Really, I do exist

Okay, okay, I haven't so much abandoned this blog as I've been in the midst of a really busy semester.

Really.

I'll probably have more time for actually updating this thing in a few weeks. Right now, I've just finished up with a conference (lots of fun and it went quite well) and one major project, but I still have lots to do in the next three weeks. After that, Kalamazoo.

I'd like to say something profound, but instead, I'll just submit this thought: according to one of my students, Marcus Tullius Cicero was actually better known as Julius Caesar, who lied about conquering Greece, had two daughters named Julia, and "was killed by being stabbed many times. :)". And, yes, the smiley face was included in the answer. History comes alive!

End of the semester review

My semester has been done for about four days, so I thought I should sum up what I've accomplished/discovered in one semester of PhD work.

1.) A 4.0. Yep. I procrastinated entirely too much (more than I did during my masters), yet did okay. I've learned my lesson: next semester I'll be taking 9 hours rather than 6, on top of teaching 3 discussion sections.

2.) I--presumably--received good teaching evaluations from both my students and the professor for whom I worked, as well as discovering that I really rather like teaching. That might be due to my unfortunate sense of humor.

3.) Got accepted to my first major conference, and not just a major one in my entire discipline, but one in my concentration. That makes me feel pretty accomplished, though writing the paper for it is an on-going process.

4.) Homeownership allows for plenty of procrastinatory/brain-break activities. Example: rather than working on a paper I should have been working on, I painted a door.

5.) You can't go home again: I discovered the joy of being in a better department in a better university, but missed the closeness of my old institute. For example, I've not met anyone from a department outside my own, whereas in my old institute, I was friends with people from a variety of disciplines. I enjoy meeting all these new people, and having a very closeknit departmental cohort, but I miss the closeness of my tiny interdisciplinary cohort.

7.) Discovered that while I may absolutely adore my thesis topic, it may be time to move one to different, but still related topics. I can't decide if it's a case of being entirely too familiar with my topic to the extent that nothing sounds new, or actually being out of new ideas in it, but I think it's time to move on. I remain a kingship/crusades/Carolingian/fanatic, but a slightly different one...I think.

7.) Was quite grateful that I remained with my advisor.

8.) Rocked the profoundly unrockable, with "unrockable" being undefined.

9.) Rediscovered the joy of absolutely brainless pursuits. For example: Guitar Hero on PS2. Brain-break, here I come!

Conference happiness

To excuse my on-going neglect of this blog...

I just had my first major conference submission accepted, so I will be presenting at Fordham's crusades conference in March!

(pause so I can jump up and down again)

Now I need to actually sit down and write this paper! The semester is coming to an end here, but I have plenty of time during break, and plenty of notes on the material already. I don't think I've ever looked forward so much to writing a paper in my entire grad school career.

Chronic(le) Procrastination

It's Fall Break time here, which means a week off of teaching for me, time to catch up on reading and research for my two seminars, and grading that pile of book reviews teetering precariously on the corner of my desk--though those are anchored right now by the cat sleeping on them, so I might not get to them for awhile.

So what am I doing instead (not including messing around with blogs)? I'm spending the morning going through the newly-released Albert of Aachen translation (which I would've loved to have had several months ago, while researching and writing my MA thesis, but, oh, well). My university library got it in last month, and I snapped it up on the second day. So far, I am incredibly impressed with the amount of work put into it.

I justified checking this book out, by the way, by using it for a seminar paper (typological saintly kingship in the First Latin Kingdom--something I touched on for about two pages in my thesis, and would love to write more on), and for the two paper proposals I sent off the other day (take that, professionalization requirement!), so it's not all for the sheer joy of reading through a book I've been looking forward to for a few years. Really, it's not.

In other news, both the department and medieval institute here have had a lot of good news and generosity thrown their way recently, and the medieval semester continues to go well--I've seen so many great lectures and performances already. My teaching observation went off without a hitch, so I'm quite pleased about that. I really, really need to start learning German. And, finally, I'm already thinking about summer research proposals as well as getting my dissertation topic fleshed out before my advisor and I go over it. After all, it's never too early to think about dissertation fellowships! All sorts of busy here, but it's a good busy.

Still Bloggin'

I haven't abandoned this blog, but I have been very busy settling into a new town and new program.

As for the new program, so far, so good. My seminars are going well, teaching is entertaining and fortunately not too difficult, and I'm starting to look at possible dissertation topics. I'm very pleased with the department and medieval institute here.

Next up? Research, research, research (yay!), submitting a conference proposal, getting my committee put together, applying to the Medieval Studies certificate program through the institute here, and the continual brainstorming for a dissertation topic. You know, fun stuff.

To a Scholar and a Hero

I've waited to write this because I've wanted the time to think things through...

