I took a class last semester called “The Good Life” and for my final assignment I created a “Good Friendship Compass” which was supposed to create a path toward being a good friend according to the four spheres of activity, Dharma, Moksha, Artha, and Kama. Classical Indian philosophy might be a bit of a niche topic, but this has always been an unconventional blog. Enjoy.
Work continues to be overwhelming in the extreme, so I took another dip into my archives and pulled out some material from one of the other periods in my life when I was incredibly overwhelmed; grad school. Here are a few musings from November 2018 about why I write things down, with a side of […]
This is a short exploratory paper I wrote for my English class in my senior year of High School, arguing for the need to read and study fiction. It has been slightly edited for clarity and punctuation, but for the most part the content is identical to what I turned in to my teacher on […]
I’m in the thick of revising my capstone paper right now, but even once I turn in the draft that I currently have it remains far from over. As I’ve mentioned before, my capstone paper is about the religious figure Brigid, but since that was at the beginning of the semester and now I’m in […]
Critical Race Theory. Of the classes I’m taking this semester it is probably the simplest and the most difficult. I’m undertaking this task of trying to explain this discipline as I understand it because I want to share why I think that this movement and its key writings should be required reading and study for […]
The issue with being in higher education is that there are so many people here who seem absolutely desperate to prove how smart and cutting-edge their thinking is. Even I’m not always immune to this, but I like to think that I’m capable of admitting when I’m wrong or when I’ve said something foolish. That […]
This blog post is a little different in that it’s a little more of what I originally wanted to use this blog for, namely an investigation of ways to think about translation. What follows is an adaptation and amalgamation of some presentation notes, a paper, and class notes, all for my Translation & Ethics course, […]
I was so pumped after my first Translation Ethics class last week that afterwards I couldn’t help but turn my notes into a blog post. What’s that? I’m a nerd? Funnily enough, I noticed. Last week’s discussion centered around After Babel: Aspects of language & translation by George Steiner. I’m going to be honest here, […]
The first week of classes has concluded and with the next one about to start I am thoroughly intimidated by the semester in front of me — my last semester, at least for the foreseeable future — and while I remain cautious, I wouldn’t say that I’m afraid, or think that I won’t be able […]
No matter how many times I have to write a paper for class, there is always a point at which I sit in front of my computer, stare at my screen, watch that little line blink and wonder “how do I write a paper again?” Cue the reviewing my notes from that semester, looking over […]
The course that I am taking on Magic and Witchcraft in the Ancient Near East is a mix of graduate and undergraduate students, and since we are at different levels of schooling, we are taking the class in slightly different ways, even though we are all of us studying the same topic. I’m the only […]
The great thing about an independent study is that I get to focus on what most interests me about a given topic, and time and time again it seems that I am finding myself drawn to Harry Potter. I’ve often joked that given six degrees I can connect anything to the series thematically, and my […]
The best thing about specializing in literature is reading great books for class, and Samanta Schweblin’s Distancia de rescate is no exception. I was delighted to discover that this excellent novel also has an excellent translation — Fever Dream, translated by Megan McDowell. My review here is unique compared to the others I have done […]
Even from just the first few pages of The Kindness of Enemies I knew that this was going to be a book that would stick with me for a long time. The novel is two stories in parallel, one taking place in the twenty-first century, and one in the 19th. The story starts with Natasha […]
Two quotes came to me, from wildly different sources, within a fortnight of one another. The first occurred a few weeks back, when I went to the Boston show of the An Absolutely Remarkable Thing tour. Much to my chagrin, I can’t remember which Vlogbrother said this, but I wrote down in my notebook that […]