Sanskrit 2: Electric Boogaloo!

OP

Original post by gjd800

It's sort of applicable to philosophy, at least in theory. But I think most of it can be put across in simple enough terms. I have taught 12 year olds similarly intricate stuff that my 3rd year undergrads really struggled get their heads around, so it is somtimes just about being open to new ideas and getting out of your usual way of thinking.

I doubt I will be posting as heavily on here now (I dislike the new stewardship and am not willing to reform my character), but do feel free to tag me in if there's stuff I might be able to help with :smile:

Sorry to hear that you're shifting away from TSR :frown:

I always enjoyed your responses to things (not even just in this thread :redface:

)! If it's any consolation I don't think your character is in need of reform (whether you wanted to or not!), although of course my views are my own and do not represent those of TSR, etc... :s-smilie:

I can take you off the tag list if you would like, and just tag you in if there are any particularly confusing or intricate problems that come up in my philosophy module this coming term if you would be interested :smile:

Alternately I can keep tagging you in all my ramblings here, much of which might not be that interesting though :colondollar:

I'm sure there will be a lot more Sanskrit grammar complaints this year with the second year Sanskrit grammar :laugh:

(also trying to work through Sanskrit poetry, which sounds like it might be even harder because the word order will be a lot less fixed as they work to the metrical forms and so I'll really need to be on the ball with my grammar to make sense of it!).

Reply 22

gjd800

Original post by artful_lounger

Sorry to hear that you're shifting away from TSR :frown:

I always enjoyed your responses to things (not even just in this thread :redface:

)! If it's any consolation I don't think your character is in need of reform (whether you wanted to or not!), although of course my views are my own and do not represent those of TSR, etc... :s-smilie:

I can take you off the tag list if you would like, and just tag you in if there are any particularly confusing or intricate problems that come up in my philosophy module this coming term if you would be interested :smile:

Alternately I can keep tagging you in all my ramblings here, much of which might not be that interesting though :colondollar:

I'm sure there will be a lot more Sanskrit grammar complaints this year with the second year Sanskrit grammar :laugh:

(also trying to work through Sanskrit poetry, which sounds like it might be even harder because the word order will be a lot less fixed as they work to the metrical forms and so I'll really need to be on the ball with my grammar to make sense of it!).

Oh no, keep me on the list! This is one of the two blogs on here I bother to read!

I'll still browse a bit, because student complaints and concerns here are very useful for me to read and to get an understanding of.

It is just posting which brings problems. I think many do not understand my humour and so are rubbed up the wrong way - oh well :lol:

Reply 23

Original post by gjd800

Oh no, keep me on the list! This is one of the two blogs on here I bother to read!

I'll still browse a bit, because student complaints and concerns here are very useful for me to read and to get an understanding of.

It is just posting which brings problems. I think many do not understand my humour and so are rubbed up the wrong way - oh well :lol:

You'll be missed! :frown:

Reply 24

OP

Original post by gjd800

Oh no, keep me on the list! This is one of the two blogs on here I bother to read!

I'll still browse a bit, because student complaints and concerns here are very useful for me to read and to get an understanding of.

It is just posting which brings problems. I think many do not understand my humour and so are rubbed up the wrong way - oh well :lol:

Hehe ok will do :smile:

That's a bit of a shame but I'm glad you're not totally leaving!

To be fair I think my posts rub some people up the wrong way and I ended up being an FH :redface:

Plus I don't think I've ever seen you post anything that wasn't constructive and relevant before :colondollar:

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 25

OP

(Post) First Day update!

So, I thought lectures started last week but it turned out they didn't start till this week :colondollar:

After yesterday I feel like I got hit by a truck though! Work was super busy and I only had two, 2 hour blocks to do anything in, and the rest of the day I was in lectures. Sanskrit Language 2 just reminded me of how out of practice I am - I could barely copy the devanagari and my handwriting was atrocious, and reading it was a real struggle. In the Kāvya lecture (which I'm auditing) I realised just how little I do know, as after some discussion we looked at two lines plus commentary, which were all in Sanskrit (the commentary filling the whole page other than the two lines), and I couldn't recognise almost any of it :s-smilie:

it's definitely going to be a lot of work to keep up and try and make the most of that audited module...

Finally, I found out the philosophy lecture which was originally slated for Tuesday (today) got moved to Monday evening, but because my module registration is still ongoing (IT issues for the department, usual start of year stuff) I wasn't on the email list and didn't find out until afterwards :frown:

so I've already missed a lecture...This also means I'm back to having 6 hours of lectures on Mondays :s-smilie:

Anyway I need to start work for today in a couple minutes and try and solve all the stuff that came up yesterday and over the weekend :redface:

Then at some point hopefully have a quick review of participles before tomorrow's Sanskrit lecture (and maybe try translating something simple to just get used to reading devangari again...).

