The Student Room Group
Uni students - Complete our survey >>
Uni students - Complete our survey >>
Uni students - Complete our survey >>

Artful Lounger learns Sanskrit (among other things!)

Scroll to see replies

Original post by artful_lounger
Thank you :colondollar: I think it was just a case of if you turned up and said somethings in all the seminars you got the full marks but, who knows :wink:

To be fair "showing up and saying something in all the seminars" is still a pretty significant improvement for me I guess lol, since any kind of like...group interactive work was just not something I could really do much..at all, in the past anyway, cos of mental health stuff...which is why I kind of stopped going to labs entirely back when I was doing engineering because it was a bit too much to handle :redface: (and then later, lectures...and then to campus at all...lol :x

That said things being online helps that though to be fair, adds an extra layer of social spacing (I would say "social distancing" but that has a different meaning nowadays :tongue: )

So sorry, in my mind I had replied this :facepalm: I think you are being too modest about this. Saying stuff in seminars, regardless of whether it's online or in-person, can be hugely daunting :eek: So you're doing really really well on that front and should be proud of how far you've come :yep:

PS. I agree that "not giving X" and "hiding X" are two different things :five:
Original post by The_Lonely_Goatherd
So sorry, in my mind I had replied this :facepalm: I think you are being too modest about this. Saying stuff in seminars, regardless of whether it's online or in-person, can be hugely daunting :eek: So you're doing really really well on that front and should be proud of how far you've come :yep:

PS. I agree that "not giving X" and "hiding X" are two different things :five:


Hehe no worries, I do that all the time! I once replied to my academic adviser (as close to a director of studies as there is on a programme with one person on it I guess!) a month late because I'd mentally composed the email response I intended to send but forgot to actually...write it :redface:


Thank you for your kind words however :colondollar: you're right though, and I just need to avoid overthinking things and try and feel less like I'm gonna get failed on the module if I say something that is wrong (since even if that were the case I'm not taking it for-credit so it doesn't really matter!) :tongue:
Original post by artful_lounger
Hehe no worries, I do that all the time! I once replied to my academic adviser (as close to a director of studies as there is on a programme with one person on it I guess!) a month late because I'd mentally composed the email response I intended to send but forgot to actually...write it :redface:


Thank you for your kind words however :colondollar: you're right though, and I just need to avoid overthinking things and try and feel less like I'm gonna get failed on the module if I say something that is wrong (since even if that were the case I'm not taking it for-credit so it doesn't really matter!) :tongue:

Very easy to overthink though, when it comes to putting oneself out there by speaking up in a classroom setting (even if it's online) - don't be too hard on yourself :hugs:
Original post by The_Lonely_Goatherd
Very easy to overthink though, when it comes to putting oneself out there by speaking up in a classroom setting (even if it's online) - don't be too hard on yourself :hugs:


Thank you for your support :hugs:
So, our lecturer changed her mind about using real texts again and decided to have us start preparing a "real text" for next week, which is the real version of the adapted form of a fable we previously had prepared and translated.

In the process of working on this one, I just transliterated a "word" that was 16 syllables long...I need to lie down after that...

(It's not actually one word, due to devanagari writing conventions and sandhi it's several words that have ended up smushed together in what appears to be one word but is not as far as translating goes...I haven't gotten to attempting to work out the grammar of it yet, I think there are at least three words in there though...)
:headfire:
So not much updates this week because it's been really long and stressful...I had a complete breakdown on Monday, because student finance sent me an email saying they weren't going to fund me, with the implication of the email being they wouldn't fund me for any course henceforth so it felt like after everything, I'd never be able to get a degree...I need to submit an appeal for that tomorrow.

I've moved past crisis mode somewhat at least in realising that although the fees are extraordinarily high, if I get a job and do a part-time degree and live with my parent during it I can just about squeak by...it was really not an ideal situation though. Otherwise we also had the mid-term test for my Sanskrit module which was submitted earlier today (it opened on Wednesday) so having been preparing for that, then getting the SFE news, then having to do that, was all very draining. Plus the myth seminar today where I think I only said one thing, I was kind of in a daze through it since after submitting my Sanskrit test I napped for a couple hours and basically only read the text for the seminar today in the hour before it since with everything earlier in the week I just sort of forgot about it...

