Oxford

Thucydides · Post by **Thucydides** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 10:21 pm

From 12pm Tuesday 7th December until 3pm Thursday 9th of December or even 12pm Friday 10th December I will be at Christ Church College Oxford taking interviews as part of the application process for the Classics I course.

The greatest University for Classics and the original traditional Classics course. It's going to be

if I get in.

Episcopus · Post by **Episcopus** » Thu Nov 25, 2004 10:26 pm

Good luck mate!

Though I would have been inclined toward Cambridge myself!

Make sure to not insult the authors and of course pretend to like the terrible ones!

annis · Post by **annis** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 1:32 am

Best of luck!

Perhaps you can get the darshan of M.L. West.

mingshey · Post by **mingshey** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 2:45 am

Good luck!

Timothy · Post by **Timothy** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 5:13 am

Best of Luck and hoping you do well!

You know, it's wicked cool that so many Textkit members are getting applications to these great schools, going to these schools, etc.

classicalclarinet · Post by **classicalclarinet** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 7:31 am

I think that's predictable.

Good Luck here too.

Eureka · Post by **Eureka** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 8:14 am

Lots of luck.

(I think we're going to run out of expressions soon.)

Post by **Jeff Tirey** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 12:54 pm

Good Luck!

You have a great mind that'll take you far!

jeff

rimon-jad · Post by **rimon-jad** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 1:15 pm

Good luck, Thucydide!

I hope I´ll get there, too. Eventual thanks be to jeff and Textkit.

Paul · Post by **Paul** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 4:08 pm

Thucydides wrote:The greatest University for Classics and the original traditional Classics course. It's going to be if I get in.

Hey Thucy,

You'll get in. It'll be a walk in the park.

Cordially,

Paul

Thucydides · Post by **Thucydides** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 9:51 pm

Wow. Thanks for all your support.

My virtual absence from these boards has been a result of Oxford preparation - preparation which consists of endless unseens and lots of time spent "thinking clever thoughts" for interview.

Soon I might just have the time to send a copyright-free version of Monro's Homeric Grammar in to Textkit.

-Thucy

Phylax · Post by **Phylax** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 11:45 pm

Very best of luck, Thucydides! Am sending positive vibes in your direction!

I was fortunate enough to go to Oxford myself, and it is the most glorious of universities, and a wonderful place.

Phylax

Thucydides · Post by **Thucydides** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 12:18 pm

...letter from Oxford this morning.

I'M IN!

Post by **Jeff Tirey** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 1:13 pm

Congratulations!! You are very talented and I'm positive you have a bright future.

All the best,

Jeff

annis · Post by **annis** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 1:38 pm

Thucydides wrote:...letter from Oxford this morning.

I'M IN!

Congratulations!

Paul · Post by **Paul** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 5:31 pm

A walk in the park!

Congrats Thucy.

Cordially,

Paul

PS: at some point, please tell us about the interviews

Emma_85 · Post by **Emma_85** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 6:23 pm

Wow! That's great news Thucydides!

Thucydides · Post by **Thucydides** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 6:34 pm

Right, the interviews...

I'm afraid that since I've been telling this story to rather a lot of people I'm going to give you a fairly generic report on the whole thing.

I stayed in Christ Church for three days.

After lunch on the first day we had Latin and Greek tests, each a one hour paper with a prose and verse unseen. The Latin paper was a piece of Cicero and some Propertius; the Greek some Plato (Meno I think) and some Euripides (Helen). They were all challenging but very do-able.I felt pretty relaxed and alert when I took them and think I was basically at my best. I had a few vocabulary problems but nothing major.

In general the tutors were very nice, very patient and quite prepared to wait for me to think my way through something.

Thucydides · Post by **Thucydides** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 6:37 pm

So thank you very very much fellow text-kitters for your best wishes and congratulations!

classicalclarinet · Post by **classicalclarinet** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 9:45 pm

Great! Oxford! *thumbs up*

Bert · Post by **Bert** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 10:37 pm

Congratulations.
How does that go Thucydides? You possibly couldn't know all that stuff you described, from highschool? Are you moving from one university to another?
Or are classics and philosophy taught so rigorously in the UK?

