Moot Thoughts & Musings

(...but only after a respectable amount of time recovering from the reality that Bob Edwards is no longer going to welcome my mornings.)

My Latin paper is done and turned in!!! That is a significant source for my glee. I'm so relieved. I learned a lot of library skills dealing with a whole area of stuff out there that I wouldn't have normally encountered. And now the idea of writing a paper on text that is untranslated is a little less daunting.

Another thing I really appreciated about my research into Hildegard is that once you get past all the weird visions and mysticism, there is evidence of a true spirituality that was surprisingly articulate. And a sense of being sensitive to Scriptures. I really enjoyed her. Her Latinity is very clear, not full of the highly structured syntax like Abelard. Her being anti-scholastic would probably reinforce this, but it also makes her more pleasurable for me, the Latin student, to read.

In other news, the Packed Lunch Club, an institution that was quite successfully established this semester, had an equally successful outing this afternoon. We all went out for lunch. It was very fun. Erica and I are pleased at how the Club has taken off. It's also exciting to be the perpetuators of such a unifying, community effort among the theory and musicology grad students and faculty.

In a conversation with a friend of mine who is a musicology grad student at Princeton, I related that I still had this week of class and then finals. "Finals?" she asks, "what's that?" I respond, "Final exams. you know." She astutely ponders, "How can you have a final exam in a graduate class?" My sentiments exactly. There's something wrong with the kind of graduate class that demands a final. *sigh* Well, study I must before going to Kalamazoo...