Spoiler


So this week has really been a struggle...and it seems like it's not likely to improve any time soon :frown:
Loads of gentle hugs coming you way! Sounds like a horrible week, am sorry :frown:

Have you spoken to any of the SFE advisors on here? I think there's an 'Ask SFE' subforum on TSR :redface:

:jumphug:
Original post by The_Lonely_Goatherd
Loads of gentle hugs coming you way! Sounds like a horrible week, am sorry :frown:

Have you spoken to any of the SFE advisors on here? I think there's an 'Ask SFE' subforum on TSR :redface:

:jumphug:


I called them up first thing the morning after I got the email (they sent it to me at like 930pm for some reason...), and they said pretty much since it's been decided by the assessor now there's nothing they can or will say or do and the only option is to fill in the appeal document and send that in to have the decision reconsidered by appeal...

But I was certain that I was eligible for finance due to the SFE advisor posts on here, and also their own policy documents which I've found on the internet and read (and one that SOAS sent to me for reference regarding another aspect of finance that I was unclear on), and according to that I should be eligible for funding...so I don't understand the decision at all, and I'm sure it must be wrong...hopefully...

If not then I need to radically change a lot of my plans for the near-ish future...:s-smilie:

Thank you for the support as well, it means a lot in all this :colondollar:
Good on you for calling them, I hate phonecalls at the best of times, let alone when it's in a very upsetting situation like this :hugs:

I'd collate and refer to/highlight all the evidence indicating that you should be eligible for finance and send that as part of your appeal.

If there's anything I can do to help, please do let me know! Sounds incredibly frustrating and disappointing :frown:

:hugs:
Original post by The_Lonely_Goatherd
Good on you for calling them, I hate phonecalls at the best of times, let alone when it's in a very upsetting situation like this :hugs:

I'd collate and refer to/highlight all the evidence indicating that you should be eligible for finance and send that as part of your appeal.

If there's anything I can do to help, please do let me know! Sounds incredibly frustrating and disappointing :frown:

:hugs:


Yeah, that's my plan for tomorrow, I have the policy documents saved and I know the sections which outline that I should be eligible...annoyingly the form has really limited space to type on though, but I also need to print it out to sign it anyway so maybe I should just handwrite it...or attach a covering letter type thing explaining everything in more detail (which is what I did when I previously had to apply for Compelling Personal Reasons for additional funding before I left uni before). I'm also going to refer to posts from their official reps here which state pretty clearly that prior full time study doesn't affect eligibility for part-time study.

We'll see how it turns out though...apparently it takes at least 20 days for the appeal to be considered (probably longer in covid) though :/
Original post by artful_lounger
So not much updates this week because it's been really long and stressful...I had a complete breakdown on Monday, because student finance sent me an email saying they weren't going to fund me, with the implication of the email being they wouldn't fund me for any course henceforth so it felt like after everything, I'd never be able to get a degree...I need to submit an appeal for that tomorrow.

I've moved past crisis mode somewhat at least in realising that although the fees are extraordinarily high, if I get a job and do a part-time degree and live with my parent during it I can just about squeak by...it was really not an ideal situation though. Otherwise we also had the mid-term test for my Sanskrit module which was submitted earlier today (it opened on Wednesday) so having been preparing for that, then getting the SFE news, then having to do that, was all very draining. Plus the myth seminar today where I think I only said one thing, I was kind of in a daze through it since after submitting my Sanskrit test I napped for a couple hours and basically only read the text for the seminar today in the hour before it since with everything earlier in the week I just sort of forgot about it...

Spoiler


So this week has really been a struggle...and it seems like it's not likely to improve any time soon :frown:

:hugs: I'm sorry to hear that, it sounds awful... Hope having slept on it you at least feel less drained. Good luck for the appeal.
Don't suppose it could be worth looking into financial support unis might provide as well?
Original post by becausethenight
:hugs: I'm sorry to hear that, it sounds awful... Hope having slept on it you at least feel less drained. Good luck for the appeal.
Don't suppose it could be worth looking into financial support unis might provide as well?


