Sunday 21st March

Well I'm feeling quite pleased with myself, which is probably a short step to disaster, but nevertheless.. today I finished my second essay of the three, well two essays and a dissertation proposal. That got handed in on Friday, and now I have number two out of the way. I've also managed to get the slides organised for the coming ordeal on Friday next, when I have to present said dissertation proposal. This will be done at Lilybank House, which is the normal venue for our RRSH lectures where we don't need to be sitting at computers. It's a pretty startling room, in fact Lilybank is a pretty startling building. I remember having anthropology seminars there back in the 90s, before the restoration - it's an old, I'd guess pre-Victorian building, and they've found some sort of paintwork in there, in the room where we gather. So whilst the room bristles with slide projectors and mix and match seating, all the sorts of things a fairly modern lecture room would need, it also has a wall with rather exotic looking paint effects - in a rather unpleasant shade of red unfortunately, with the main bulk of the wall in an odd and unmatching green. It's not quite British institutional green, but frankly it's not far off, and the red is that oxblood shade that's not quite brown but isn't exactly red either, in sweeping somehow flowery cascades. Actually I don't think there's a flower in there, but somehow I look at it and I think flowery. Every week for the past few months I've been looking at this, and thinking that I should like it more than I actually do, and now it's going to witness my first, and probably last attempt to give a presentation with powerpoint slides.
You know you'd think I'd've organised an attempt to practise this since I've never done it before, and I would have liked to, but somehow either it wasn't offered to us as part of RRSH - which is a bit odd and makes me suspect I somehow missed it, as RRSH has usually been pretty good about offering us every opportunity to play with every variety of gadget in the academic toolbox. Anyhow, it's only ten minutes in duration - or at least it's supposed to be, and I don't have to use very many slides, I just click on the mouse to make it move to the next, so I'll wing it along with everyone else, making damn sure I take handouts along with me. Then people can fiddle with bits of paper, a sure way of distracting them from what I'm saying.

So.. yep the Constructing Faith essay is done and will be handed in tomorrow, yippee. Just the Gender essay to go, which is all planned out and just needs to be written. Then.. the great blank stares me in the face, and this is I suppose the really interesting bit. As a part time student I then technically have nothing else to do until term starts again in September/October. I do have the dissertation to actually do, and I will be working on it across the summer - I have to, I'd never get it done otherwise, but basically that's it. I've set myself the task of a) I absolutely must definitely absolutely find some work, which isn't easy as apparently Glasgow has an unemployment rate that's 10% higher than the rest of the country, or so they told us this week. This goes some way towards easing my concerns about not having found anything so far, but without having work, lord how am I going to fill my days? At some point in May/June/July -ish I have to deal with whether or not I'm going to have to move as my lease runs out, and I have to say I'm hoping very much that I don't because it's been a great little flat and I hate moving anyway. Luckily most of my friends will still be here across the summer because they do have dissertations that have to be written and handed in by September, so I shan't be lonely, but the lack of a day to day routine will still niggle, you know?
But as I say let's cross the first bridge first, and get the Gender essay written and handed in. And of course, let's just keep everything crossed that the bloody essays get pass marks!

