Changing Your Mind is the Point of Research

April 6, 2024 ~ sententiaeantiquae ~ Leave a comment

Quintilian, Inst. Orat. 3.6.

“I admit that I now have a bit of a different opinion from what I believed before. Perhaps it would be safest for my reputation to change nothing which I not only believed but also approved for many years. But I cannot endure knowing that I misrepresent myself, especially in this work which I compose as some help for our good students. For even Hippocrates, famous still for his skill in medicine, seems to have conducted himself very honorably when he admitted his own errors so his followers would not make a mistake. Marcus Tullius did not hesitate to condemn some of his own books in subsequent publications, the Catulus and Lucullus, for example.

Prolonged effort in research would certainly be useless if we were not allowed to improve upon previous opinions. Nevertheless, nothing of what I taught then was useless. These things I offer now, in fact, return us to basic principles. Thus it will cause no one grief to have learned from me. I am trying only to collect and lay out the same ideas in a slightly more sensible fashion. I want it made known to all, moreover, that I am showing this to others no later than I have convinced myself.”

Ipse me paulum in alia quam prius habuerim opinione nunc esse confiteor. Et fortasse tutissimum erat famae modo studenti nihil ex eo mutare quod multis annis non sensissem modo verum etiam adprobassem. Sed non sustineo esse conscius mihi dissimulati, in eo praesertim opere quod ad bonorum iuvenum aliquam utilitatem componimus, in ulla parte iudicii mei. Nam et Hippocrates clarus arte medicinae videtur honestissime fecisse quod quosdam errores suos, ne posteri errarent, confessus est, et M. Tullius non dubitavit aliquos iam editos libros aliis postea scriptis ipse damnare, sicut Catulum atque Lucullum et… Etenim supervacuus foret in studiis longior labor si nihil liceret melius invenire praeteritis. Neque tamen quicquam ex iis quae tum praecepi supervacuum fuit; ad easdem enim particulas haec quoque quae nunc praecipiam revertentur. Ita neminem didicisse paeniteat: colligere tantum eadem ac disponere paulo significantius conor. Omnibus autem satis factum volo non me hoc serius demonstrare aliis quam mihi ipse persuaserim.

Mind Change real

Against the Aeneid

June 25, 2023 ~ Erik ~ 3 Comments

nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade.

“Something greater than the Iliad is being born…”

This line of Propertius, hinting at the composition of the Aeneid, has always struck me as violently sarcastic – how could it be otherwise?

Vergil possesses only two virtues: he is a sensitive interpreter of Homer, and he is on occasion capable of delivering a line of eloquence well freighted with pathos. Examples of this latter tendency include everyone’s favorite tags:

en sunt lacrimae rerum
forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit
quae iam terra nostri non plena laboris
facilis descensus Averno
etc. etc.

This places Vergil well in the tradition of Ennius. Donatus records that, when a friend saw Vergil reading Ennius, he asked him what he was doing and Vergil responded, “Looking for pieces of gold in a heap of shit.” Samuel Johnson once suggested of Shakespeare that for all of his fine qualities as a writer, one would be hard pressed to find more than four consecutive lines of good poetry in his plays. Much the same is true of Vergil, which is in part why he serves as such a fruitful source for the isolated quotation and overblown tag; it is also why he is such a painful chore to read.

Over the years, I have been both shocked and appalled to hear a number of my fellow Latin teachers cite Vergil’s Aeneid as their favorite work of Latin literature. What strikes me in particular about their claim to love the Aeneid is the fact that most of them also admit to having never read through the entire poem in Latin. While I am not generally a fan of altitudinal equestrianism I’m afraid that I must place a reluctant foot into the critical stirrup and make the daring suggestion that one cannot properly evaluate a work of art that was designed as an organic unity and survives complete (though unfinished) without having read through the whole of it. As this steed begins to canter along, I will note that I have read the whole poem through twice (and the AP selections several times over) and I can only conclude that Vergil served as Dante’s guide not because of his Christian qualities, not for his foray into subterranean cosmography, but because reading the Aeneid in its entirety offers one a grim foretaste of eternity. Even the most interesting of long form narrative fictions will occasionally get bogged down in longeurs, but an entire half of the poem (Books 7 – 12) is regularly neglected because of its tedium, and even people who make the case for the historical interest of Homer’s Catalogue of Ships would be stumped in their search for reasons to read Book 5 of the Aeneid.