Thank you, yes it's a little less raw now so things feel a little more manageable at the moment :colondollar:

I had been looking at other bursaries and stuff offered by unis anyway, because I had been under the impression if I wanted to do a full time course I would only get a maintenance loan and not a tuition fee loan, so would need to pay tuition fees with the maintenance loan and then find a way to support myself otherwise...however there really aren't that many universities that offer signifcant bursaries in that regard. Usually they're much smaller amounts of support, which if I did get into a uni offering them and qualified for that support would certainly help, but none are really enough to counterbalance the loss of all funding from SFE :s-smilie:

Something is better than nothing though so it's definitely something I'll keep in mind going forward :redface:
Original post by artful_lounger
Thank you, yes it's a little less raw now so things feel a little more manageable at the moment :colondollar:

I had been looking at other bursaries and stuff offered by unis anyway, because I had been under the impression if I wanted to do a full time course I would only get a maintenance loan and not a tuition fee loan, so would need to pay tuition fees with the maintenance loan and then find a way to support myself otherwise...however there really aren't that many universities that offer signifcant bursaries in that regard. Usually they're much smaller amounts of support, which if I did get into a uni offering them and qualified for that support would certainly help, but none are really enough to counterbalance the loss of all funding from SFE :s-smilie:

Something is better than nothing though so it's definitely something I'll keep in mind going forward :redface:

Ah yeah it isn’t usually very much :frown:
Fingers very crossed it works out for you!


Sanskrit (mostly)



We finished going through the "real" version of the fable of the Lion, the Cat, and the Mouse today (rather than the adapted version we had done before). The moral of the full version is a bit different from the adapted text, which cut off the end bit - rather than a case of "don't bite off more than you can chew, or else you'll die", it's "don't do your job perfectly and give your employer no reason to have you around anymore, or else you'll die". Afterwards we went had a lecture session on noun formation based on the chapter reading we had done over the weekend. It seems pretty straightforward I guess, you take a verbal root, add a suffix, and you get a new noun - I need to spend some time reading over the examples to make sure I understand the kinds of nouns formed from each suffix though.

Later we got our marks back from the mid-term last week and I did pretty well despite the whole crisis last week (which is still ongoing but slightly less preoccupying at the minute). I did make a couple of dumb mistakes, mostly based on two typos (one of which I actually had emailed to clarify whether it was a typo or not!), which I had interpreted correctly when I was analysing the grammar but then kind of mindlessly reproduced when I wrote out the devanagari (the first was the lecturer had written tad instead of tat, where tad is the undeclined form that doesn't appear in texts, and the second was where the lecturer had written *tasmina instead of tasmin by forgetting to include the virama, which I then dutifully also forgot to include :redface:

In the declension I wrote out I forgot to carry over the swoosh from the i diacritic when I rewrote it after making a mistake the first time, so instead ended up writing the preceding consonant having a long a instead of the consonant in question having an i. Then I mistook the prefix/word for "happy" to mean "good", and also mixed up something that was supposed to be in the final position of a particular type of compound with the first position. Also I misspelled dvandva...twice :colonhash: I only lost 8 marks as a result of all that though so our lecturer was clearly marking in a pretty lenient mood!



Non-academic stuff:

Spoiler



Quote list:

Spoiler

(edited 3 years ago)
Glad you got good marks, well done! Annoying that someone else's typos led you to lose marks. It's hard to remember sometimes in the heat of the moment that you've emailed them about it and confirmed that it's a typo, so don't be too hard on yourself :nah:

Hope you have a good week :biggrin:
Original post by The_Lonely_Goatherd
Glad you got good marks, well done! Annoying that someone else's typos led you to lose marks. It's hard to remember sometimes in the heat of the moment that you've emailed them about it and confirmed that it's a typo, so don't be too hard on yourself :nah:

Hope you have a good week :biggrin:


Oh the typo thing didn't lose me marks I think, just the other stuff. It was just an observation she made that I had reproduced the same error - she did say that it wouldn't affect anyone's marks, just a bit embarrassing that one of them I literally was the one to highlight to her and still copied it out wrong!