Thucydides · Post by **Thucydides** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 10:46 pm

How does that go Thucydides? You possibly couldn't know all that stuff you described, from highschool?

Gosh, I feel all big-headed now.

rimon-jad · Post by **rimon-jad** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 10:00 am

Congratulations!!!

chad · Post by **chad** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 10:18 pm

that's amazing thucydides, all that stuff you had to do and know just to get into uni, but i guess that's why you're going to oxford whereas i went to, wherever

annis · Post by **annis** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 10:22 pm

Thucydides wrote:Some topics, like philology have been essentially self taught.

And what resources did you use for this? I have Sihler's magnum opus, and I recently got Fortson's Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction (Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics), which I just love (Sihler is a little overwhelming, frankly).

Eureka · Post by **Eureka** » Sun Dec 19, 2004 11:47 pm

chad wrote:that's amazing thucydides, all that stuff you had to do and know just to get into uni, but i guess that's why you're going to oxford whereas i went to, wherever

Hey, I thought UNSW was considered to have the best law school in the country.

Umm... never mind.

chad · Post by **chad** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 12:03 am

hi eureka, that's true or at least arguable but when i think back about uni i think of the arts degree not the law one. now that i'm interested in classics my arts feels a bit too hollow, i did an extra hons year in philosophy in leibniz and kant but never really studied the works of plato and aristotle properly through my degree, just here and there. i'm completely biased now of course in favour of the greek stuff, but i just imagine that something like that couldn't happen at a big uni like oxford. could be wrong though.

one thing that i remember is going back to our lib to find some plato in greek, once i could read a bit after finishing uni. went to the phil section and there was the full set of OCTs for plato and aristotle lined up, i opened them and the spine crackled upon being opened for the 1st time. all the other books were grimy from years of use but the core of western phil in the original sat there unused... i'm sure the plato OCTs are well used at O.

annis · Post by **annis** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 2:03 pm

chad wrote:i'm sure the plato OCTs are well used at O.

One hopes they get better copies than they sell to everyone else.

Emma_85 · Post by **Emma_85** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 3:22 pm

chad wrote:one thing that i remember is going back to our lib to find some plato in greek, once i could read a bit after finishing uni. went to the phil section and there was the full set of OCTs for plato and aristotle lined up, i opened them and the spine crackled upon being opened for the 1st time. all the other books were grimy from years of use but the core of western phil in the original sat there unused... i'm sure the plato OCTs are well used at O.

That's very sad

.

Phylax · Post by **Phylax** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 4:43 pm

Huge congratulations, dear Thucydides, from a fellow Oxonian! I must say, the selection process seems a lot more rigorous than in my day (though we did have to do special entrance examination exams, as well as the interview). The jokey myth about entry into my college (St Edmund Hall, which in those days was very proud of its athletic prowess), was that the interviewing dons would pass you a rugby ball: if you caught it, you were in; if you passed it back, they awarded you a scholarship. Well, my own interview wasn't quite *that* easy, but it was much more informal and chatty than the process you have had to go through.

Please do continue to post, and let us know how you are getting on.

Again, humungous congratulations, and well done!

Phylax

GlottalGreekGeek · Post by **GlottalGreekGeek** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 11:04 pm

Again, congratulations Thucy!

Thucydides · Post by **Thucydides** » Sat Jan 08, 2005 3:54 pm

annis wrote:
Thucydides wrote:Some topics, like philology have been essentially self taught.
And what resources did you use for this? I have Sihler's magnum opus, and I recently got Fortson's Indo-European Language and Culture: An Introduction (Blackwell Textbooks in Linguistics), which I just love (Sihler is a little overwhelming, frankly).

Sihler, Palmer, Vox Graeca and Latina, "Historical Linguistics" (Campbell), "A Practical Introduction to Phonetics" (Catford)

topics: ablaut, assimilation, phonetics, reconstrcuted pronunciation, dissimilation, quanitative metathesis, loss of PIE *y, *s, *w, dialect differences...

but only at a pretty basic level!

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