I recently heard it suggested that Aeneas is an interesting and complex character. No one in the history of literature could be less complex than Aeneas. Indeed, he isn’t really even a character so much as an idea. The only figure given less of a personality in the Aeneid is Lavinia. I suggest, rather, that Aeneas is the biggest chump in all of ancient literature. His chief function in the Iliad is simply to almost get himself killed by better heroes (Diomedes, Achilles) in the same way that Paris was rescued in his duel with Menelaus. (It is perhaps not without reason that Iarbas in Book 4 describes Aeneas as ille Paris.) Throughout the Aeneid, all of his important actions are prompted by three things: dreams, prophecies, and direct admonition of the gods. When Hermes comes to tell Aeneas to leave Carthage, he presents the hero with the first thing resembling a real choice: it is implied that he can remain with Dido and grant Ascanius the glory of reaching Italy. Here he does make the choice to abandon Dido and pettily ensure that he, not his son, receives the honor of reconstituting a Hesperian Troy, but instead of fully acknowledging it as a decision, he tells Dido:

“Stop working both of us up with your complaints –
I am not pursuing Italy by choice.”

desine meque tuis incendere teque querelis;
Italiam non sponte sequor.’ [Aeneid 4.360-1]

Complexity? Depth? Hardly. One could see figures like Odysseus and Achilles, for all of their unsavory traits, as proto-existentialist heroes who occasionally transgressed the boundaries of the human, while Aeneas is nothing more than a bland but perfect paragon of Bad Faith.

Vergil has, of course, had his distinguished defenders. Dante, Tennyson, T.S. Eliot. Perhaps, as poets, they can sense something in the Aeneid that I miss, in much the same way that dogs apparently find a particular olfactory pleasure in shit that we humans, being less nasally developed, cannot appreciate. Or perhaps their creative faculties came at the cost of their judgment. For an illustrative example of T.S. Eliot’s painful defects as a literary critic, consider these remarks on Aeneas and Dido in the underworld:

But I have always thought the meeting of Aeneas with the shade of Dido, in Book VI, not only one of the most poignant, but one of the most civilized passages in poetry. It is complex in meaning and economical in expression, for it not only tells us about the attitude of Dido – still more important is what it tells us about the attitude of Aeneas. Dido’s behaviour appears almost as a projection of Aeneas’ own conscience: this, we feel, is the way in which Aeneas’ conscience would expect Dido to behave to him. The point, it seems to me, is not that Dido is unforgiving – though it is important that, instead of railing at him, she merely snubs him – perhaps the most telling snub in all poetry: what matters most is, that Aeneas does not forgive himself – and this, significantly, in spite of the fact of which he is well aware, that all that he has done has been in compliance with destiny, or in consequence of the machinations of the gods who are themselves, we feel, only instruments of a greater inscrutable power. [T.S. Eliot, What is a Classic?]

By contrast, note how Samuel Johnson, who apparently remembers his Homer better than Eliot did, handles the same scene:

The warmest Admirers of the great Mantuan Poet can extol him for little more than the Skill with which he has, by making his Hero both a Traveller and a Warrior, united the Beauties of the Iliad and Odyssey in one Composition; yet his Judgment was perhaps sometimes overborn by his Avarice of the Homeric Treasures, and for fear of suffering a sparkling Ornament to be lost, has inserted it where it cannot shine with its original Splendor. When Ulysses visited the infernal Regions, he found among the Heroes who died at Troy, his Competitor Ajax, who, when the Arms of Achilles were adjudged to Ulysses, died by his own Hand in the Madness of Disappointment. He still appeared to resent, as on Earth, his Loss and Disgrace. Ulysses endeavoured to pacify him with Praises and Submission; but Ajax walked away without Reply. This Passage has always been considered as eminently beautiful, because Ajax the haughty Chief, the unlettered Soldier, of unshaken Courage, of immoveable Constancy, but without the Power of recommending his own Virtues by Eloquence, or enforcing his Assertions by any other Argument than the Sword, had no way of making his Resentment known but by gloomy Sullenness and dumb Ferocity. He therefore naturally showed his Hatred of a Man whom he conceived to have defeated him only by Volubility of Tongue, by Silence more contemptuous and affecting than any Words that so rude an Orator could have found, and which gave his Enemy no Opportunity of exerting the only Power in which he was superior. When Aeneas is sent by Virgil into the Regions below, he meets with Dido the Queen of Carthage, whom his Perfidy had hurried to the Grave; he accosts her with Tenderness and Excuses, but the Lady turns away like Ajax in mute Anger. She turns away like Ajax, but she resembles him in none of those Qualities which give either Dignity or Propriety to Silence. She might, without any Departure from the Tenour of her Conduct, have burst out like other injured Ladies into Clamour, Reproach, and Denunciation; but Virgil had his Imagination full of Ajax, and therefore could not prevail on himself to teach Dido any other Mode of Resentment. [Samuel Johnson, The Rambler No. 121]

Indeed, I find it hard to believe that anyone with more than passing familiarity with Homer could enjoy the Aeneid except in those occasional moments when Vergil manages to provide some special illumination that shows how deeply he himself had drawn from the Homeric well.

I regret to say that I take the shameless hipster line on Vergil: while the Georgics leave me cold for the most part, I am a tremendous admirer of the Eclogues. Indeed, I think that the Eclogues might even outdo their Greek original, Theocritus’ Idylls. This is all to say that I liked Vergil “before he sold out” – before he became a paid pen for the regime. Among the Augustan poets, one gets the sense that Tibullus was content to cultivate his narrow garden; that Horace could toe the line but still carved out some space for genuine feeling and rich humor in much of his poetry; that both Propertius and (especially) Ovid had an anarchic streak that kept them from too deeply internalizing the blandness of the early Principate. These last three are notable for their playfulness (especially Ovid), but with Vergil, poetry is always a grim affair. Indeed, Homer shows signs of real humor in the Iliad and the Odyssey, but once they were passed through the Augustan grinder, they yielded nothing at all that could be considered funny in the Aeneid.