Friday 12th

Day two of the big countdown to completion of the dissertation proposal. Today I got a good page and a half done, and three pages worth of tables to go with it, but I really need to watch that. I think they'll have to be redone, as they're simply too big size wise - no way should they be occupying three pages! But squashing them up is going to be difficult what with all the formatting that went on. But still, they do look good. Here's a thought, am I being overly impressed with them, and in reality they mean nothing? God knows.
Anyhow I guess the really big deal is that I sort of have a title. It's called The Miracle of Health: What can accounts of miracles tell us about health in antiquity? I thought that's quite snappy. And sufficiently loose to be flexible about what I actually write. I can include mental health and people with limbs falling off - there's one of these miracles that involves a chap who's basically described as a comic actor from Curubis, who (you've got to feel for this chap) not only is suffering from paralysis, but genital deformity as well. Lord only knows what state he was in after his healing, but you've got to wonder if this wasn't some sort of scam he was pulling, thinking I go in there, drag the old leg a bit, get prayed over and helped to the shrine of the martyrs, and hey presto, get cured and maybe there'll be a meal and a few coins in it for me. It is entirely possible that that's what was going on here, or alternately, I really should say its equally possible that he was on his last legs (no pun intended) and really, genuinely got healed. There's absolutely no way to tell. I'm the sceptical 21st century girl here, and this happened back at the end of the, well lets say 420 which is when Augustine 'published' all this. It's well pointed out by Peter Brown I think (sorry my referencing is used up for the day) that Augustine was a pretty savvy chap, and this chapter of miracles is sort of tapped on to the end of the City of God. I don't think there's any doubt that its his work, but it is kind of an odd change of direction for him. Until you get into On The Care To Be Had For The Dead, which was part of the Retractions, and it's pretty plain at that point that the Church was having problems making the pagans toe the line when it came to burials and death practises. People where having memorial celebratory meals by the graveside, people where claiming that Great Uncle so and so appeared to them in a dream and told them where he had buried the family doubloons when the Goths so inconveniently invaded a few years back... My but they must have been having trouble. The Christian Church is always an organisation that likes people to do as they're told to do. They are a religion of the book, and it's by the book, or you could get into some mighty hot water. Back then at any rate. They hadn't actually started burning people at that point, but they weren't far off it. Augustine had to find ways to explain all these funny dreams, and he didn't much care about whether they dined at the graveside is my guess, but he'd really rather that they didn't. So he took a leaf out of St Ambrose, who essentially came up with the Cult of Saints, and instead of dining at mother's graveside, you could pop her in next to some holy bones, and that would do her nothing but good in the afterlife. As for the dreams he's very firm that your ancestors aren't in the least interested in having a chat with you in your dreams, they are far too busy up there doing a bit of worshipping, but it's entirely possible that an angel could pop down to have a chat, and pass the information on when they get back home. Augustine's angels are the biggest gossips in the afterlife, it's a hoot!! At any rate, his contributions to the way the church presented death and the afterlife were very influential indeed.
Anyhow I hadn't exactly intended to write a mini lecture here, and you'll have to take all this with a pinch of salt because it's the end of a very long day, with far more to come tomorrow. I'll keep you posted!

Thursday 11th March

Oh I am so tired. It's always the same on Thursdays, its a long day for me - get to uni, class on gender, class on rrsh - get something to eat, I go home via M & S, which is my Thursday treat, home and veg out. I can veg out tonight, but come tomorrow it's back to the books. I have more deadlines for essays/work than I know what to do with.
I have actually got a good deal of my Constructing Faith essay done, which is a good thing even if it isn't quite typed up yet. But top of the list for my to get finished list is my dissertation proposal. This is due next week, and this afternoon we were all like "Are we all in the same state of panic?" I think pretty much everyone is. We're masters students so we don't do 'panic' in the way that say a first year undergrad does, but underneath the somewhat calmer exteriors is a rather numb feeling of oh God I haven't finished the bibliography, I haven't done this, that's only just started.. like most of my colleagues I have a loose collection of paragraphs on different bits of it, and it all needs to be stitched together. Bit's of it I'm very chuffed with, like for instance I have a small mini database that ok, only comes from one chapter of Augustine, but yay, it makes tables, and this Looks Good. Or it will look good on a powerpoint slide. Let's just hope that it will fit on a powerpoint slide.. oh God I didn't think of that.
Enough. It's 23.48 as I type this, and if I don't stop now I won't sleep a wink tonight until I get up, put it onto a powerpoint slide and find out if it fits or I have to spend another six hours putting it into a size that will both a) fit and b) be comprehensible.

I cannot tell you how much I'm looking forward to the 27th of April. After the 27th, it will all be done, dusted.. until next semester.

