences between Emory and UCL. At Emory, the History department would email us our topics, or our professor would. At UCL they make one print out, and post it in a building that isn’t open on weekends.

Why can’t they email it to us? It’s old technology and a simple idea. It’s abundantly clear that they have our email addresses as we are bombarded with spam from the departments and student groups constantly.

After a few panicked emails, I resolved myself as to what to do. I woke up very early on Monday, made it down to the History building for its opening at 9 am, found my essay topic choices, selected one, researched it, and wrote it. I had it in by 3:30pm that afternoon, and with that I am done with academics for the semester.

Simultaneous to this time period I came down with congestion, then a cough, then a fever. Once the fever broke, my voice went away. I feel much better now, and my voice is almost all the way back. Still, very unpleasant.

I had guests from home in town for a few days this week, although we only got to spend one evening, and I had to cancel plans for the Tower of London with them due to illness. Tanner arrives from his travels in Africa next week, and he’ll be staying here a few days. Then it’s off to the continent one last time, this time with my friend David – and then off home.

I have quite a few other things to update, and am feeling newly inspired to do so.

After not sleeping at all on Tuesday night, I slept from four in the afternoon until midnight. I spent a few hours with my English and American friends, they were in the midst of celebrating the end of classes. I managed to squeeze in a few hours of sleep then before I had to meet my professor at the book store to discuss my essay on A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne.

She rather liked it, and we talked about a wide range of things. We met in a book store basement café, as she was kind enough to give me an extension and meet with me even after University had closed for Easter. It came up that she has a book coming out at the end of the month called Boxing and it’s a historical-cultural examination of the evolution of the sport of boxing. Her name is Kasia Boddy if you are interesting in picking it up when it comes out.

On the way out, I rewarded myself by picking up a couple books of recreational reading. One of them is a collection of Henry James’ short stories. Daisy Miller is one of my absolute favorites, and it is included, but I just finished reading “Four Meetings.” Once again, a crushingly sad story about a naïve young American woman who is destroyed by Europe. The protagonist is either incapable of, or ignorant of how to save her.

Perhaps it is simply more evidence for my Uncle’s brilliant definition of a short story (paraphrased), “A short work in which one of the character’s lives is ruined.”

It’s beautiful, though, and he has a way of phrasing something very simply at a pivotal moment. It allows for very powerful understatement. The sort of thing I go for, and the examples I always give are Winterbourne saying, “She would have appreciated one’s esteem” or Nick saying to Gatsby, “They are careless people.”

As of today, I am exactly half way between birthdays. I have also completed my 5th essay of the term, out of eight. I just submitted the second of two today in the past hour or so. I’m completely exhausted – just did not sleep last night. I’m trying to decide whether I should “nap” or just stay up until about 8pm, and then crash for 14 hours. Probably the latter.

This means I have no more classes to attend here, and only three more papers to turn in in May, and I’m done. Not a bad feeling. So, this also means there should be a lot more updates here in the near future, as I actually resume doing things that are worth writing about.

Also – happy belated half birthday to my sister Annalisa. Hers falls on the slightly less well-known holiday of St. Patrick’s Day.

I pulled an all-nighter trying to finish a 2,500 word essay by 5:00 p.m. today. I had received an email saying it was the departmental deadline. I’d prepared pages of notes last week, but had put off writing much of the essay. I got to 2,000 words this morning before I left for class. In class, the one it was supposed to be for, I found out that not only could I hand it in by the 19th in order to get feedback, I can hand it in on the 21st at the latest or something along those lines. The 17th deadline was for a paper I’d handed in 10 days ago.

So, I’m going to sleep now – as soon as they stop testing the fire alarms – and then finish it up tonight. I picked up three books of criticism on Sterne so I can write my second, shorter essay for Wednesday evening. It’s going to be busy, but once I finish them it’s rather smooth sailing.

I must seem like the most boring college student ever, given these past few updates. I did go out Friday night, but most of it was trying to find the pub we were looking for and so forth. Wound up just wandering around for a few hours and coming back. I was following around the English kids, and just taking in the sights.

Meanwhile, I still continue to spend an exorbitant amount of time reading about baseball, and watching Spring Training on MLB.TV. Right now I’d go with a starting lineup of Swisher in Left, Brian Anderson in Center, Dye in Right, then an infield of Fields-Cabrera-Ramirez-Konerko. Of course, that’s not what’s going to happen, but I can dream.

I’ve come up with a new way to write history papers that I’m really fond of, and has worked really well recently. I get the books and resources I’m going to use. I then spend several hours collecting all of the quotes and citations that could possibly have any relevance to my topic. Once I start writing the paper I can just refer to my notes, and if I ever need filler, or another supporting argument, I just go back to the quotes. So I’ve been compiling quotes for the past day or so.