In any event, why all of this harping on about the Aeneid’s defects? Because, as a Latin teacher, I have come to think that we are entirely undermining our mission by forcing this slop upon students every year. The Aeneid is barely worth reading except among true dedicatees of Latin epic – the sort who might also enjoy the Pharsalia or the Thebaid. Naturally, I found it encouraging that the AP Latin syllabus would be revised for next year, dropping Caesar in the process – Caesar, the only popular Latin author more boring than Vergil. Indeed, whatever interest students may have had in the Aeneid in all of the years that I have taught the AP syllabus, it has come primarily from the fact that he affords some relief from the drudgery of Caesar, in much the same way that being kicked in the ass might afford some relief from being repeatedly punched in the face.

I began studying Latin for its literature – for its humor, its wit, its humanity. When I began bashing the books pretty seriously and grinding out those declension tables, I would have given up if I thought that the incentive at the end of it was simply to read the Aeneid. Almost none of my students express an interest in exploring Latin literature after being hammered by Vergil and Caesar because it suggests that what they always suspected of Latin is indeed true: that it is stodgy, narrow, and boring. I grant that Latin programs are struggling for a number of complicated reasons, but students talk to each other and relay these messages down the line to younger kids – most of them have already heard how boring the AP Latin syllabus is before they even arrive in Latin I.

Maybe, to save Latin, we ought to abandon our commitment to dreary horseshit and embrace some literature with real life and vitality in it. The move to Pliny away from Caesar is a good start, but how about a wholesale makeover, a shift entirely away from narrow classicism? The Late Republic and Early Empire are all interesting in their way, but what of the fact that this literature constitutes an infinitesimal portion of our extant Latin literature? Whatever happened to Plautus and Terence? Why do we affect such disdain for Medieval Latin, some of which is simultaneously easy for students to read with a sense of fluency and has real human interest?

At any rate, I submit that students will never be excited about our programs as long as they terminate with a capstone course in such a miserable piece of third-tier art and will never be excited about Latin when all they see in it is the tedious droning of Augustan sentiment.

Plutarch’s Advice on Being a Good Father

June 18, 2023 ~ sententiaeantiquae ~ Leave a comment

Plutarch, On the Education of Children 20

“Once I add a few more things, I will complete my proposals. Beyond all other things, it is necessary that fathers, by avoiding transgressions and doing everything that is required, offer themselves as a clear example to their children, so that when looking at their father’s life as if in a mirror they may turn away from shameful deeds and words. Whoever makes the same mistakes as those for which they punish their sons become their own accusers under their sons’ names without realizing it . Men who live life poorly in every way do not possess the right to criticize their slaves, much less their sons. In addition, they could become their sons’ advisors and teachers of crime. For whenever old men behave shamefully, it is by necessity that their young are the most shameless.”

Βραχέα δὲ προσθεὶς ἔτι περιγράψω τὰς ὑποθήκας. πρὸ πάντων γὰρ δεῖ τοὺς πατέρας τῷ μηδὲν ἁμαρτάνειν ἀλλὰ πάνθ’ ἃ δεῖ πράττειν ἐναργὲς αὑτοὺς παράδειγμα τοῖς τέκνοις παρέχειν, ἵνα πρὸς τὸν τούτων βίον ὥσπερ κάτοπτρον ἀποβλέποντες ἀποτρέπωνται τῶν αἰσχρῶν ἔργων καὶ λόγων. ὡς οἵτινες τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσιν υἱοῖς ἐπιτιμῶντες τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἁμαρτήμασι περιπίπτουσιν, ἐπὶ τῷ ἐκείνων ὀνόματι λανθάνουσιν ἑαυτῶν κατήγοροι γιγνόμενοι• τὸ δ’ ὅλον φαύλως ζῶντες οὐδὲ τοῖς δούλοις παρρησίαν ἄγουσιν ἐπιτιμᾶν, μή τί γε τοῖς υἱοῖς. χωρὶς δὲ τούτων γένοιντ’ ἂν αὐτοῖς τῶν ἀδικημάτων σύμβουλοι καὶ διδάσκαλοι. ὅπου γὰρ γέροντές εἰσιν ἀναίσχυντοι, ἐνταῦθ’ ἀνάγκη καὶ νέους ἀναιδεστάτους εἶναι.

Father

This my fifth father’s day since my father’s passing. His example(s), though fading, remain.

Making Ends Meet as a Visiting Professor in the Humanities

January 10, 2023 ~ kevinsolez ~ Leave a comment

“The man-hunter and the job-hunter have succeeded the hunter and warfare and welfare merge in a way of life as completely as any Paleolithic or Stone Age society.”