Sunday 28th Feb

Well it's not been a wildly wonderful day, in that a) Villa lost the FA cup final, b) I've been a touch hung over. Last night I went to a friend's party, and I had what I think is the first drink of alcohol since not last Christmas, but I think the Christmas before. I can't really remember. I'm not fond of alcohol, for a number of reasons, chiefly because I think it's sneaks under my guard and before I know where I am, I'm wildly drunk and doing things that make me cringe the next day. All that on perhaps a glass and a half of red wine. No tolerance you see, I know if I stuck at it, I'd build a tolerance and could drink a glass a day with relatively no ill effects, but I'm always a bit worried that a glass would become a bottle without my noticing. Then there's the cost. I don't enjoy it, I don't see any benefit to it, why should I waste what's basically a vast amount of money to do it? I already have my vice, I smoke and I enjoy that, so I'll stick to it I think. Mind you I'm even thinking twice about that these days.
On top of all this, it's been a difficult week. I did finish my gender presentation, but I can't say that I was happy with it. I finished it at 2 in the morning, which is never a good thing, and I've no idea what the end result of it will be, people seemed to think it was ok. I even had one of my compatriots come up to me in M&S to say he thought it was good. But you know that irritating feeling at the back of your mind that you could have done it so much better? Ok, I will admit that I have this feeling for virtually everything that I do, every piece of university work, but on this occasion I have to say that I think the feeling is fully justified. It was not up to my normal standard and I ran out of time and patience with it, and went off on a wild tangent about this wretched pendant. I won't bore you with the details, but it was a pretty stunning pendant. Just not exactly greatly relevant to the piece I was supposed to be writing.
Anyhow today I've been going through Foxe's Book of Martyrs, for Constructing Faith. Fascinating piece. Google it, and it will reward a brief look at pretty well any part of it. It's all about the Reformation in England and the building of the Church of England. Tonight I'm going to be cracking on with, let's see.. a chunk more of Stripping the Altars? Perhaps. First though, I'm going to reward myself with a morsel of Lark Rise to Candleford - trash, but moderately amusing trash.

Friday. Late.

Had the most awful cold this week, the sort of cold that verges onto flu. Thankfully it's clearing up and really I should be in bed now - I've spent all day working on my presentation for Gender which hasn't helped. What really hasn't helped is a load of photocopying that I did has managed to miss off the page number from every single page, so unless I find either the book, or a copy of the book, or someone who has the book and will tell me what page number chapter 1 is, I can't quote from it! Infuriating!
The presentation is on Eunuchs in the Byzantine Empire. Most of my gender class are modern come semi modern historians, so I have to include a quick mop and brush up on the Byz Empire - brilliant, especially as I don't know much about it myself! I didn't take the courses on Byzantine history as an undergraduate, but as I do know quite a lot about the early church this is giving me an opportunity to do a bit of basic brushing up myself, always a useful thing.
One thing I will say about having cold/flu, if you have to have it, then have it when the Olympics are on. There's nothing like watching people hurl themselves off mountains to make you feel just that little bit better..!

Friday 11th February

Big news of my day is that my next presentation has been moved up by a week - no idea why, but I presume that someone can't make the date it was arranged for and hence it has to be moved. This may be all very well for lecturers, but it's not exactly helpful for us poor old students. Still I've spent today making notes from about 30 odd pages of Third Sex, Third Gender - the presentation is going to be on Byzantine Eunuchs, of which there were rather a lot. I won't go into the details, but the guys in the class are going to be doing a bit of squirming I think.
What else have I done? Translated a chunk of a book by Aline Rouselle, which frankly should be available in an English version, but it's not, so hence the translating. I should point out that I'm doing this by translation engine rather than by hand, my French is schoolgirl level! Mind you given that I recognise more words that you'd think, maybe the Latin is coming in handy.
Frankly apart from this I haven't done a lot. You'd think this sounds awfully boring and frankly you'd be right - but it's got to be done and there's an end to it. I have more of this to do over the weekend as well, only for Constructing Faith this time - a riveting little (ha!) article on Scale-free Networks - I think this is some one's theory that heresy spreads like a virus, ok, so I haven't read it yet, but it's top of my list for tomorrow morning, then I still have to find my copy of Lambert. This infuriatingly I saw only a few days ago, and needless to say now it's turned up on a reading list I cannot find for love nor money. I have a ton of stuff to get done for essays and the like, and blow me down, two workshops to attend next week. One is on Creative Writing for Academics, or some such and I'm hoping that it might brush up my writing style somewhat. I feel it lacks that final touch, you know? I'm pretty sure it'll be here's how to write a plan, but nevertheless, for a couple of hours I will get a grip and do my best to get the most out of it. Who knows, it could get me a couple of extra marks that will make the difference between a grade.

