Grammarstudium

Being the compulsive planner that I am, I've spent a good amount of time exploring the Uni Tuebingen website and figuring out which classes to take. It's interesting, because our peer advisor tells us that the university is in a 'transition' period, and has been for a while, with regard to course registration. Some you can register for online, some you have to show up in person, and it sounds like some require you to fill out forms. Regardless, I've just decided that the best thing to do is to email professors (it's helpful for them--and us--to know they have an exchange student with a bit of a language barrier), inquire about their courses, and take things from there.

Seeing as the whole purpose of this year for me is to learn Latin and Greek, those classes are naturally taking priority. With one semester of Greek at Wesleyan and the rest of the book nearly done now on my own, I need to figure out which Greek language course here is best suited to my level. At Wesleyan, the next step would be a reading class that focuses on translating, building vocabulary, etc, but the website here isn't quite as helpful and that whole 'prerequisite' thing doesn't exist in the same way. What I found were either reading or lecture courses, as well as this Stil I ("Style 1") class that sounded pretty interesting. I swallowed my nerves, pulled up my online dictionary, and emailed the professor for the latter, relying on the fact that my German is good enough that I can at least be excessively polite and hoping that I might actually hear back from him. Less than 24 hours later, I had an email that was among the nicest and most helpful I've ever received. He started by thanking me (extremely kindly) for my question, and explained the difference between his class and the others; it sounds like it's mostly translating from German to Greek, but that should give me a great grasp of the specifics of the language, as well as help me practice my grammar stuff, and then next semester I could take a reading/lecture class to round out that skill. He also invited me to sit in on his first class to see if I think it's for me with absolutely no obligation to come back, and was just generally very kind and welcoming. He also informed me that the title "Professor" was too formal, and I should just use "Herr"...go figure. I think this will be the class I end up taking for Greek, as he was so incredibly nice and that suggests he'll be understanding of my language difficulties.

In terms of Latin, I was also able to get in touch with the language advisor for the philology departments, and she pointed me in the direction of the intro Latin course for students without prior experience--it turns out I'd seen it on the website, but some of the courses don't even have descriptions, and it's just called "Practice for the Latinum: Level 1", which is training for the big test students have to pass as a requirement for certain majors or careers. My big debate is, do I take the class on Mondays and Wednesdays from 8-10, or the class on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the late afternoon. On the one hand, the earlier class is offered by the Classics department and would get me out of bed and help make the most of my day, time-wise. On the other hand, the second class is offered by the History department which, according to my peer advisor, prefers History majors, but it does meet later in the afternoon and guarantees more sleep. I can't decide if I'd be happier being forced to really start my day much earlier, but luckily I have time to decide. I did just order the Latin book that Wesleyan uses to help myself on the whole "learning in German" front, and it's hilariously small compared to the behemoth I had/have for Greek. I'm thinking this isn't going to be so hard...

The title of the post starts to make sense when I explain that my DaF course (German as a foreign language class) for the semester will probably be a grammar course on Friday mornings. Anya and I are thinking of taking this together because our German is good enough that we can develop vocabulary and other oral/aural skills by interacting with people and other students on a daily basis, but a formal grammar class would be a BIG help in terms of growing our speaking and writing confidence. Scintillating three hour block? Unlikely. Extremely useful? You bet.

My fourth and final class (I think) is definitely going to be a fun archaeology course. There's a Greek Portraiture course offered on Monday afternoons that I would really like to take, especially after having written my thesis on something somewhat related this year. I wish I could take several of these, and if some of them are lectures, I may just drop in and listen on occasion (entirely acceptable here). I'm a little bit concerned about the amount of work I'm going to have, though, and I'd hate to bog myself down with so much stuff during this 'year off' that I can't enjoy being centrally located in Europe!

Hi, my name is Catie, and I'm now officially a grammar major.