–Marshall McLuhan, in his 1971 Convocation address at the University of Alberta.

26 December 2022

I had not previously been a radical job-seeker until April of 2020. Prior to this time, I had been active in seeking tenure-track jobs in Classics and Ancient History, but only rarely looked beyond these opportunities. (You can read about the present state of the job market in Humanities disciplines here and here.) It was in April 2020 that the university I was working for in Edmonton announced that they would not proceed with their scheduled courses for spring and summer, adapted to the pandemic-induced online mode of delivery.

This meant that my job for the summer, to teach Classical Mythology, had been canceled and I was out $7800 for July and August, on which my family of four was going to survive until my regular teaching resumed again in September 2020. We had our second child in September 2019 and my wife, a high school teacher, was just gearing up to return to work after her maternity leave. (Learn more about how maternity leave is punished in education and academia here.)

So, April arrived, and I had nothing lined up to carry us through beyond the first week of July. Luckily, the course I usually teach for a college in Cold Lake, AB, is set up as an online course, so that proceeded as usual, and I had a steady income from when teaching ended at my main employer in Edmonton until July.

At this time, I was working a three-year Sessional-Extended Contract, which includes guaranteed 3-3 teaching from September to April, compensated at 7800 CAD per course. Usually, I taught nine or ten courses per year between Edmonton and Cold Lake, bringing my income to what I would consider sustainable levels, between seventy and eighty thousand Canadian dollars.

The pandemic-related work stoppage was a big shock for me, as it came on the heels of two tenure-track searches for Classics faculty at my main employer, where they had passed me over. Now, I was laid off in the most sensitive time, when the Canadian Prime Minister was frequently on the news asking institutions to retain their employees as much as they could, and I realized I could not keep doing the same things and expecting different results.

I changed my academic job-search strategy to apply also for the short term, visiting positions. We had had a family agreement that we would only move if I got a permanent job, because my wife was happy with her work as a teacher. Now, because of the pandemic and hiring priorities, I could no longer rely on my main employer in Edmonton as a stable source of income. I needed to work at a different university, so I cast my net wide.

At the same time, I was idle and frustrated during the first pandemic restrictions, having only my online employment in Cold Lake as a connection to the outside world. I went looking for local jobs, and I started serving as a handyman for the condo corporation where we owned our home, and started delivering food for an organic food start-up in Edmonton.

This gave me renewed confidence. It felt OK that I had lost my ordinary work and picked up these odds and ends. But something else was about to change as my main employer, who had just laid me off, sent me a new contract for September, asking me to sign by a certain date, and Memorial University asked to discuss my application for the 8-month Visiting Assistant Professorship.

Long story short, I took the Memorial offer. I told my employer in Edmonton that I couldn’t teach for them in 2020-21, we sold our house, and moved from Edmonton, AB, to St. John’s, NL. The shock of moving from the lowest-taxed jurisdiction in Canada to the highest, at the same time as living apart from everyone in our new home because of the pandemic, took its toll on my family. My wife doubted whether this had been a reasonable choice for us.

This shock wore off in about nine months and we started to enjoy our time here very much; life and work returned to normal. Everything was about 30% more expensive than we were used to, but we adjusted. What we, and everyone else on earth, did not expect was the massive inflation of late 2021 and 2022. The shock of that put me back in my April 2020 mindset.

We did the math. Over the course of 2021, I lost $7000 dollars in purchasing power. That’s a big hit to a $56,000 annual income. (Yes, I am one of those who moved across the country for lower pay and more prestige.) In 2022, my salary lost another $7000 in value. Now, I am working my visiting professorship for $42,000 in 2020 dollars. This is very bad.

I had free time coming after I submitted grades in December, so I took a risk and worked as a mall Santa for two weeks. That was the very definition of an “odd job,” but it bought our family what we would consider an ordinary Christmas, which we otherwise would not have been able to afford.

The Santa job ended, and here I sit, working as a security guard in a hotel. I hope that working this job part-time alongside my full-time academic work will help us survive the global affordability crisis, and I hope the best for everyone struggling with these issues.

Kevin Solez, PhD

Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador St. John’s, NL, Canada (kevin_solez@hotmail.com)

A Response to AP Latin: A Student Perspective

September 6, 2022September 6, 2022 ~ Luke G ~ Leave a comment

I’m obviously not the first one to say this, but the AP Latin curriculum isn’t good.

In several different ways, it seems like the content of the course is slowly deteriorating over time. I’m sure some here can recall the days of four different tests, each covering a different Roman author. That’s right, four. Nowadays, it seems as if the College Board has really limited the curriculum as a result of the lessening number of students taking the exam (4,899 in 2021).

The effect of this lack of students? A curriculum that awkwardly shoves together two authors in a way that isn’t conducive to educating modern high school students. It hops back and forth between Caesar and Vergil for each unit—in such a way that your average juniors and seniors can struggle to gain a truly strong footing in the material. It’s a little strange.

