Behind Infinity

This is my last week of regular classes at Grand Valley State University.

I had my last Greek class today. I cried. Dr. Rayor did too.

This last week is a bittersweet thing. I’m so sick of writing papers and prepping for exams and reading x lines of Sophocles/Suetonius/Tacitus/X author every night. I’m so ready to have my life back and be able to spend extra time brushing my ponies, playing Super Smash Bros. with my little brother, and building things. Yet I will miss the academic realm, the forced mental calisthenics, and most of all, the amazing people I’ve gotten to spend so much time with for the past four years.

Today we had our Classics end-of-year get-together, which is basically a party where we get together and talk about how awesome we are and make nerdy inside Classics jokes.

This is Me and Kate. Kate is such a dear. She is amazing with languages. She was awarded the Sophia prize, which came with a “Big Liddell”, the Holy Grail of All Greek Dictionaries. I am jealous, but not terribly jealous, because I got this:

This is the Oxford Classical Text collection of Seneca’s complete dialogues. OCTs are the holy grail of all classical texts, and obscenely expensive. I intend to sleep with this book tonight because I loves it soooooo much. Before he presented it to me, Dr. Anderson made a really nice speech which made me cry (again) about Classics, Life, and Calling.

Here I am with my Seneca and the venerated Dr. Anderson himself, famous for snarky comments and astonishingly effective pedagogy. He is nothing short of an amazing educator and has been such a mentor to me, both in the classroom and in our office-hours conversations.

And this is Ginny. Her official title is office manager, but her actual position is more like “Everybody’s Surrogate On-Campus Mom”. She is the keeper of the stapler, forks, coffee creamer, Ibuprofen, and the latest departmental news. She is good at soothing ruffled feathers and listening to people whine. She straightened everything out yesterday when the registrar’s office failed my degree audit because they had marked me as the wrong major (in spite of my repeated efforts to make them change it). Without Ginny, we would all be lost.

I cannot believe it’s gotten to this point. I have way too much to do yet (4 papers and an exam to write) before I can call it quits. But it’s pretty surreal that after four years of work, this is it and before long, it will all be over. Life goes on, though. The end of the semester means I get to see my dear Stephenie again and we will gallop over the fields side by side on my horses. This is why I can’t be too sad, even about the end of a good thing.

“And that’s all I have to say about that.”

My Dad, as he sorted through the mail, tossed me a thin envelope emblazoned with the Grand Valley logo. I opened it halfheartedly, wondering what sort of graduation-related junk mail it was. Likely the alumni association, already begging me for money, I surmised. But when I saw that it was on Classics department stationary, my heart’s pace quickened and I knew what it was.

Dear Ms. Hunter,

It gives me great pleasure to inform you that, upon recommendation of the Classics Department faculty, you have been recognized for the Prokope Award for 2008. On behalf of the entire department, I’d like to offer you our congratulations on work very well done.

Although I’ve received departmental awards in the past, I hadn’t really expected to get one this year. That’s not to say I didn’t dearly want one–recognition means way too much to me. But there are only so many distinguished/overachieving/brilliant senior awards, and many of my graduating classmates are downright brilliant. There’s Devin, who has been doing scholarship since he was in diapers on obscure topics like the writings of John Chrysosdom, a Christian mystic. And Jaci, who has studied abroad and been to more archeological digs than I have horse shows. And Kate, dear, brilliant Kate of the 3.99999999 GPA (some writing prof had the nerve to give her an A-). Sure, I’m a good student. But not like them. I dabble. Greek because it’s beautiful. Latin because it’s beneficial. Stoicism because it’s intriguing. I’m interested, passionate even, but not 110% invested in a topic, the way my colleagues are. And there’s only so much recognition to go around. So as I read the letter my ears kind of buzzed, and I felt a mild adrenaline rush and a huge sense of relief that I wasn’t left out. I queried my mental lexicon for the word prokope, but it wasn’t working. I knew I had heard the word before…it was a Dr. Anderson word. But the definition escaped me. So I took a dictionary dive.

