February 26, 2009

Happy Lent, everyone! Well, I’m not entirely sure if that’s the correct greeting. But you get the point.

This week’s classes were amazing. I thought that Tolkien last week would be a difficult act to follow, but this week easily took the title of my most intellectually engaging week so far this semester. In Ideological Destruction of Art, we focused on Rome and damnatio memoriae. Did you know that you can differentiate statues of the Roman emperors based upon their hairstyle? The difference can be as minor as a lock of hair being curled in a different direction. We’ve been analyzing Caligula in particular, and it’s simply fascinating to see how his face was transformed into Claudius or Augustus. In Early Christian Literature, we’re arriving at the philosophical part of the Confessions. That means that the Latin is a tad more difficult, but it’s all the more beautiful. Speaking of Augustine, that Saint keeps on popping up in all of my classes. In Tolkien, we discussed the Battle of Helm’s Deep, and how Tolkien portrays the Orcs. The following is a brief selection of the questions Prof. Mulrooney posed to us: Are they purely evil? Are they machine-like? Can we dismiss their deaths without any moral recompense? So, I took it in an Augustinian view that to exist is to be good, although one might be twisted away from the good. Writing about it simply can’t do the discussion justice. Trust me – it was a fantastic class. And speaking of Lord of the Rings, guess what we watched in Mathematics in Art on Wednesday? That’s correct – Lord of the Rings! We’re learning about forced perspective and illusions in art, so Prof. Frochette played a clip from the “Behind The Scenes” clip on the Fellowship of the Ring DVD. It was great. So, as you can see, not exactly a bad week academic wise! All of my classes don’t appear to be connected like last semester’s, but deep down, they really are.

As if to enunciate how quickly the rest of this semester is going, RA decisions were mailed today. Ashley is going to be an RA in Mulledy next year. Today, another RA knocked on our door, and asked to see our room because she’ll be living here next year. That’s so weird. Of course, thinking about that makes me shudder because I realize how much packing I have to do. That’s not for a while, though. But it is certainly frightening how quickly everything is going. When I return from Spring Break (which begins tomorrow), I have two months left in the semester. Of course, those two months are filled with papers, exams, and whatnot, so it’s just going to go by even more quickly!

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