Spoiler

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 26

OP

Work today is very

Loads of hugs, that all does sound like a lot to take in for a first day. Be kind to yourself and remember that everyone feels a bit rusty after the summer. Hope they sort out your registration soon :hugs:

Reply 28

OP

Original post by The_Lonely_Goatherd

Loads of hugs, that all does sound like a lot to take in for a first day. Be kind to yourself and remember that everyone feels a bit rusty after the summer. Hope they sort out your registration soon :hugs:

Thank you (and sorry for the delayed response!) :hugs:

To be fair our lecturer did say "you're all probably rusty so don't panic!" I think it was just the combination of the shock of doing academic work again along with being super busy at work was a lot!

Definitely going to have my work cut out for me keeping up with the kāvya class though :redface:

Fortunately tomorrow and Friday I'm only working half days so I have those afternoons plus the weekend to combine some chill time with some academic work :smile:

Reply 29

gjd800

Six hours, on a Monday?! Outrageous!

Reply 30

OP

Original post by gjd800

Six hours, on a Monday?! Outrageous!

I know

it's literally almost all of my contact hours on the same day (6/8)!

Plus I have to work 2 hours in the morning (mostly just to try and catch up on all the emails from the weekend and Friday afternoon I imagine!) :frown:

At least I have an hour break between each 2 hour lecture block, although a caveat of that does mean that I don't actually get finished with lectures until 7PM :s-smilie:

Reply 31

gjd800

Original post by artful_lounger

I know

it's literally almost all of my contact hours on the same day (6/8)!

Plus I have to work 2 hours in the morning (mostly just to try and catch up on all the emails from the weekend and Friday afternoon I imagine!) :frown:

At least I have an hour break between each 2 hour lecture block, although a caveat of that does mean that I don't actually get finished with lectures until 7PM :s-smilie:

Oh that sounds awful tbh, you have my sympathies!

Reply 32

OP

Original post by gjd800

Oh that sounds awful tbh, you have my sympathies!

Yeah, I think the only thing that makes it even remotely (pun not intended :tongue:

) palatable is that at least I don't have to be on campus for the lectures...a small quality of life benefit but, I'll take what I can get!

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 33

Original post by artful_lounger

Thank you (and sorry for the delayed response!) :hugs:

To be fair our lecturer did say "you're all probably rusty so don't panic!" I think it was just the combination of the shock of doing academic work again along with being super busy at work was a lot!

Definitely going to have my work cut out for me keeping up with the kāvya class though :redface:

Fortunately tomorrow and Friday I'm only working half days so I have those afternoons plus the weekend to combine some chill time with some academic work :smile:

No need to apologise at all :nah:

Def make sure there is sufficient chill time amidst class prep and work. Leisure time is so important for wellbeing, and is good for the soul :yep:

Reply 34

OP

Update!

So since I've now had the majority of my lectures this week already yesterday, I figured I'd do an update now!

Sanskrit Language 2A

We mostly worked on the sentences that were assigned as homework. The homework was principally to parse the participle forms in all the sentences and then translate as many as we could. We continued working on the translations in pairs in the class, since most of us didn't translate all of them. Once again a reminder of how much I had forgotten! Also a reminder that usually trying to stick closely to the grammar in the first place tends to make the sentences easier to translate; several times I had to try a more idiomatic translation only to realise that I'd mistaken some grammatical feature and that it was much simpler and fairly directly translatable in a sensible way if I had recognised that! Mostly this was trying to find participles were there weren't any - this was probably because the main task for the homework was to parse the participles so I was deliberately trying to find some and ended up picking out some forms that were not participles but looked like them!

Ancient and Medieval Indian Philosophy

I was able to attend the philosophy lectures for the first time this week, after having read a brief introduction to the ṛgveda by Paul Thieme (which was surprisingly fairly readable, which is not always the case with academic writing!). A lot of the lecture focused on kind of, background of the vedas and the RV in particular, some discussions about what can be considered philosophy and the nature of Indian philosophy compared to Greek philosophy (and it's descendants). The focus is mostly book/chapter 10 of the RV which (apparently) contains most of the philosophical pieces. I've got a bunch of things earmarked to read following the lecture, since it felt like we didn't discuss as much about the philosophy itself? However! There may be a change to this module...

Other Academic Matters

As it turns out, Prakrit is running this year. It wasn't originally slated to run, which I was disappointed by as with the Sanskrit texts modules not running as well I didn't have as much language based work as I was hoping for this year. However since Prakrit is running, I'm checking to see what the format is and whether I might be able to take it, swapping the philosophy module for Prakrit. Honestly I'd be fairly happy either way though so it's a win-win situation I think. Prakrit is probably somewhat preferable just because I don't know if or when it might run again in the future (and isn't really available at other universities except Oxford :s-smilie:

). Also the Prakrit classes are on Friday which means I wouldn't have 6 hours of lectures on Monday!

However I don't know if they are taught online or on-campus. If on-campus then this requires a bit of thinking. As it would be on Friday where I have no other lectures I could actually get the train into London to go to the classes,~~and it's in the middle of the day so I wouldn't need to get up at an ungodly hour to make the commute~~ edit: I misread the information leaflet thingy and the lecture is 9-11, not 11-1 like I thought...so I WOULD need to get up to get the train at 10 to 6 :/. But it is still a long commute, for "only" a two hour class (the commute is nearly as long as the class...) plus it'd cost about £40-50 a week which adds up quickly.