There’s also an absurd amount of vocabulary. Based on the research of other teachers, there are nearly 11,700 words that a student must understand over the course of the syllabus. This amount of new vocabulary is much more than what the beginner Latin reader is used to dealing with in their first few years of the subject. It’s not to say that it’s impossible, but it is difficult if you’re in your third or fourth year of the subject.

The other aspect of this current AP curriculum that doesn’t exactly appeal to your average teenage high school student is in the subject matter inherent to these pieces. Commentarii de Bello Gallico is dry and does a tremendous job detailing the frequently boring military exploits of the Roman army in Gaul. For every chapter explaining the specifics of a battle, there are five more examining how Caesar sent a dull letter to a commander that one time.

On the other hand, Vergil’s Aeneid is much more interesting. There are lots of references throughout the text and its narrative serves as a nice introduction to the wider world of literature for newer Latin students. In fact, it inspired me to read other works of Roman poetry that I enjoy.

(Personally, my passion for authors like Catullus and Ovid was directly inspired by my work with Vergil this last year. It was the first time I had been exposed to this kind of poetic literature in my education, and now it’s my main interest in the subject. My favorite genre of these works are the semi-autobiographical elegies.)

However, there is one massive flaw with both the Aeneid and Commentarii Bello Gallico that each AP Latin student has to contend with. There is a total lack of variety in the material provided.

I don’t think I’m asking for too much here. This last year, I completed the course with five of my peers, and we were all shocked by something as simple as the lack of a relatable female voice. I can’t remember a single named female character in De Bello Gallico and the non-male characters of the Aeneid don’t exactly get much, either.

You have Juno and Dido, who are both characterized as “crazy” in their opposition to Aeneas. From the opening lines of the epic, it is established that Juno is defined in the story by her conflict against Aeneas’ journey to founding Rome. Similarly, Dido is at first portrayed as the strong female ruler of Carthage, but after Aeneas departs at the request of Mercury, she becomes a crazed lunatic who commits suicide in a famously elaborate fashion.

The other prominent female characters don’t exactly have much to offer. Venus exists entirely as a mother figure in respect to Aeneas, and Lavinia acts as nothing more than a prize to be won at the end of the narrative.

The response to this shouldn’t be “well that’s how it is,” because there are countless examples of prominent, more defined characters throughout Latin literature.

And so, my peers and I, inspired by this notion and a friend’s passion for typesetting, decided to pursue our own educational resources for newer Latin students that featured these uncommon figures. The process for us consists of taking texts from books like Sarah Pomeroy’s Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves and resources like Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library and Oxford Scholarly Editions and adapting them to lower reading levels. It’s tedious and not exactly entertaining, but it’s been insightful to go through all these different resources and pick certain texts to adapt. Hopefully, this can become a resource useful for high school and lower-level teachers. Based off of the formatting of other educational texts, here’s a section I adapted:

Luke is a rising high school senior from outside Philadelphia, PA. He was new to the subject entering his freshman year, but has since fallen in love with Classical languages and culture to the point where he hopes to study it in college. His personal interest is specific to Roman poetry, but he has experience with traditional Greek authors as well. Outside of his academics, Luke enjoys theatrical performance and filmmaking.

Plutarch’s Advice on Being a Good Father

June 19, 2022June 17, 2022 ~ sententiaeantiquae ~ Leave a comment

Plutarch, On the Education of Children 20

Father

This my fifth father’s day since my father’s passing. His example(s), though fading, remain.

What Books have You Read? Give Them Up.

June 2, 2022June 2, 2022 ~ sententiaeantiquae ~ Leave a comment

Lucian, On the Ignorant Book-Collector 27

“I’d be happy if I could ask you what kinds of books you like to read the most? Is it the works of Plato or Antisthenes, Archilochus or Hipponax? Or do you look down on these books because you prefer the orators?

Tell me, have you read Aeschines’ speech Against Timarchus? Or, do you know all those things and comprehend each of them but instead dip into Aristophanes and Eupolis? Have you even read The Baptai, the whole play? Did nothing in it change you and were you not embarrassed once you recognized what it was about? Someone might, in fact, be especially amazed at what kind of a spirit you have when you touch your books or what your hands are like when you unroll them.

When do you read? During the daytime? No one has seen you doing that! Is it at night then? Do you do it after you have given out orders to these guys or before? But in the name of Kotuos, don’t dare to do this kind of thing any more. Give up the books and pay attention to only your own affairs”

