Back to the Books

Wow. It is almost time for me to think about school starting again. Time to buy myself a bouquet of sharpened pencils and get back to work. (Please ignore the maniacal howling you hear in the background. It's just my brother, who isn't ready for school because he took classes in both summer sessions. Including Physics II, which turned out to be the wrong Physics class for his degree anyway. Silly boy.) I am, I admit, somewhat sad to see the summer ending, but I really do love the school year, especially the fall. After all, I will get to see my boyfriend again, and several other good college friends who have been gone all summer. Also, football season is about to start, and you all know how I feel about football. It was all my dad and I could talk about over dinner the other night. (Fortunately, my mom wasn't there to be annoyed or bored to tears.) And then, of course, there is school. Contrary to appearances (I love to rant about how much homework annoys me), I actually enjoy school a lot. (If I had enough money, I would stay in school for years and get a masters and Ph.D. just for the fun of it. Unfortunately, however, my scholarship ends in '08 and so does my education.) I enjoy learning things, especially things you don't even think about in everyday life. Things like...ancient languages! This semester will be my first in classical Greek, and I am very excited about learning it. I have already taken 2 years of Latin, and I will continue that this year as well. I have even studied a smattering of Old English in my "History of the English Language" class. People sometimes ask me why I bother to learn dead languages. I don't really know why, except for the fact that I am fascinated by languages in general, and equally fascinated by ancient cultures. (And there's a bonus to dead languages--you don't have to bother learning to actually speak them. Anyone who has taken foreign language classes knows that speaking a different language is a sight harder than simply reading and writing in it, and that is the part that does a classicist no good whatsoever, since after all no one is alive to speak it with. We have it easy.) What can I say, I'm a words person! I am also taking stellar astronomy this year with Dr. Wilhelm, who is the best professor ever. I enjoy astronomy a lot, despite my general lack of a scientific mind, for much the same reason as I love ancient languages. It is just so fascinating to study something that you never even see in boring old everyday life. Who even thinks about stars and galaxies, unless they're watching the CNN NASA update (which is always full of snide commentary about how we should be spending our tax money on welfare instead)? I love to think about the vast stretches of space, some of which we humans will never see, and about how "the heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of His hands."

So I suppose I should admit that, overall, I like studying. The thing I don't like about the school year, though, is that I don't get to read much. Between class, work, studying, church, housework, coffee shop socializing, and sleeping more than 4 hours a night, I just don't get to curl up with a good book as often as I'd like. Someone needs to invent a 30-hour day. After all, if we can manage Daylight Savings Time, what's stopping us? Until that happens, though, I just have to take advantage of the summer. The next couple of weeks my nose will be firmly planted between the pages of some wonderfully non-academic books. Fantasy is my favorite genre, and today as I was walking in the SF section of the library I was assaulted by about 15 titles I really want to read. I only have 2 weeks, though, so I had to be choosy. The one I chose is called The Redemption of Althalus.

One of the things I love best about fantasy is the amount of crazy names you find. "Althalus," isn't that great? I just adore names like Sorka, F'lar, Polgara, Luthe, Darmok (hehe), Harimad, Twengor, Gwenhwyfar...and the like. (Tolkien's names are especially lovely. Galadriel just rolls off your tongue, and I can scarcely imagine a more noble-sounding name than Aragorn.) I have a slight obsession with names anyway, since it seems that so much of what makes a person or object unique is tied up in their name, at least in my imagination. Again, I agree with Anne of Green Gables: a rose would not be nearly as pleasant if it were called a skunkbush. (This is why screen names are a bit disconcerting for me. They never seem to be quite right, for me or anyone else.) I already feel rather sorry for my poor future children, because I don't think I will be able to give them normal names like Brandon or David or Polly or Sue. No, my kiddos will have names like Aerin or Vesper or Corlath, and will therefore be spelling their names wherever they go. Hehe maybe Corlath can be a middle name or something...I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Well, the more I talk about fantasy the more I long to bury myself in it...so it is time to put this entry to bed and go curl up with Althalus. Have a good night, y'all.