The topic is, “To what extent was Ancient Greek religion a matter of doing the proper thing in the proper place.” So I’ll be exploring that. It’s a remarkably flexible and variant religion, but some things they were very strict about. If anybody has any interest in the papers I’ve written I can definitely throw them up here. So far I have written papers on:

- Julius Caesar (the play, not the historical figure, although some history inevitably creeps in)
- How much we can possibly learn about archaic civilizations
- Xenophon

Dry stuff, I suppose, but I’m proud of my work. I’ve been going through the notes I’ve compiled for stand up, and sent out an invite to my London friends. I’m no longer feeling overwhelmed, but capable of meeting these things head-on.

As an affiliate student at UCL this term, I am responsible for eight essays – two for each of the classes I am in. As I’m in two History courses, and two English courses, they each do them a bit differently. For the first two English papers, I am supposed to email them to a teacher assigned to me, and then she grades them and we meet for an hour to discuss the subject.

The History papers I have to print out, hand in two hard copies to the department, fill out a cover sheet, and have it get stamped that it was received at a certain time. The reason for the multiple copies is that they have two readers/graders in an attempt to eliminate bias.

So at this point I have written three of my eight essays for the entire term. I have two more due before classes end on March 19th. Then I have to write the last three by some time in Mid-May. So the next few weeks will be stressful, but after that it’s really a great deal.

I gave a presentation today in my discussion group which took a Point-Counterpoint format. I was arguing against the statement that “We can reconstruct Early Roman History from archaeological and literary evidence.” I took the approach of trying to point out the limitations of the sources, rather than attempting to disprove it entirely.

Most of the problems stem from a few points. One being the issue of Survival of Evidence. Most archaeological evidence that survives from before 500B.C. (or even from later) does so because it was intended to. Funerary and votive objects were intentionally put into the ground, whereas habitation cites preserve virtually nothing. As such Archaeology can give us insights such as populations, and urbanization, it cannot as of now give us too much insight into social structure, political institutions, etc.

Further, written histories by Romans concerning themselves didn’t really arise until nearly 200 B.C. While it may all sound old, when you think about it, that means the foundation myths of Rome weren’t recorded by a Roman until 550+ years after they were supposed to happen! How much would you trust a historian to write about 1450 based on word of mouth only?

However, the general outline seems to be acceptable (although we must accept that mythology got bound up in there somewhere) and also remember that whether or not the histories are “factually true,” it may be more important to keep track of what the Romans believed about themselves.

In light of my points about the limitations of what we can conclude from the evidence, the conversation turned to the ethics of making conjecture and “common sense” (a loaded term) based arguments regarding archaic history. We did not come to any definite conclusions, as there is the difficulty of “Do we write conjecture or do we conclude nothing?”

I was told my presentation was excellent, a comfort when thinking I am an ambassador of sorts.

This was actually the most interest part of the Greek Alphabet/Literacy discussion, and I can’t believe I left it out. As such a small proportion of the populace was literate, it made literacy rather prestigious. As a result, there were many instances of graffiti (writing/carvings on pottery) where there is lettering that doesn’t form words, in order to make the object seem like a bigger deal. For example, in Greek Letters, it would just say, “sdkjpoi plokajsdf dlfkjasdf.” A literate person would know this is just gibberish, but most wouldn’t – a sort of, cubic zirconium of intellect.

Today it took an hour and a half to get back from campus to my dorm. This was a result of me waiting for the 29 Bus. The walk is only about half an hour maximum, but I was listening to music, and not feeling up for walking that far tonight. This was combined with – on the way there – the 29 Bus I was on spontaneously informing us that the third stop had become the last stop, and everybody had to get off without warning. They give you no heads up whatsoever, and when you’re paying 90p for a ride, it’s obnoxious to have to switch buses, and pay all over again to get to the same place. Oh, London. You’re run so badly.

My discussion section for yesterday’s Mediterranean 800-500BC focused on the inception of the Greek alphabet, and the impact of literacy in the culture. The answer was that most of the material on the subject was academic bickering that pretty much went nowhere. The most common consensus seems to be that the language was adapted from Phoenicia through a proxy of Cyprus, around 750BC. Even up until 200BC literacy would peak in Athens at around 20-30 percent.

Further, in a discussion with the Teacher’s Assistant regarding my upcoming presentation I mentioned Rome’s anti-elephant incendiary pigs. He responded that the most amusing thing he had seen in military history was the WWII headline, “Eighth Army Push Bottles Up German Rear.”

Friday we discussed Tom Jones by Henry Fielding in my Restoration & 18th Century Literature seminar. This professor is really excellent. Very energetic, great sense of humor, and very knowledgeable. I had only read 130 or so of the 850 page book, but I admitted it. The pages I had read, however, I had taken notes and highlighted citations, so I was able to keep up and contribute.

I was aided considerably by having watched the 1960s version of the film with my parents. It was the last thing I did before I left for my freshman year of college.

It truly is amazing how ahead of its time it was as a book, and how the narrator’s voice seems scattered and absent-minded, yet every little detail, and every way of presenting information itself is a hint or serves a purpose. The amount of comedy cannot be understated either. I found myself laughing out loud at several points.

The most quotable sound bite of the discussion is as follows:
“Most English novels written before 1960 wouldn’t work if there had been paternity tests.”