There's rather a stunning interview with Sven in tomorrow's Guardian about this business going on at Notts County - so much so that you rather wonder why the police aren't involved. It sounds like fraud to me. And God knows there are enough football clubs in trouble at the moment. What really makes you saddest though is the little fact tucked away at the bottom, that the supporters club handed over their holdings for free. They owned a reasonable chunk of the club, and these monster's come along promising huge investments and mythical dreams of European football in eighteen months, etc, they somehow talked Sven, Sol Campbell et al into it, and before you know where you are, the little guys are conned out of their precious bit of their local club. If that isn't worth a quick chat with the desk sergeant at the local cop shop I don't know what is. Having read this interview, my guess is that by tomorrow midday, there'll be a statement coming from the local fraud squad to the effect that they'll be looking in to it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/feb/12/sven-goran-eriksson-notts-county-interview

Anyhow I just have to thank my lucky stars that Villa seem to be in a reasonable good order, and Martin O'Neil said he didn't aim to bankrupt us in order to get us into Europe. There's a lot to be said for a good academy and youth policy. Ah well. Then on the news all this stuff about the big thing going off in Afghanistan - one of my uni mates has a brother that's just gone out there. I suppose he'll be part of it. Hopefully it will all work out well, but lord your heart goes out to the families of these people. And as for this business with MI5, words fail me. At the very least they appear to be trying to pull the wool over the publics eyes with all this withdrawn judgement and everything. In fact the whole news just makes you feel more and more down over the past couple of days, except for the baby that they've managed to get out of Haiti. This gorgeous little scrap of a girl, who's about three months old, called Landina was caught up in the earthquake and suffered a major skull injury and her arm was crushed - so badly it had to be amputated, and because her parents are lost or dead, she had no paperwork. Medecin Sans Frontiere have been funding a surgeon from Britain over there, and she must have really got to him, because he's moved heaven and earth to get her the right papers and someone - no names, but someone has personally funded her flight, and the surgeon and a colleague actually carried her all that way on the plane and she arrived at Great Ormond Street earlier today. Hopefully she'll get her operation within the next few days - she has to have tests, and then 6 months recuperation or so, and all being well, she'll be able to go home.
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/baby+landinaaposs+journey+for+lifesaving+treatment/3538437
There you go, you can read it for yourself. Best story of the week, if not the month.

Tuesday 9th February

Well peeps, here I am all excited and enthused because I have some essay planning underway, and it's such a cracking subject I'm thinking about changing my dissertation plans to move towards this idea. Some of you know that I've just done a presentation on Augustine Bishop of Hippo's book On The Care To Be Had For The Dead. This is an extremely interesting book written in the 4th Century by the above, basically following a letter that he had regarding a widow who wanted to bury her son near to the body of a saint. Augustine didn't think it would do the son any good to be buried in a place that might be regarded as especially sanctified, he didn't think it would do any harm, but having considered the subject there were a few other things he'd like to move on to... and so on he went. It's oddly stream of consciousness type of writing for a Church Father, who are usually more structured, but in and amongst all of this are a few references to 'the entranced', 'the mad', those who address people who are not present, as if they were present - in other words, it's a bit of a window into how the people of the antique viewed people with mental health issues. I'm going to write an essay on this, which is a great opportunity to firstly come up with a really great bibliography, and see whether this topic really has the legs for a dissertation. So I'm quite chuffed.
The presentation itself seemed to go ok, no great shakes I don't think, but not a total disaster either.

Anyhow it's gone extremely cold up here. In fact I shall have to go and put the heating on in a minute, I've been sitting here all morning searching the library catalogue to find sources for my essay. My but I've come up with some interesting looking stuff - what do you think of Demonical Possession among primitive races in antiquity? It dates from the 1930's, and a lot of these very old history books have lots of references in them to the primary sources that I can dig out and use - you wouldn't necessarily use a book that old as a source, but trace it back to it's original roots. Mind you I was writing my presentation on books written in 1909, and 1907 - one of which is Van Genneps Rites of Passage, which frankly I can't believe is that old. It's certainly lasting that's for sure.
Anyhow that's it for now, I'm desperate to go and put the heating on!