Who knows where the time goes

Been a bit slow around here lately – mainly because, without the cast-iron excuse of exams, the job-that-pays-the-bills has eaten all my study time. At least the exams seem to have turned out OK, judging by the provisional marks – which are there on the uni website, if you know where to look. Even the language paper on which my answers were only tenuously related to the questions wasn’t too bad. Let’s see what the external examiners do; last year I had a pretty good paper on Ovid downgraded because the external examiner felt the scores were too high. Too high for what? Why should we aim for mediocrity – flattening out the curve so that we’re all much the same?

Anyway, as we know, it’s not about the points, it’s about the journey of exploration and discovery. Not much to report on that front – see above – except that Simon Goldhill’s Reading Greek Tragedy is even better on the second reading than the first. I love the way his argument never strays far from the text, and he is more interested in what it has to say than in positioning himself in relation to other critics. This is the kind of writing I admire and aspire to.