Well, this is a less romantic post than many, for the same reason that it is rather delayed; I've simply been drowning in the amount of email and organization I have to handle every day. Because the new year has started! I'm officially a second-year PhD student, no longer probationary.
So far academically, I've been attending classes on Latin, Old English, and Old English literature. The latter two are especially motivated by the fact that I've gotten my first opportunity to supervise (teach) an undergraduate! Supervision can be hard to acquire here as teaching is arranged through each college separately, and you often have to know someone/leverage your supervisor's networking. However, there aren't many people who are able to teach Old English within the English faculty. Most serious scholars of that stuff are over in the ASNC department (Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic). Win for me. :D I've met with my student a couple times, and she's delightful. I worry that I don't know all the minutiae of the language or vocabulary, but the exam for which I'm prepping her is more focused on the literary angle, so I just keep telling myself that I know how to do that. Plus, having asked a few undergrads about good supervision techniques, I gather that I'm doing better than some...
I'm also co-captain of the novice rowers, which involves a fair amount of scheduling and such. Oh, and acting as 'external ents' [entertainments] officer for the MCR. You can see why my inbox has been clogged for a couple weeks.
Meanwhile, I have one week in which to get my paper in shape for the annual NAVSA conference (North American Victorian Studies Association). It's a big-ass conference, and I really want to do well at it; so of course I proposed to talk about a confusing, slippery poem that will easily turn you around until you can't sort out what your argument is. Fun times. :-/ But it will come together somehow or other.
For wading through all that, how about a picture? Here's the view from my bedroom window. Tree!
