I seem to have started something

Last night, I think I started a dissertation. The problem was (is?) that I don't really know exactly what I'm writing about, and so rather than get through this exam with a whole bunch of post-it flags sticking out of books that I've read (and an extreme inability to recall what each color stood for), I'm going back to the basics: index cards. Yup, index cards.

I've done this before--not with index cards precisely, but with the same idea. The most successful papers I've written have been the result of recording in a word processing document all of my observations and important points of fact and interpretation--anything that interests me, really--and then printing it all out, cutting the individual notes, facts, pieces of evidence, ideas, clever turns of phrase, anything that occurred to me as I was reading, and laying them all out on the living room floor in logical hierarchy:


Main Point.
Subpoint
piece of evidence one
pieces of evidence two and three, which need to be understood together
Subpoint two
----uh oh! I have no evidence for this; better reconsider!----

You get the idea: it's a very concrete way of determining whether or not you've proved what you set out to. And to get an idea of what is provable within the scope of your paper.

This time, it's a little bigger, but I'm organizing the index cards as I go. Category cards get written up in portrait rather than landscape format so that they can act as dividers--but if the category proves unuseful, then that card gets set behind the 'no longer useful' category card.

It's flexible, and it allows me to take all the things that I find interesting and see what I can make of them. And it will, I hope, mean that at the end of taking this exam, I'll be well on the way to proposing rather than just knowing more but having no idea what I'm going to write on.

(Wish me luck.)

German exam: results

High Pass!

German exam today

...it went quite satisfactorily; at least, if the examiners get the same impression I did. This implies that I get my life back, for a couple of weeks at least, until studying for my next (i.e. last) exam commences.

The news you've all been waiting for...

A-.

"No really, really, egregious errors--though you did usually forget the categories of state and definiteness when parsing nouns. Basically it was a very good exam. I'll be putting an A- on it and sending a copy to [departmental admin] if that's the recommended procedure."

Woo hoo!

Und jetzt, Deutsch!

I have been examined.

Hebrew exam yesterday. Interestingly, one of the few words from Hebrew with an Indo-European cognate is baĥan, "test, try, examine." It shows up in Greek as basanos, "touchstone," and the word came into English as "basanite."

The exam, meanwhile, went pretty well: the known passage was Job 1; the unknown Joshua 8. I don't think I had any majr screwups; I do have a small fear that I didn't go fast enough. Is it good or bad (or just a fact) that I got through more of the unknown passage in the allotted time than the known passage?

The grammar questions (about words in the known passage) went well, I think, though I was stumped by one of them.

Results by the end of the week.

And they sat with him on the ground, for seven days and seven nights, and said not a word to him, for they saw that his pain was very great.

Back on track: Job 1 read & reviewed, Job 2 read. Lots of new vocabulary, which tends to slow one down a bit (note the time stamp on this post).

Edit: That's Jb 2:13 up there in the title of the post.

The Patience of Job

Job didn't have to handle studying in a warm room on 5 hours of sleep. Last night's intention: Vocab cards (will post my vocab card system anon), review Jb 1, which I'd read a month ago, and read Jb 2. But I joined students already studying and they had the study room warm as spit, so I got through the vocab cards and half of ch. 1. But not bad for the first night back to work in a while, and a Monday night at that, which are always difficult.
And I skipped movie night in favor of Hebrew, which betokens some form of virtue.
Tonight, it's my study session: I set the time and the temperature!

D-Day

I'll be taking my Hebrew exam on Monday, Oct. 29th. (Time TBD) It will consist of "at least one text from this list [below] and at least one not from this list with a range of questions over grammar, interpretation... No less than two hours, no more than three; no aids allowed." The list: Exodus 1-15, Job 1-3, Ruth 1-4.
That makes 22 chapters to be known forwards and backwards (well, it's all backwards--or at least right-to-left) over the next 28 days. So, in addition to hardcore use of the vocabulary cards I'll be going through one 'new' (I've read almost all this material in Hebrew before) chapter every day as well as reviewing the previous day's chapter.
Further updates as events warrant.