Thank you, and hopefully you also will have a good week :smile:

Term 2 Week 5

Back to our regularly scheduled programming!


Sanskrit


Today we finished up the work we started on noun formation last time, and then mostly just did some revision, or perhaps more specifically our lecturer laid out a plan for revision that we can start doing today and continue across reading week next week. We touched on a lot of topics we'd covered before, but mostly seemed to focus on sandhi and devanagari writing conventions - importantly also clearing up some misconceptions that it seems we all had on what counts as sandhi and what counts as devanagari writing conventions.

Some of the instances in which words are connected fall into either category, however, with sandhi there is only one "round" of changes normally, and so it seemed some of us were accidentally applying two rounds of sandhi by mistaking the connecting of some words due to sandhi to be devanagari writing conventions, applying this after applying the sandhi as usual initially. The lecturer did point out that normally we don't work in this "direction", of essentially composing English into Sanskrit (where you need to think about sandhi then devanagari writing conventions, and "rounds" of sandhi) but that we are doing it mainly to help our understanding when translating.

I think it was quite helpful all in all, as it turned out we as a cohort (and me as well) were overcomplicating some things, in essence. When working on things by translation though it's a bit more straightforward in some respects, I guess, because first you just need to split apart any words that were joined up due to devanagari writing conventions, then figure out what all the word forms are by "de-sandhising" them in a sense, and hence analyse the grammar and determine the meanings...to eventually get a translation! I guess the end goal would be to read Sanskrit texts in devanagari "fluently" as such, rather than actively translating it in a multi-step process, but I for one am definitely still in the latter category of ability!

For reading week our lecturer put together a revision handout on verbs, which connects a bunch of different things we've done over last term and this one in one handout which is helpful to see as a "big picture" (or maybe just "bigger picture"!). Doing something along those lines for the topics we've covered generally was sort of my plan for reading week so this gives me a bit of a template to work from in trying to piece together other bits of stuff we've covered to synthesise it all hopefully. We also have a new fable to work on starting to translate over the break, which we'll be working on in class when we get back. This one is a bit shorter, by the look of it, than the last one, although after underestimating how long it took to "de-sandhiise" the previous one I'm definitely going to try and make sure I don't wait too long before starting work on it!


Myth


I haven't done much on the myth module this week yet, except read the text for our seminar tomorrow, which is Sophocles' Oedipus the King. I was familiar with the myth in general terms previously, having actually read this text directly now though it's a lot more gruesome in the imagery than I expected (perhaps anyway...I've found often Greek texts are pretty gory in imagery, and at least grim in tone...maybe I should adjust my expectations :tongue: ). The main thing I need to do otherwise before the seminar tomorrow is to read a critical essay on the text, and then think a little about it I guess! I've not seen any lectures or lecture notes uploaded yet this week though, which I would also normally go through beforehand. I need to check moodle again to make sure I've not missed them in a folder somewhere...


Miscellaneous


Also applied to two jobs (which I have very little hope of hearing back from though) and had the initial call with my DWP work coach. I was pretty stressed about that (also applying to jobs, which is always stressful) but it was mostly just tick box stuff today. I have more job applications to work on though...also unfortunately everything is kind of far away, commutable by train but I'd rather something relatively local. Alas now I'm stuck living in the "countryside" again, no such luck. Not knowing how to drive or having a car is once again a noticeable difficulty for doing stuff generally :/ I much preferred living in a city where I could walk or get the bus anywhere I needed easily (or cycle, potentially anyway).

Otherwise last night I finally got my first pieces of tier 3, finally...only had to be raiding for two months! One of them was also a very big upgrade, so I'm pretty pleased with that. I have no DKP left now though...The raid was also surprisingly relatively painless, although there was a bit of arguing in officer chat afterwards in spite of how well things went :s-smilie:
(edited 3 years ago)


Linguistics




Small update on the linguistics module from last term...at some point somewhat recently the final assignment got marked and returned to us, I only just remembered to check it. Overall my experience with the linguistics module was that it felt like a real challenge and I don't feel like I understood a lot or was doing well, but was surprised by my marks regardless on the earlier assignments.

