Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Ramping Up for the Semester

Denial time has officially ended. Yesterday, I started working on my syllabi** for the semester that begins in three weeks. Seems like lots of time, but I'm headed back to Puddletown in a week, so I want to get everything done by Friday.

I've got three courses, all of which I've taught before (yay!), but all of which I'm constantly tinkering with (not-so-yay). Still, I'm optimistic.


**Latin geeks, the error has been brought to my attention (see comments).

10 comments:

Daniel Johnson said...

Hate to be pedantic (a lie) but plural of "syllabus" is either syllabuses or syllabus. Pesky Latin...

Notorious Ph.D. said...

Damn fourth declension always tripped me up.

non-pedantic classicist said...

pfft I'm a classicist and I say syllabi. Long live language change!

Curt Emanuel said...

I'm with non-pedantic. Syllabi is cutomary American usage - we've bastardized English over the last 200 years - I say let's give Lation a go too!

Curt Emanuel said...

Or Latin, even.

Another Damned Medievalist said...

wait -- syllabus is 4th declension? argh.

Anonymous said...

Some 4th-declension stuff is good like that though; it only just occurred to me that the plural of `consensus' is indistinguishable in text from the singular, which is as it should be.

Anonymous said...

I am troubled by what I read. First of all, it is my humble opinion that no one who calls himself an intellectual is an intellectual. Same thing pretty much goes for the term "scholar." You should probably drop laying claim to those two attributes. It looks bad. Secondly, I am amazed that you would take the advice of random people on the interwebs. Syllabus is a 2nd declension masculine noun. What's more, it's from a Greek second declension masculine noun. Nowhere, at least in classical literature, is it used as a fourth. Look it up in the OLD or L&S, and check the PHI database.

Notorious Ph.D. said...

Thank you, Anonymous. In this case, I think your recommendation of not taking the advice of random, anonymous people on the internet is quite sound.

Anonymous said...

I apologize for my sermon. I am surrounded by pretentious academic fuckheads and occasionally, sick of their antics, I lash out at someone who doesn't deserve it. There's a world of difference between calling oneself an intellectual on a blog and doing it in person. I should have taken it out on your other commentators, the first one for being a goon and the others for being schmucks.

I am in a bad mood today.