Ἡδέως δ᾿ ἂν καὶ ἐροίμην σε, τὰ τοσαῦτα βιβλία ἔχων τί μάλιστα ἀναγιγνώσκεις αὐτῶν; τὰ Πλάτωνος; τὰ Ἀντισθένους; τὰ Ἀρχιλόχου; τὰ Ἱππώνακτος; ἢ τούτων μὲν ὑπερφρονεῖς, ῥήτορες δὲ μάλιστά σοι διὰ χειρός; εἰπέ μοι, καὶ Αἰσχίνου τὸν κατὰ Τιμάρχου λόγον ἀναγιγνώσκεις; ἢ ἐκεῖνά γε πάντα οἶσθα καὶ γιγνώσκεις αὐτῶν ἕκαστον, τὸν δὲ Ἀριστοφάνην καὶ τὸν Εὔπολιν ὑποδέδυκας; ἀνέγνως καὶ τοὺς Βάπτας, τὸ δρᾶμα ὅλον; εἶτ᾿ οὐδέν σου τἀκεῖ καθίκετο, οὐδ᾿ ἠρυθρίασας γνωρίσας αὐτά; τοῦτο γοῦν καὶ μάλιστα θαυμάσειεν ἄν τις, τίνα ποτὲ ψυχὴν ἔχων ἅπτῃ τῶν βιβλιων, ὁποίαις αὐτὰ χερσὶν ἀνελίττεις. πότε δὲ ἀναγιγνώσκεις; μεθ᾿ ἡμέραν; ἀλλ᾿ οὐδεὶς ἑώρακε τοῦτο ποιοῦντα. ἀλλὰ νύκτωρ; πότερον ἐπιτεταγμένος ἤδη ἐκείνοις ἢ πρὸ τῶν λόγων; ἀλλὰ πρὸς Κότυος μηκέτι μὴ τολμήσῃς τοιοῦτο μηδέν, ἄφες δὲ τὰ βιβλία καὶ μόνα ἐργάζου τὰ σαυτοῦ.

Changing Your Mind is the Point of Research

May 16, 2022May 16, 2022 ~ sententiaeantiquae ~ Leave a comment

Quintilian, Inst. Orat. 3.6.

Mind Change real

On Leaving

January 18, 2022January 18, 2022 ~ amycoker ~ 1 Comment

I can remember almost exactly when I decided to stop pursuing a University job. It was sometime around 8am on a nondescript Thursday in February 2018 – and I was in the back of an ambulance. I didn’t know at the time, but the impact of a van driving into me while I was cycling to the station an hour earlier had broken my pelvis in several places, and was about to mean 10 days in hospital and another 3 months on crutches. It also made me realise that even thinking about turning down the full-time, well-paid, likely-to-go-permanent, school teaching job put on a plate in front of me just a few days earlier was sheer madness.

All this sounds very melodramatic – but it is absolutely true. For all the brilliant things about the still very new job which I was commuting to when the accident happened, I really did think it might have been in my best interests not to stick with it, but to take an enormous gamble on a lectureship coming up for the following September. How had it taken something as serious as hospitalisation to make me realise I’d had a genuinely very good deal already land in my lap, and that it was OK to stop pursuing the Elusive Permanent Academic Job which everyone kept telling me was within my grasp eight years after being awarded my PhD?

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.8

Τὰ μέλλοντα μὴ ταρασσέτω· ἥξεις γὰρ ἐπ᾿ αὐτά, ἐὰν δεήσῃ, φέρων τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον, ᾧ νῦν πρὸς τὰ παρόντα χρᾷ.

Don’t let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Just one more application, one more term, one more year… I spent the next couple of days (it might have been more, or less – blame the morphine or oxycodone) idly following the UCU strike on Twitter and pondering my life choices. Maybe all this was a sign. I don’t want these reflections to be another sad tale of the woes of academia. There are enough of those, and many far sadder and more upsetting than mine. I’m not after pity in writing this. Instead this is a cathartic warts-and-all tale about my experiences of finding a life outside the Ivory Tower, a life that can be just as fulfilling intellectually – if you want it to be.

On paper I’d had a pretty good run: in 2010 from the September straight after the PhD three years at one place (actually a succession of three one-year jobs, because the Faceless Uni will commit as little long-term cash as possible), then a prestigious post-doc for three years, then a single semester job that then gave me another semester part time. This last job was actually in the city where I had been building a life with my partner for the previous 10 years or so: prior to this a lengthy weekly commute had been the norm.

Apart from getting a book out – that’s a whole other tale of woe, tardy reviewers, crying, and email-management ineptitude at an Unnamed Publisher – I felt like I’d done everything right. I was now getting shortlisted for the permanent posts I was applying for, but never quite making first choice. And by September 2017 I had had enough. I wasn’t about to apply for a(nother) temporary job 400 miles from home. I felt by this point I was worth more than this. As a former Head of School once said to me, ‘it’s a war of attrition’, before regaling me with tales of his back-to-back postdocs. And in this war my nameless enemies were starting to win.

So in November 2017 I went for, and got, a temporary, part-time school teaching job a short commute from home. And after a very short time, this place really felt like home. Maybe part of it is down to size: there are some 100-ish teaching staff, and I know most of them by name. I know who Senior Leadership are, the people actually making the decisions which affect me and my life. They speak to the staff – their colleagues – at least once a week. I have even spoken to them socially. At all of my other institutions I wouldn’t have been able to pick those running the University out of a line up. There is also as much free tea and coffee as you can drink, in actual pottery mugs rather than immediate landfill, and in the halcyon pre-COVID days, free cake and cheese straws: this was all far better than a sad brew in a paper cup from a soulless, expensively-branded University outlet – and you didn’t have to pay £1.50 a pop for it out of your own pocket. This job made me realise how utterly expendable I had been to my employers for most of the last decade. This school made enormous efforts to get me back after the accident when I was ready, rather than simply replacing me to suit their own needs because it would have been easier. That is not to say that my immediate colleagues in Uni Land had never fought tooth and nail to keep me at the end of my six separate contracts – I’m certain some of them really did – but in the end there is only so much academic departments can do in the face of The System, and the Giant Balance Sheet which must exist in all Higher Education Establishments. I’d simply been a faceless figure in the expenditure column. Here, I was Dr Coker, valued and respected Teacher of Classics, the one who keeps introducing herself by accident to students with her first name because old habits die hard.

