On Leaving

I'm getting out. This shouldn't be news to you my (very very small) audience, but I'd like to use this space to think about leaving academia. In the end, I don't think i had it in me to follow through on my desire to become a professor. I loved teaching--teaching my LAT 506 class this semester was definitely the most rewarding and enjoyable thing I've done while at a grad student--but the research involved never really grabbed hold of me. Or maybe it did once, back before the joy of going out and playing with the TLG was snuffed out sometime in the beginning of my 4th year of seminars and the accompanying seminar papers. I never really became a fan of the politics and constant bitching and back-biting that accompanies life in a big academic department.

As I grew disenchanted with what I was doing, I began to notice that being a grad student was just not fun. We spend our downtime in the office not talking about Latin/Greek/history/academics or about life and things we enjoy but rather about what we don't like. How the department is f*ing us over. Why we're sick and tired of reading for seminars. How much we want to get out. Perhaps it becomes a self-fulfilling attitude that if we are acting unhappy, by golly, we are going to be damned unhappy. Or perhaps it's more than that.

Classics, as a field, is dying. It's not dead, nor will it be dead any time soon, but it's dying. When I started grad school, we all knew that the job market was kinda shitty because of the recession. But we told ourselves "hey, as soon as the recession is over, there'll be jobs." Ha. What naive optimism that was. Universities across the country are cutting back, particularly in the humanities. Higher education budgets are being sacrificed to keep taxes low and now that they can see that these university systems are getting by, do you really think budgets will go back up? As a result, there are just so many fewer job openings in the field. Yes, people will still get jobs, but the cornucopia of TT positions that seem to have existed ten years back, I fear, will never return. Instead my peers getting their PhDs are more likely to spend years bouncing from one visiting professorship to another, endlessly chasing the mythical TT position at the end of the rainbow. Some will get it, some will become discouraged and leave the field. I am glad that I realized when I was 27 and not 37 that the great and glorious TT job at some SLAC that I dreamed about was probably not going to happen and now have made the move to do something else.

What is that something else? The future. I'm going into software development, in a role where I can put my love of languages to use with some that are more of the living variety.

I'll miss plenty of things about being a grad student and look back fondly at many of the things I've done here. I do not regret for a second the five years I spent grad studenting, as they have been, on the whole, spectacular and the people I've met have been superb.

How else could I have spent a month playing in the dirt outside of Rome
or took the role of the servus callidus in an Aristophanic revival
or fallen in love with the melodramatic plots of Greek novels
or spent so many Thursday nights with friends, beer, and football
or taught impressionable underclassmen how to read dirty Latin poetry
or spent hours chasing down all the uses of a certain word in the Latin language
or decided to name my cats after Hellenistic Greeks
or write a last-minute all-nighter pinch-hit conference paper after a speaker was stranded in London because of the Icelandic volcano
or fallen in love with a guy with whom I've had a wonderful long term relationship?
The answer is nowhere.

I'm proud to be a classicist, even though I'm damn glad I'm getting out.

A bit of Easter reflecting

I'm not a huge fan of the Catholic Church. I don't agree with its politicalization and attempts to enforce its will on people. I abhor its byzantine power structure that has enabled so many years of abuse and exploitation across the globe. I want to shun the institution that collectively dismisses my existence as a human being because I love another man.

But...

The intrinsic message of the gospels and the wonderful meditative quality of the Mass are such peaceful and calming things that I can't renounce my faith. Yes, the big picture Catholic Church repels me, but on the microlevel, it's a great thing. Last night's Vigil Mass with its message of rebirth and renewal was exactly what I needed after this week of being angry with myself. Forgiveness of self is an important step in making progress toward the changes that I need to make in my life and I think that last night was a good step in that process, Pope Benedict be damned.

Marrakesh, with a little help from google

So while I might have lost my camera in an alfalfa field in Ostia, I figured that I could use the almighty powers of Google to track down images that might substitute for whatever photos I might have taken, so here it goes.

I began my day with a run out to the south amongst the olive groves that are situated down there. Dusty, yes. Camels, yes. But it was pretty deserted and not at all an unpleasant run.

When I got back to my hostel, I chose to spend the next several hours reclining by the pool. Yes, the pool. Quite idyllic, if you ask me.

Properly relaxed, I headed out to do some touristing and shopping in the souks. As for the touristing, I headed through the Jemaa el Fna, which, as always, was filled with spectacles such as snake charmers and various singers, henna-workers, and orange juice stands.

From there, I headed over to the Koutoubia Mosque, which is dominated by its rather impressive minaret that can be seen across the city.

And then it was off to shop in the souks! Colors and smells abounded. If you so much as display the smallest bit of interest in what a shopkeeper might be selling, you then have to tell the shopkeeper "no, I'm not interested" a dozen times. They're friendly, but insistent.

At the end of my day, I ended up in a rug store. Now I've been on the lookout for a rug for the new house, so I decided to look into a rather reputable looking place. The owner was quite hospitable (as are most merchants in Marrakesh). He started having numerous rugs of all different sorts brought out for me to inspect. I was not so much a fan of the ones from the Middle and High Atlas (too rich for my tastes), but when I indicated that I did like the relative simplicity of the Berber style, the merchant called for mint tea to begin what he called "negotiations" (not bartering...that was something for the market). He started with a price of 4000 dirhams, which was far more than I was willing to pay. I countered with 800. "Ah, but that is far to low," he said, "how about 3000?"
Seeing that he was willing to knock the price down so far on the first round, I raised my price to 1000. "Ah but observe the dyes and the hand-stitching of the rug" he protested, as he poured more mint tea.
"I'm sorry, but I am merely a graduate student with not much money."
"In that case, I will lower my price to 2400, which is a great deal."
"Well, I suppose I could go to 1200, but not any higher."
"This is ruinous, but I will sell this to you for 2000, which is what I ask for one of these poor-quality rugs," he countered, gesturing at a rug that was clearly a cut or two below the one that was being negotiated for.
"Well, you drive a hard bargain, sir. I will go up to 1500 dirhams, but not any higher."
"That offer is quite low, are you sure you do not value the quality of the craftsmanship higher?"
"It is finely made, but it is not a large rug (it was approximately 1x2.5 meters). 1500 is the absolutel highest I can allow myself to bid."
"That is a low price but you seem to be a nice person. 1500 dirhams it will be."
And so, I got a rug.