Tim Moy, a professor at my old university, passed away this last week. He was vacationing with his family in Hawaii, and he died trying to save his son when his son ran into some trouble swimming in the ocean. Dr. Moy's death at a fairly young age--he was only in his mid-40's--is a terrible tragedy, but the tragedy of it is lessened somewhat by the fact that he did prevent his son from dying (he's physically fine and with his mother now).

Dr. Moy was the graduate advisor when I was getting my MA. I remember the two-week long rush at the end of every semester when every grad student would run to meet with Dr. Moy to get advisement, where grad students who rarely saw each other sat outside his office and waited cheerfully. I think we all could recite his welcome speech to all the new grads, and we all respected the fact that he deferred to our academic advisors, particularly if he was far removed from our area of study. Dr. Moy saw his role as graduate advisor as that of the ultimate bureaucrat: he made sure that all the administrative i's and t's were dotted and crossed, and I must say that he made the paperwork end of my graduate experience easy and drama-free (a relative miracle in my old uni).

Beyond being a good bureaucrat, he was an endearing geek. I remember being horribly amused everytime Dr. Moy opened up his computer to access student files--a total Trekkie, his screen was made to look like a Star Trek consule. I always thought of Sulu, particularly in the "Futurama" Star Trek episode, with Sulu: "You assume that because I am Asian, I know Karate..." I wish now I had referenced that episode. I think Dr. Moy would've laughed.

I knew his son slightly. He used to spend his days off from school with his dad, definitely a bored child sitting in a parent's office, and once, while exploring, ran into my office. Fascinated by one of my officemate's collection of historical puppets, he laughed and asked questions about them, and we talked briefly. Dr. Moy came rushing in to find his son, scolded him so lovingly, and then apologized to me if his son had bugged me. "No," I said, "I enjoyed chatting with him." "I'm glad," Dr. Moy said, and cheerfully led his son back to his office.

I never took a class from Tim Moy. I wish I had. He always impressed me as a good man, an excellent scholar and an enthusiastic teacher (also, I admired his anti-creationism in the schools stance immensely), and a man who never allowed himself to be drawn into the sometimes petty world of academic politics. Students loved him, his co-workers adored him, and he was respected in the community. I can only hope I'll be half the scholar and fellow academic as he was.

A person could do far worse.

Templars at 2am

Late-night TV viewing rarely leads to anything good. The other night, I stumbled upon the lastest medieval offering by a certain WWII-skewed channel. "The Templar Code" devoted two hours to discussing the so-called mysteries of the Templars.

I freely admit that I'm not all that interested in the Templars, nor have I ever really been. When I was required to read about them for a seminar, I was reluctant to do so. The book I read was fantastic, and I recommend it to anyone, but it still didn't make me any more interested by the rise and fall of the Templars. Really, for what I study, the Templars play a relatively minor part. They held, in conjuction with the Hospitallers, the keys to the treasury of the Holy Sepulchre, unlocked during coronations to retrieve the crown of the new king. But the mysteries, their downfall, their wealth? Not really interesting at all. To put it another way, I just don't care, which probably stems from my general disinterest in conspiracies, theoretic or otherwise.

This show drove me crazy! It was so intellectually lazy, so desperate to create more drama and mystery than really existed, that it spent the first hour contradicting itself. For example: "Nothing was written about the Templars until seventy years after their inception," closely followed by a long discussion of Bernard of Clairvaux's "In Praise of the New Knighthood." My other personal favorite was the drama surrounding the "mysterious" return to Europe in 1128 by Hugh de Payns, where several of the commentators noted that it was just so "odd" and "mysterious" that he spent 9 years in the Holy Land doing "mysterious" excavations under the Temple of Solomon, and just suddenly rushed off to Europe. Cut to after the commercial break, and the show states that Hugh went back on a fundraising trip. How terribly mundane of him.

The laziness continued into their dramatizations of the Templars (apparently, they dressed like fifteenth-century Italian bankers--who knew?), and into their depiction of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (the other territories simply didn't exist on their map), and into the broad generalization that everything which occurred in the Holy Land was part of a crusade. For example, if one didn't know any better, one would think that the Battle of Hattin took place during one of the major Crusades, led by armies fresh from Europe.

Fortunately for everyone involved, I feel asleep after about 45 minutes, though I did wake up in time to hear the various commentators' assertions that the Templars were in fact guilty of the various crimes they were accused of in the early 14th century, based on the number who confessed to the crimes. Funny, I heard that very argument in a talk over a year ago, and my position is still the same: most people will confess to anything under torture, and when the people doing the torture want a specific answer, they're likely to get it.

Now, off to figure out an abstract for Kalamazoo, and to enjoy a lazy day observing the 820th anniversary of the Battle of Hattin.