This trend continues with the most recent assignment, as I got almost full marks overall (with full marks on the semantics section), despite the fact it was the one on topics I felt like I understood the least (semantics and pragmatics). I only got dinged for 10% because I didn't put much explanation of the theory in, which was mostly because I just didn't have any word count left!

The final assignment had felt very challenging because the second part of it (the pragmatics section) was designed around applying the theory we learned to a case study, and I felt like I had no idea how to do that. It also had a very tight word limit of 450 words to write basically a mini essay in! So it's encouraging if extremely surprising that I did so well on it.

Maybe I shouldn't be so quick to write off linguistics as a possible route in the future? Although linguistics has been very challenging, I've done a lot better in it than expected, and it is pretty core to the area that originally drew me to Sanskrit (comparative philology). Also challenging isn't necessarily bad if as it transpires I have learned something through that challenge...I just felt like I hadn't, but the lecturer obviously disagrees. So it might just be more of an issue of my being unable to gauge my ability in the area?

Spoiler

(edited 3 years ago)

Term 2 - Week 6 (or is it 5?)


So, it's the week after reading week...I can't even remember what week number that is then, and that is pretty much a good summary of how this week has gone. Also a quick retrospective on reading week: I did nothing productive at all. I ended up messing up my sleep patterns so I didn't get to bed before 4am basically the whole week, although that's really more of an excuse than a reason because even when I was awake otherwise I didn't do anything productive...the most productive thing I did was email my myth lecturer about essay ideas. But generally I've just been very unmotivated recently, and feeling very lethargic mentally...which follows in the below. So I'm not gonna post the quote list because there's really nothing of substance here :s-smilie:



Sanskrit


Sanskrit classes have pretty much been a blur; I can't even remember what we did on Monday other than spending some time working on the text that was sent out over reading week (which I didn't do any work on...), and today I didn't feel really engaged with things...we did had a lecture on the imperative mood, a lot of the nuance of which I don't think I took in, and then the lecturer spent some time quickly going through the rest of the first half of the text from reading week. I also don't really understand what the third person imperative is? For homework we have another chapter to read of the textbook, and to keep working on the text which we'll finish looking at on Monday. Also I guess some time soon we have the oral exam? I'm not even sure when that is happening.


Myth


Seminar tomorrow...I've read the text (Hymn to Demeter), I also read some of the commentary by the translator. I've not read the translators essay on the text yet, nor really had any particular thoughts...I'm hoping to read the essay tomorrow and spend some more time thinking about it. My only real thoughts so far are "tumblr really has a bizarrely skewed impression of the relationship between Hades and Persephone, especially considering its general moral stances", since they're basically always represented with Hades as a kind of uwu soft-boi when it's basically like...he definitely kidnapped her against her will, and there is some uncomfortable implications besides that.

Over the reading week as mentioned I emailed the myth lecturer about essay ideas. Basically although I was kind of mainly interested in this module for the possibility of comparative work with Sanskrit texts and the myths within those, I realised that basically it's impossible for me currently because:

a) My language ability in both Sanskrit and Greek (also Latin) isn't sufficient to deal with the original texts, so I need to use translations
b) I have very limited access to translated Sanskrit texts, since they aren't that easily available online as I can find, compared to the Greek ones (all on Perseus)
c) The Sanskrit texts are very, very long and I need to actually read the whole text, and understand the background and context of them, to be able to do any scholarly work with it.

As a result, I decided I'd stick with something that seemed interesting but was within my ability academically, and also practically within my reach in terms of texts etc. So I've decided to write on Dionysus and/or Dionysian cult and their representations, mainly in The Bacchae and The Frogs (since the former we studied earlier in the term, and the latter I actually own as I bought a translation of Aristophanes' collected works last year that I never got around to reading any of), and maybe also visual/archaeological material and/or the Hymn(s) to Dionysus.

The lecturer seemed enthusiastic about my choice, despite how vague my ideas are in terms of specific direction and a particular topic/essay question beyond just "these texts and this mythological figure", and suggested some preliminary reading for me. Which I've not yet started on...also the deadline to submit a draft for him to provide feedback on before the final submission is only in just under two weeks so I really need to get moving on that...

Quick Reply

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you