And it’s not that I hadn’t felt good at my job before, but I was good at this job, and I enjoyed it. I even started to dare to have fun at work, discovering that there is almost nothing 15 year olds won’t do for a Party Ring (= type of cheap UK biscuit), and that there can be immense joy in teaching younger students. Nothing gives you more instant feedback than a room of teenagers, and nothing also says appreciation like a hand-made card with a drawing of a pelvis on it with a pink heart, seven weeks after you start your new job. Weird, absolutely, but also peculiarly endearing. It’s not that students of 18+ are incapable of such displays of affection – nor indeed those University staff who teach them – but there is a genuine sense of community at my workplace which I had not realised I had been missing. I’m not in need of constant praise, but more positivity in the previous decade would have been nice. I think of myself as mostly pretty emotionally robust, but my experience of academia is that it is fundamentally set up to make you feel like a failure, regardless of your status. Got a PhD? Well done, but you need to publish it. Got a your first temp job? Great, but, you know, it finishes in 10 months so get writing that postdoc application, sort your publications out, and then get applying again. Finished that article and sent it off? Good news! If you are really lucky, you’ll get some feedback within a year, and Reviewer B won’t question the entirety of your knowledge base with his (and I think the pronoun is more likely correct there than not) anonymous acerbic vitriol.

Four years on and for all the positive things about the now not-new job, the truth is I’ve only recently stopped feeling like a failure because I’m not in The Club any more. This change in status has been the hardest part of the transition, such is the way in which academia wraps up your own personal identity with that of your intellectual achievements. I’m still invited to give papers or public talks from time to time, and do various kinds of reviewing for well-known journals which definitely helps me prove to myself I have what it would have taken. I submit the odd conference abstract, and am beavering away when time allows on various publications including The Thesis Book (a.k.a. The Millstone Round My Neck). I’m doing this now because I want to, because there is a reason I went back to Uni to do an MA, and then a PhD, which was because the Real Jobs I had in between my studies were boring and unfulfilling.

But what am I now, what label do I put on myself? I have an Honorary Research Fellowship at my nearest University, which keeps me an academic email, unfettered library access and perhaps some small amount of kudos. ‘Independent Scholar’ sounds like I am deliberately claiming some kind of maverick autonomy which I’m not sure I am. ‘Gentleman Scholar’ of course is even worse, not least because I don’t define myself as a man, gentle or otherwise. I take heart from the acknowledgements which fill the early pages of LSJ (the big lexicon of ancient Greek) to all the ‘non-professional Classicists’ in non-University settings whose own expertise was invaluable to this monolith of scholarship. I’ll just have to be me, and pick my own way through this identity crisis. We’re beyond labels now, right…?

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.16

Μέμνησο, ὅτι καὶ τὸ μετατίθεσθαι καὶ ἕπεσθαι τῷ διορθοῦντι ὁμοίως ἐλεύθερόν ἐστιν. σὴ γὰρ ἐνέργεια κατὰ τὴν σὴν ὁρμὴν καὶ κρίσιν καὶ δὴ καὶ κατὰ νοῦν τὸν σὸν περαινομένη.

Remember that to change your mind and to follow a new direction is not to sacrifice your independence. It’s your own action which brings this about, through your own impulse and judgement, and your own mind.

Most importantly, and this shouldn’t be unsurprising but somehow I feel I need to say it, loudly enough that those those who are thinking about jumping ship and doing something beyond academia can hear: I Am Ok. I haven’t lost all my intelligence and experience. I still have Dr in front of my name, which perhaps ironically is used far more now I’ve left HE than when I was in it. My publications still count – though just for me and some higher ideal of the search for knowledge, not for any bureaucratic exercise (UK-based folks will know all about REF) or because I need them for a promotion.

My friends and family still love me, and am proud of me, even my friends who still work in the sector (of course!). Some of them are actually more proud of me now for having had the confidence of my convictions to decide to follow a different route than one which is, let’s face it, not always what it is cracked up to be. What’s really empowering is that once you’ve escaped the Ivory Tower, you may well be invited back in from time time, but you don’t have to say yes unless you want to. Leaving academia teaches you that it’s ok to say no – and incidentally makes you realise how much of the academic discipline operates through good will and favours beyond formal contracts of employment.

