Wednesday was the first day of classes and I am so excited to have started my first semester as a full-time graduate student! While I loved my time as an undergrad, I’m excited to learn and participate in an advanced course of study. With the start of the semester comes more content in line with what I had originally envisioned my blog to be, that is to say, a record of the many fascinating and intriguing fields of study that I am undertaking during my time at Brandeis.

This leads in to my first announcement which is that I am reincorporating academic posts! My old blog had academic posts, and to explain, these are going to be posts where I talk about what I am studying that week, including snippets about my classes and my independent study. Only the interesting stuff, I promise. You’re more likely to enjoy content from my course on Magic and Witchcraft in the Ancient Near East than my Latin synopses! These posts will alternate on Fridays with my reviews, and I may throw one up on an occasional Tuesday.

From the previous sentence you may surmise my second announcement which is that book reviews are shifting to being posted every other Friday instead of weekly, because I am an uber-busy grad student now and I simply don’t have as much time for pleasure reading/binge watching as I did this summer. 🙁

All that said, I’m looking forward to exploring new avenues of content as I build this website, and I especially want to know what readers think, are curious about, or want more of, so please do not hesitate to drop me a line via the contact page, or contact me also through my new Facebook Page, which (minor plug) I would super appreciate if you go and like! Right now it is primarily just a way to forward my posts on here to Facebook, but I am planning on posting more content on there soon!

The Translation

As an example of my more academic postings, the following is a translation I completed in my Millennial Latin American Fiction and Graphic Novels class of the famous (and untranslatable) short story The Dinosaur by Augusto Monterroso.

El Dinosaurio (Spanish, Original)

Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.

The Dinosaur (English, My translation)

When they awoke, the dinosaur persisted.

To read about why I translated this story the way I did, click here, or better yet go investigate my translation page.

Note on the featured image: My roommate baked me first-day-of-school muffins! Isn’t she sweet?