More on uni

As I have a little more time than yesterday, I will give a short review of what the two following years at university will entail.

As I am a part time student, my course has been split up in two parts of a year (that was kind of obvious). This year, I am more or less doing all the interesting courses. In the first semester, I am taking 2 hours a week of the core History module (see last blogpost), 2 hours of Latin (yes, indeed, Latin!) and 2 hours every other week or so of 'Medieval Gender and Identity', an optional module I took to replace 'Locating Sources' next year (and good riddens). This last course is an English department course, which means I will be studying Literature (yay!), and it will only consists of six students and a teacher, all female, and it will be amazing. We will be discussing the stereotypical women in medieval literature (the queen as a goddess, the woman as representative of the country, Guinevere etc). It should be insanely interesting and I am quite sure it will be.

Next semester, I will take the second part of the core History module and 2 hours of Latin Paleography a week (yes, that's why I am studying Latin in the first semester). For those who do not know what Paleography is, it is basically reading old manuscripts in the typescript and in the form they were produced and found. No modern translation, no modern font, just reading pen strokes from scheep skin, so to speak. That too should be insanely interesting, as I've done some Old Dutch Paleography and very much enjoyed it, and always found the translation of Latin texts the most fun in secondary school.

Now, onto next year. That year is going to be endlessly dull. I am taking all the research modules and I just can't be fussed, to be honest. First semester will be 'History and Theory' (Nietzsche, Foucault, Marx...), and for those who know me, you are all aware of how much I loathe philosophy, so that's going to be one long journey of boredom. Together with that, I will get the course 'Sources and Methodes for Medieval and Renaissance Studies', a specific module of a course I failed twice at the KUL and then was mercifully let through because of "failing points". So that too will be a nightmare. In my last semester I will get 'Feasibility Study', of which I have no idea what it entails, but it sure does not sound interesting (it's something about taking the theory seen in the first semester and applying it to your dissertation subject). And then over the Summer, I will write my dissertation. Because this second year sounds so horrifying, I will try and take some extra modules (Irish Studies, Old English), as to try and brighten things up a bit, because otherwise I will never be able to see things through.

But, those are worries for later. First, this year, which is going to be amazing. Hooray!