![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Everybody wants to rule the world
Jan. 26th, 2006 08:10 pmWell, crap, that's kinda embarrassing. It seems that every time I make a "omg I don't know if I can hack grad school, I'm tired of feeling so stupid" then the next day I enjoy all my classes and do fine and think, "wow, maybe I can do this after all."
It helped that today were my two favorite classes, Shakespeare and Calligraphy. In Shakespeare we did The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which is fun, if problematic for my inner feminist. ( Summary for those who haven't read/seen it )
Then this evening I had my Calligraphy class, which TOTALLY ROCKED. We met in the Special Collections classroom in the library, where we got to look at actual medieval and early modern manuscripts (including a couple of really early ones in Anglo-Saxon!). It was incredibly cool, and it turns out any student can go in and request to look at this stuff! There were tons of gorgeous illuminated manuscripts which I COVET WITH A FIERY VENGEANCE, but my two favorite pieces that I kept returning to were only a page each: one was a page from a tiny little book with 14-15 lines per inch (seriously, it was impossible to read without a magnifying glass, and looked like it must have been written with like a needle or something except that it DOES have the thick/thin lines which indicate a quill or brush or pen of some kind). The second, which was even cooler, was a Latin charter from 1613 signed by James I of England, and with his seal still attached.
See, that's the part that I really love about history: it's like all these great stories about interesting people in interesting times, the kind you'd read in a novel, only they REALLY HAPPENED. And one of the cool things about THAT is that it means you can get proof of it: you can go see the places where these people lived or spent time, you can read things they've written, or actually see artifacts from their lives (like, say, a charter they personally signed) which somehow really brings them to life for you and makes you feel a certain, I don't know, affinity with them. Which I like. XD
Anyway, I copied out about half of the charter for my paper due next week in Calligraphy, and I'm probably going to go back to Spec. Coll. tomorrow to finish copying it. I'm hoping to translate it for my paper using my nonexistent knowledge of Latin (but fortunately I have a large vocabulary and kick ass at recognizing cognates, and I was able to read most of it while I was copying it, so it shouldn't be too hard if I can find an online Latin dictionary).
It helped that today were my two favorite classes, Shakespeare and Calligraphy. In Shakespeare we did The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which is fun, if problematic for my inner feminist. ( Summary for those who haven't read/seen it )
Then this evening I had my Calligraphy class, which TOTALLY ROCKED. We met in the Special Collections classroom in the library, where we got to look at actual medieval and early modern manuscripts (including a couple of really early ones in Anglo-Saxon!). It was incredibly cool, and it turns out any student can go in and request to look at this stuff! There were tons of gorgeous illuminated manuscripts which I COVET WITH A FIERY VENGEANCE, but my two favorite pieces that I kept returning to were only a page each: one was a page from a tiny little book with 14-15 lines per inch (seriously, it was impossible to read without a magnifying glass, and looked like it must have been written with like a needle or something except that it DOES have the thick/thin lines which indicate a quill or brush or pen of some kind). The second, which was even cooler, was a Latin charter from 1613 signed by James I of England, and with his seal still attached.
See, that's the part that I really love about history: it's like all these great stories about interesting people in interesting times, the kind you'd read in a novel, only they REALLY HAPPENED. And one of the cool things about THAT is that it means you can get proof of it: you can go see the places where these people lived or spent time, you can read things they've written, or actually see artifacts from their lives (like, say, a charter they personally signed) which somehow really brings them to life for you and makes you feel a certain, I don't know, affinity with them. Which I like. XD
Anyway, I copied out about half of the charter for my paper due next week in Calligraphy, and I'm probably going to go back to Spec. Coll. tomorrow to finish copying it. I'm hoping to translate it for my paper using my nonexistent knowledge of Latin (but fortunately I have a large vocabulary and kick ass at recognizing cognates, and I was able to read most of it while I was copying it, so it shouldn't be too hard if I can find an online Latin dictionary).