Also it is nicer to NOT have to go into lectures and sit in a lecture hall (even without covid and masks and so on!), so...would be a tough choice if it's on-campus. I might be inclined to stick with the philosophy module just for "quality of life" in that case. If Prakrit is online though I'll definitely see if I can swap to it, as interesting as the philosophy module is! I think the philosophy module leader might contribute to some of the classes in term 2 as he specialises in Jain philosophy which is I gather mainly written in one of the Prakrits so I hope he would understand my choice if I did leave his class :redface:

The Sanskrit kāvya class I'm auditing I didn't get a chance to prepare for last week and mostly passed me by as a result...I need to find some time to work on the verses before the class or I'm not going to get much out of it. It will definitely be good practice to do so anyway, even if I can only do a couple (those taking it for credit are doing about 10 verses per week plus the associated commentary for each verse).

Something else I found out over the weekend is sadly the course that was my main preference/focus for applications for next year won't be open to part-time applicants until 2023 entry, so I'll have to apply for deferred entry instead. In a sense it's not too surprising because I understand the process for getting this approved with all the internal stakeholders as well as UCAS and SFE takes some time, although it's still a little disappointing. I will definitely be applying for deferred entry, but this does mean I'll have a year "out" before that starts. If I were a school leaver this might be referred to as a "gap year" but since I'm most definitely not a school leaver, it's really just a year :tongue:

Non-Academic Things

This does maybe shift my priorities for my job though - previously I would've been OK whether they renewed my contract at the end of the month or not. Now, knowing that I will most likely have that year between courses (I'll apply for deferred entry to all my options I think just to make things simpler to plan for), I kind of really want to keep it throughout the entire academic year if possible so I could potentially go full time for that year. So, something to think about...that said in terms of the immediate situation, work is a little less hectic this week thankfully, although still a fair bit of stuff to do! However the current things I'm working on I've got till next week to nail down, so I'm feeling a bit less pressured :colondollar:

Also, I managed to complete the arch-tempered Velkhana hunt in monster hunter world finally! Was pretty tough...we were down to our last cart (life) D: I also got TWO Velkhana tickets instead of just one from the rewards which was a nice bonus (I think the second one is like a 7% chance; the first one is guaranteed). Also I picked up heavy bowgun to try the sticky ammo spam tactic (basically cheesing the game) which was...wow, glad I didn't do it before! It really does just make the game SO MUCH EASIER. I've been using it a fair bit lately instead of my usual gunlance because I'm kind of lazy and don't have that much time to play now so it makes it so I'm usually successful on hunts and it's a lot quicker :biggrin:

Spoiler

(edited 2 years ago)

Reply 35

Glad work is a bit less hectic. Sounds complex trying to decide about Prakrit: I got very excited when I read classes were in the middle of the day :gah:

only to later realise you'd crossed it out for a reason :ninja:

That's a bit annoying (to say the least!) about having to do deferred entry :frown:

Though I guess an extra year is a chance to earn more money, like you say. So then you'll have extra pocket money for student spending sprees :teeth:

Reply 36

OP

Original post by The_Lonely_Goatherd

Glad work is a bit less hectic. Sounds complex trying to decide about Prakrit: I got very excited when I read classes were in the middle of the day :gah:

only to later realise you'd crossed it out for a reason :ninja:

That's a bit annoying (to say the least!) about having to do deferred entry :frown:

Though I guess an extra year is a chance to earn more money, like you say. So then you'll have extra pocket money for student spending sprees :teeth:

Hehe yeah I just realised that about half an hour ago and edited it :biggrin:

It definitely does make it a trickier choice if it ends up being in-person on campus :/ I had pretty much resolved to take it regardless of whether it was on campus or not until I realised that and now I'm once again undecided...hopefully I will get confirmation about the mode of teaching soon and can at least make an informed decision!

Also yes it would be nice to have some money in the bank when starting the course :wink:

although of course I suppose it's possible if I don't get my contract extended till then (which honestly is very likely, I wasn't even expecting it to get extended this far) then I'll be job hunting again and may end up spending the year living at home on JSA which would kinda suck :s-smilie:

Hopefully not though - I think I've gotten a lot of good experience in this job at least so even if it isn't extended I think it is a nice boost to my CV :smile:

Reply 37

Yes it does sound like you've had quite a bit of responsibility in this role, so hopefully that would scare off the JSA gremlins :yep:

You are no doubt more employable than you realise!

In-person on campus does sound like serious trekkage, ngl :erm:

Reply 38

OP

Original post by The_Lonely_Goatherd

Yes it does sound like you've had quite a bit of responsibility in this role, so hopefully that would scare off the JSA gremlins :yep:

You are no doubt more employable than you realise!

In-person on campus does sound like serious trekkage, ngl :erm:

Ach, I never saw a notification for this >.>

Hopefully you are right on the employability front :colondollar:

I do have an update about all the Prakrit and campus stuff which I'm about to write too :biggrin:

Reply 39

OP