Four years on, do I regret any of my time in academia? Absolutely not. Do I think it’s a ‘waste’ not having ended up in Uni-world? No, no education or experience is a waste. And, I mean, it’s not like I didn’t try my best. If it is a waste, then that’s not on me. At the very least, those jobs all paid the rent ,then the mortgage, and led me to see places I would never otherwise have been. I’ve also picked up some wonderful people along the way, whom with any luck I will keep by my side for the rest of my life.

But let’s not pretend academia is peopled entirely with the great and good, since we all know absolutely that it is not. There are plenty of low-level miscreants alongside the infamous headline cases. I’ve met some people who should never be in charge of anything, yet somehow are running the show, and regardless of this a few of these people will probably end up with buildings named after them. I’ve sat in front of interviewers who were on their phones under the table (I’m pretty sure this guy does now have a building named after him, or at least moved on with a massive promotion), and others who genuinely nodded off during interviews.

I’m sorry, I’m really not that boring: if you have so much work to do that you can’t stay awake in my interview – and by the way, I’m sure that work didn’t involve reading the course materials you requested I painstakingly prepare for this interview which you clearly haven’t even bothered to open – then the system really is broken. And also, by the way, as someone in charge of that system or at the very least complicit in it, maybe you should try leading from the top and enacting change? Earn your massive salary by thinking about those who might need you to represent them for once. Has academia has left me bitter? Yes, and disappointed that my experience of working in it was not what I had hoped it would be.

I still occasionally look at adverts for positions when they come round, but with an odd mixture of masochistic voyeurism and relief. The job market has only got worse in the last four years, compounded now of course by the uncertainties of Brexit and COVID-19, which in all honesty makes me realise that my decision in the back of that ambulance four years ago was undeniably the right one. Never say never, but at the moment I’m glad to be out of it all.

As I sit here at my desk at home in my very comfortable study pondering the last decade or so, the story of the last decade doesn’t look like failure, even though from time to time the pangs of self-doubt whisper in my ear that it is. Carving your own path is hard, but untrodden ways can come with their own sometimes-unexpected rewards, and be absolutely worth it.

Amy Coker has a PhD in Classics from the University of Manchester, UK. She taught and held research positions in University-land for the best part of a decade after her PhD, before jumping ship to school teaching (11-18 year olds) in 2018. She still manages to find time to think and write about Ancient Greek offensive words, pragmatics, and historical linguistics, and to do what she can to make Classics a better place. She can be found on Twitter at @AECoker.

Leave Your Homework to Sunday Night? Philo has Some Words for You

September 19, 2021September 10, 2021 ~ sententiaeantiquae ~ Leave a comment

Philo, The Preliminary studies 29.166–7

There are those who, when they encounter the frights and horrors of the wilderness with complete endurance and strength complete the contest of life, after preserving it unsullied and unconquered, holding fast against the compulsions of nature like poverty, so that they subdue hunger, thirst, cold, and heat and everything which enslaves other people through the great abundance of their strength.

The cause of this is not simple toil but toil with a certain sweetening. For he says “the water is sweetened” and the work that is sweet and attractive is also called “love of labor” (philoponia). For in work the desire and longing and and love of finer things is sweet. Let no one turn away from this kind of suffering, nor let anyone believe that when the table of the feast and happiness is called “bread of suffering” it is for its harm rather than profit. For the soul which is chastened is fed by the instructions of education.”

οἱ δὲ τὰ φοβερὰ καὶ δεινὰ τῆς ἐρήμης πάνυ τλητικῶς καὶ ἐρρωμένως ἀναδεχόμενοι τὸν ἀγῶνα τοῦ βίου διήθλησαν ἀδιάφθορον καὶ ἀήττητον φυλάξαντες καὶ τῶν τῆς φύσεως ἀναγκαίων κατεξαναστάντες, ὡς πεῖναν, δίψος, [ῥῖγος,] κρύος, θάλπος, ὅσα τοὺς ἄλλους εἴωθε δουλοῦσθαι, κατὰ πολλὴν ἰσχύος περιουσίαν ὑπάγεσθαι. αἴτιον δὲ ἐγένετο οὐ ψιλὸς ὁ πόνος, ἀλλὰ σὺν τῷ γλυκανθῆναι· λέγει γάρ· “ἐγλυκάνθη τὸ ὕδωρ,” γλυκὺς δὲ καὶ ἡδὺς πόνος ἑτέρῳ ὀνόματι φιλοπονία καλεῖται. τὸ γὰρ ἐν πόνῳ γλυκὺ ἔρως ἐστὶ καὶ πόθος καὶ ζῆλος καὶ φιλία τοῦ καλοῦ. μηδεὶς οὖν τὴν τοιαύτην κάκωσιν ἀποστρεφέσθω, μηδ᾿ “ ἄρτον κακώσεως” νομισάτω ποτὲ λέγεσθαι τὴν ἑορτῆς καὶ εὐφροσύνης τράπεζαν ἐπὶ βλάβῃ μᾶλλον ἢ ὠφελείᾳ· τρέφεται γὰρ τοῖς παιδείας δόγμασιν ἡ νουθετουμένη ψυχή.