Put on your dresses of red and gold
Oct. 25th, 2012 04:41 pmWell, wow. It's been a really, really long time since I've posted here, and I'm sorry about that. For some reason, I just haven't been feeling the blogging vibe for a while. It's frustrating, because I have all these things I want to talk about, and yet can't quite manage to put pen to paper (or, you know, fingers to keyboard).
It's autumn with a vengeance now in Cambridge, which is my favourite time of the year. I love the way the trees look, the colour of the sky, the feel of the air, the clothes I can wear after putting them away during summer, the feeling of being snuggled up inside under a blanket or running through frosty fields as the mist rises from the river. However, along with the weather came the dreaded freshers' flu, which, although I am not a first-year, I caught. I'm still not entirely better. Last week, I was all about the coughing fits, and they still haven't gone away completely. I haven't been able to run since last Wednesday.
In the time since I posted last, I went to the other Cambridge to give a paper at a conference in Harvard. It was my first time in the States since 1999, and my first time to Boston. The conference was like an amazing reunion - I'd met most of the North American Celticists either at summer school in Dublin last year, or at the International Celtic Congress in Maynooth that followed it, so now we have a tendency to go to the same conferences in order to catch up. Cambridge itself - and the Harvard campus - was gorgeous. My paper was well received, and for the first time in a conference, a whole bunch of people wanted to talk to me afterwards, which I think was a good sign. After the conference, I caught up briefly with![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
romen_dreamer and her husband N, who are both sraffies. I'd never met them in person before (I've not met many of the North American sraffies) and we had a great time while they showed me around Cambridge.
Once I got back to MY Cambridge, I was thrown straight away into teaching and research. I sent my supervisor my entire first chapter at the end of last week, and we met about it this week. She made some helpful comments, but, more importantly, she told me she thought I was close to finishing. You cannot imagine how happy that made me. I haven't believed in my ability to finish this PhD for a long time, and it was nice to be told the end was in sight.
I'm finding teaching both more difficult, but more rewarding than I expected. I had a fantastic group seminar today with the third-year students which I found particularly enjoyable. Their essays were such a joy to read, and they made me think about my own research in different terms too. I still sometimes feel like I could be better, but I guess I'm learning too.
I've been thinking for a while that I really need to revive my Romanitas blog. I stopped posting there because the chapter recaps I was doing became too difficult, because I think I got too obsessed with writing them like perfect, self-contained little essays. I think it was the literature student in me. But the whole point about Romanitas is that it made me read with the delirious, devouring joy with which I read as a child. What I feel about that series is so deep and personal and emotional. How could I hope to convey it with a series of dry essays? In other words, I'm going to go back to doing the chapter recaps, but with more of an emphasis on my own emotional reaction to them. More Mark Reads, I guess.
I've got a few other long-term plans for my review blog, but I might talk about them later. Right now, I've got a dinner to cook!
It's autumn with a vengeance now in Cambridge, which is my favourite time of the year. I love the way the trees look, the colour of the sky, the feel of the air, the clothes I can wear after putting them away during summer, the feeling of being snuggled up inside under a blanket or running through frosty fields as the mist rises from the river. However, along with the weather came the dreaded freshers' flu, which, although I am not a first-year, I caught. I'm still not entirely better. Last week, I was all about the coughing fits, and they still haven't gone away completely. I haven't been able to run since last Wednesday.
In the time since I posted last, I went to the other Cambridge to give a paper at a conference in Harvard. It was my first time in the States since 1999, and my first time to Boston. The conference was like an amazing reunion - I'd met most of the North American Celticists either at summer school in Dublin last year, or at the International Celtic Congress in Maynooth that followed it, so now we have a tendency to go to the same conferences in order to catch up. Cambridge itself - and the Harvard campus - was gorgeous. My paper was well received, and for the first time in a conference, a whole bunch of people wanted to talk to me afterwards, which I think was a good sign. After the conference, I caught up briefly with
romen_dreamer and her husband N, who are both sraffies. I'd never met them in person before (I've not met many of the North American sraffies) and we had a great time while they showed me around Cambridge.Once I got back to MY Cambridge, I was thrown straight away into teaching and research. I sent my supervisor my entire first chapter at the end of last week, and we met about it this week. She made some helpful comments, but, more importantly, she told me she thought I was close to finishing. You cannot imagine how happy that made me. I haven't believed in my ability to finish this PhD for a long time, and it was nice to be told the end was in sight.
I'm finding teaching both more difficult, but more rewarding than I expected. I had a fantastic group seminar today with the third-year students which I found particularly enjoyable. Their essays were such a joy to read, and they made me think about my own research in different terms too. I still sometimes feel like I could be better, but I guess I'm learning too.
I've been thinking for a while that I really need to revive my Romanitas blog. I stopped posting there because the chapter recaps I was doing became too difficult, because I think I got too obsessed with writing them like perfect, self-contained little essays. I think it was the literature student in me. But the whole point about Romanitas is that it made me read with the delirious, devouring joy with which I read as a child. What I feel about that series is so deep and personal and emotional. How could I hope to convey it with a series of dry essays? In other words, I'm going to go back to doing the chapter recaps, but with more of an emphasis on my own emotional reaction to them. More Mark Reads, I guess.
I've got a few other long-term plans for my review blog, but I might talk about them later. Right now, I've got a dinner to cook!
