Monday, October 23, 2006
Next semester I need to continue taking the next sequences of the language courses (despite the whole "lack of money and lack of financial aid" issue I must contend with), but the German department is only offering two senior-level classes, neither of which I would want to take at the moment. One is an internship at a local elementary school (nein, danke), with the other being a course in business German, which would be useful, but probably not as reading-intensive as I might like. I need to focus on reading more at this point, I think, in order to better grasp the language. Reading short stories last spring improved my German considerably, but this semester I haven't immersed myself as much, and I feel everything I knew (or thought I knew) slipping away...
Thus at Oktoberfest (a small gathering at a graduate student's house) Saturday night I talked to Dr. Bonzo and Der Grair Bear about independent study. Dr. Bonzo wouldn't have time, since he has to coordinate the summer trip nach Deutschland, and Dr. Grair informed me he would be on leave. After I elaborated a little on what I wanted to do, Dr. Grair said he wouldn't mind meeting with me once in a while (which makes me feel even more guilty about taking his time than I would normally, considering that "on leave" entails "no students").
However, ich habe keine Ahnung, was für ein Literatur ich lesen soll. The top two ideas as of this moment would be post-world-war literature (auf Englisch oder Deutsch sehr interessant) or perhaps something related to classical scholarship, but utilizing the original sources of German authors. Der Grair Bear is no classicist, but he is historically-minded and seems pretty well-versed in classical literatures (he knew the subjects of Greek tragedies this summer when he saw me reading them). In any case, I need to find something suitable to my reading level, which would entail a trip or two to the Bibliothek.
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 7:29 AM]