Ah, University...

I'm in the middle of my second day of my teaching position at UCD, and thankfully past the beginner's anxiety. Mostly. This morning, at 9am (which forced a very early commute, just in case the buses were running late), I began with Virgil's Aeneid. My class is all male, with the exception of me, which made our discussion of Virgil's presentation of women VERY interesting. I was thrilled, however, because they all participated in the discussion. This is a marked difference from yesterday's class, which saw me facing 15 first years, only one of whom had done the assigned reading...

My second class today was the second-year Latin course. We translated a letter of Cicero, and it is clear that the levels of comprehension are widely varied. Two of the women in the Latin course are actually sisters, and both are doing MAs. They are in their mid to late 50s, and neither told me that they were sisters until the end of class. Thus, when they were bickering during the middle of translating, I was wondering what kind of animosity I would have to mediate in the rest of the semester. Both of them are very nice, though, and I'm actually excited to be doing more translation with this class.

It is wonderful to be back on a college campus. Even half a world away from my own higher institution of learning, the feeling of the campus is the same.