Another week has passed; a week much less stressful than the past four, thank God. Things are finally falling into place and calming down. *phew* I am thoroughly enjoying my archaeology class with Dr. Gaber and the colloquium. It's exciting to see different archaeological thoughts, theories, and methodologies; and they're all changing at this point in time, and it's so nice to have two prominent archaeologists (Pamela Gaber and William Dever) on cusp of all of it to present it all to us.
I'm in love with my German poetry class too, though I think I'm losing a bit of my German. Oh wells. I'm loving Hebrew but the structure of the text book and Dr. Knauth's excitedly sporadic teaching style are making it difficult to grasp everything. You can tell she knows a lot about the language and its grammatical structure, but she's so excited about teaching it that everything just comes out unorginized and confusing. And the text book just does not help. Oh wells, I'm slowly getting there. I feel like I knew more Greek at this point than I do with Hebrew. And to make it worse, I keep forgetting to go to the study groups. grrrr!
And then anthropology is my whatever class. It's writing intensive, but the papers I have to write for it are such jokes. It's all just whatever we feel about different movies or books he makes us watch and read. LEAF is starting to slow down with all its excitement, thank God. I can focus on my classes a bit more. Though Homecoming isn't that far away, which means it's going to pick back up again. And we have a lot of things planned for weekends in October.
October is just going to be busy. I have to get on the ball for grad schools. This means the dreaded GRE. So far it looks like I only have to take the general exam and not the subject test. I don't think there even is a subject test for archaeology. Yale and Brown don't require a subject test, which leads me to believe it is entirely pointless to take it. Good. Because it's already $140 to take just the computerized general test. Poor Denise and Melissa, they also have to take the GMAT for business management studies, which is $250. That sucks. And we have to take these tests in October to make sure our scores come back in time for grad school deadlines, which seem to all be January 1st or 2nd. I have to get at least 3 recommendation letters, at least 2 of which have to be in my field of study. I have to write a few personal statements (because some schools require different things to be in the essays).
Here are the schools I'm looking at, in order of my most desired: University of Pennsylvania/Bryn Mawr, Yale University, Brown University - Joukowsky Institute, Boston University, Cornell University, and Columbia University. I could add University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins, University of Arizona, or Bucknell University, but they're just a bit far for me at this point. The only thing that sucks is that half these schools only have PhD programs and the Master's is included in the PhD, which means I will get a "Master's" but not really. blah. What I'm really hoping for is to get my Master's here in the States and then go to Israel (I really want to go to Hebrew Union College!) or Germany (Humboldt University?) for my PhD.
Here's what I want my degrees to look like at this point (yes, plural degreeS): Near Eastern Archaeology with a concentration in Assyriology/Mesopotamian (Syria, Iran, and Iraq) ancient civilizations up until the Persian period; something with textual studies (Epigraphy), specifically for Akkadian, Ugaritic (wait...is this a language?), Sumerian, Babylonian, and Persian; German, and also maybe French. As of now, this is what I want. Um, this could possibly change as I go through my studies, of course. I'd also like to learn modern Hebrew and Arabic since I'd be spending a significant amount of my time in the Middle East, though these don't have to be part of any degree. Just for my own benefit.
This is going to take...um...possibly forever. Luckily, there are tons and tons of moneys for doctoral students, including for travel, research, and summer language studies. Yale alone gives an average of $250,000 to any given student over their 5 to 7 years of study. *jaw drops* That's why it's in my top 2/3 choices. UPenn and Bryn Mawr are kind of listed as one school because if I get into Bryn Mawr but maybe not UPenn, Bryn Mawr has a thinger with UPenn where grad students can take classes at UPenn and have them count at Bryn Mawr. Then I could actually be in UPenn AND Bryn Mawr! ah. haha. I'm not necessarily looking at Harvard just because I feel like I wouldn't be able to "fit in". I dunno, it just has more of a "stigma" than Yale, I think. It seems more...erm...sexist and elitist? Though Knauth, Gaber, and Dever all received their PhD's from Harvard...and I'd have a big in. Maybe I'll just talk with Gaber and Knauth about it, but I'm kinda predisposed against it. *shrugs shoulders*
No comments:
Post a Comment