Thoughts on Antiquity

I promised Brandon I’d update this when I got into grad school, so here it goes. This would have been sooner, but with graduating (Magna cum Laude with Honors and Thesis) and moving here to Northern California, I’ve been simply swamped. I got into SFSU Classics program, and so far, it’s not bad at all. I’m taking Roman Philosophy (Latin class), Greek Historiography (Greek class, focusing on the Persian War of Herodotus), and Greece and the Near East (archaeology seminar, focusing so far on identity and interaction of the Hellenes and the cultures of the Near East, a favorite topic of mine personally). Hopefully I’ll be able to incorporate my ASOR paper/senior thesis on cannibalism in Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman traditions with my classes.

The classes are intense but not impossible, although I’ve found living out here on a reasonable budget to be so. Living in the outskirts, it costs me $15 a day to travel to the city, and an extra $5 if I want to stop by Berkeley on the way (although only $11 if I wanted to go to Berkeley). Berkeley too is a rip-off, and there seems to be no discount at all for students. It cost me $20 to get a library card at Berkeley, and that came with no special privileges. Nor is there any help for students with the public transportation, which is disappointing as well. For all its supposed liberality, San Francisco is still very conservative with respect to finances (just take a look at the programs that voters put into place and then refuse to fund via taxes).

Enough whining, I also want to congratulate Chris Zeichmann for getting into Toronto’s Ph.D. program in Religious Studies. Way to go Zeichmann!