As I ate my dinner on the rooftop of my hostel, I reflected that it had been a good day. I spent more money so far than I had wanted, but it was quite a pleasant day nevertheless.

Marrakesh

So I'm out of Rome for the weekend visiting Marrakesh. First impressions?

1) It has a peculiar odor. In the souks, the air is scented with spices and fresh leather but in the main square (Djemaa el Fna) stinks of piss and horse dung.

2) The environment is unlike any I've ever been in. Definitely the most exotic place I've ever visited with its snake charmers and architecture. I was eating dinner on the roof of my hostel and was listening to the call to evening prayer from the (many) mosques in the city. Definitely not in Western Europe anymore.

3) Speaking of my hostel, it's possibly the best hostel I've stayed at. A former luxury riad, it is appropriately opulent and luxurious without feeling too over-stuffed (I'm a fan of the pool!). Oh and there are two or three cats that live here full time and have the run of the place. Definitely a plus.

4) The souks are ridiculously confusing. A rabbit warren of streets that all look the same, I definitely got lost on the way back from my run. Like, really lost. Running up and down street after street (I definitely blundered in not bringing a paper with the NAME of my hostel or street), it took until I encountered a salesman (who started talking to me because he is also a runner) who first sold me a nice camel-leather bookbag and then took me back to my hostel so that I could pay him. I might have caved too quickly in the bargaining (I got him down from 800 riyhad to 500) but to get back was nice and the bag is a quality piece. After walking about tonight, I definitely now know how to find my way home (which will avoid any costly blunders in the future!)

5) And while discussing running, I'll note that this city, on the edge of the Sahara, was much easier to run in during the early afternoon than Austin is at this time of year. Draw your own conclusions there.

The end of the dig and...disaster!

So the dig is over. Finito. The last several days in my trench were spent drawing the walls and the top plan, which were surprisingly fun activities, though after thinking back to my high school curriculum that consisted of a lot of mechanical drawing classes, I shouldn't have been TOO surprised at enjoying this process. Because of an arrangement with the British School (who provided our dig equipment), we had to be done with the tools by 3:00 on Friday. By the time we got to the backfilling process in my trench, it was 1:15. It was a sprint to move all that dirt back to where it came from, but we were able to successfully finish it and then I, in turn, had to sprint away from the site to meet Zack at the airport. Unfortunately, while I was running across the site, my camera dropped out of my bag, something I did not realize until the next day. Now I'm out a camera, which is not a huge loss because it was over five years old, but for the rest of my time here, there will be no more photo posts :-(

A few of my favorite things, part V

Pizza Boom

Everyone needs a pizza place. Thanks to Bart, I found Pizza Boom a few weeks ago, sitting a few blocks down the Viale di Trastevere from my apartment. Pizza Boom looks like any other Roman pizza place, with a good-sized selection of pizzas laid out for you to choose from and then have just the right amount cut off and taken back to the oven and re-heated. But the quality sets them apart. It's not the absolute best pizza, but for its price (I can usually do a full-sized meal there for 5 euros) it cannot be beaten. Add in some very friendly staff (between my broken Italian and their broken English, we've had some nice conversations), Pizza Boom is definitely one of my favorite things in Rome (although they close for a month-long vacation tomorrow, so no more Pizza Boom after today).

The selection!

A delicious lunch of pizza bianca, pizza margherita, and Fanta.

Why I hate floors

Floors. Not a huge fan of them right now. Oh they're all right in the abstract and certainly very useful in preventing me from plummeting six stories to the ground below, but man, they are a pain in the butt when working in the trench. Especially my trench. We have floors popping up everywhere, which is nice because they can, in theory, provide us with correlations between different sets of walls (oh goodness...the walls!) and building phases but they are a pain to deal with. Once a floor is found, we have to slow down our work and carefully brush out/trowel out all the dirt that might be on top of that floor (and sometimes that floor will disappear) and get the surface nice and clean so that it can be photographed/drawn/elevated. And then we get to break up the floor with picks and chisels. Totally fun--particularly now that the dig is getting hot. The brick walls surrounding our trench act like an oven in the afternoons by retaining heat and blocking any access to a breeze which makes it...sticky. But yeah, we have lots of floors to deal with; just take a look at this baulk preservation of the floor layers we've found so far in the southern half of the room:

So on the right side, we have the remains of the latest level--a cocciopesto floor. Below that (on the left) is a floor made up of amphora shards inlaid in a concrete, which rests directly on top of a different concrete floor (the small sliver to the left of that). The little terrace in front is yet another layer of floor and the lowest one we've found.

Of course the one benefit of floors is that they provide "seals" on the layers below them, by which we can use whatever is within that sealed locus to date the earliest time (and probably within a 10-20 year window) when the floor could have been constructed. We've been finding mainly pottery shards (including a really neat and rare 1st century type up fineware) but those only give approximate data. What we really like are coins and...I found one yesterday under the lowest level of floor. Pretty cool stuff. Now we just have to wait for our numismatist to clean it off and give a look and then we'll have a much better idea of an earliest date for this floor level.