The thing about Greek that’s kept me going for four years even though it’s crazyhardandannoying at times is the absolute beauty of the words themselves. They have a somewhat musical sound sometimes, but more than that, every word has such a story to it. You look in the big lexicon and there’s a certain two-letter word that has 2 whole pages dedicated to its history and definition. There are so many words, each with a slightly different connotation and shading. When the Greeks didn’t have a word for something, they made up a new one. It makes vocabulary learning a beastly task. It makes the language extremely precise. And like in any language, a word gains depth and background each time it’s used.

The basic definition of the Greek word prokope is “progress on a journey”. That’s actually where we get the English word progress. Drill down farther and you get “improvement”. “process of time or growth”. It’s the word Paul uses to describe Timothy’s progress in the faith in 1 Timothy 4 and the Phillipians’ growth in Phil. 1:25. It’s a key word in the writings of Epictetus (Stoic philosopher) about the lifestyle of the Stoic person. Prokope is not Classics-Nerd-Speak for “most improved student” — it is a word of striving, of personal and spiritual development.

And this is lame but I cried a little because prokope is perhaps the word that best describes my relationship with the Classics and my education in general. (Pathemathos, “learning through suffering”, is the other contender). I don’t even remember why I became a Classics major…all I figure is that I failed art, and computer science bored me, so it was just the next thing. It could have just as easily been English or Writing or even Psychology. One could argue that those fields are much more relevant. But what followed was an odyssey of philosophy and language and culture and thought, requiring more discipline and fortitude and mental stamina than I thought I had. And I’m not saying that I possess any of these things in great quantity, but through study of the Classics I certainly have gained more than I had before, and that’s what Classics became to me: not a scholarly pursuit, or a career, but rather an important means to growth, and personal growth even more than intellectual. A part of living the examined life–an important part, but still just a part, often eclipsed by the needs of the farm or the 17 violin students, sometimes taking a backseat to personal struggles and issues. Sometimes it caused those issues. More often, it helped resolve them, on some level or another.

So it means a lot to me that my professors recognize and feel a need to commemorate this. And it explains, too, why I’m feeling very laid-back about graduation: I’m neither overjoyed, nor dismayed. It’s been lovely…but there’s other prokope to be done. It’s time to move on, and I look forward to what happens next, even though I have no idea what it is yet.

I just finished my paper for Stoicism class. The Stoicism-Calvinism-Determinism one.

click here to enjoy

I really love this paper. It was the hardest and most rewarding thing I’ve ever written. Very dense material. Generally I can crank out a paper at about an hour a page, but this one took more like 2.5-3 hours per page.

Ever since I first encountered my beloved Seneca and his Stoic pals two years ago in Honors Classical World, I’ve been fascinated by them and the interaction between Stoic and Christian thought. There are many parallels present in the two ideologies. Many times I’d be sitting in class and my classmates would have severe objections to whatever Stoic concepts Dr. Anderson was presenting that day, especially when it came to determinism, free will, or the state of the human soul. Many people were appalled by the idea that one’s life is determined by anything other than one’s self. But having been raised a good Calvinist girl, this was all just a different twist on the stuff that had been drilled into me since 6th grade catechism.

When I set out to do some research on Stoicism, Christianity, Calvinism, I found that there are two camps: those who believe that Christianity is Stoicism warmed over like last night’s leftover mashed potatoes, and indignant, bellering theologians who believe that the very suggestion that the two could be remotely related is absolutely preposterous and set out to dispel any sort of notions that the two are related in any way, shape or form. There was very little in the way of a happy medium, although I found a very insightful article by a dude named W.J. Torrance Kirby titled “Stoic and Epicurean? Calvin’s Dilectical Account of Providence in the Institute” which I would highly recommend (and I have copies of, if anyone is interested). His basic thing is that Calvinist theology is in a way both hyper-Stoic and hyper-Epicurean, exceeding and fulfilling both schools of thought. Referring to general revelation, Calvin says, “Since then, the Lord first appears, as well in the creation of the world as in the general doctrine of Scripture, simply as Creator, and afterwards as a Redeemer in Christ, a twofold knowledge of him arises.” The Stoics were in possession of one ‘fold’ of the twofold knowledge, that is, general revelation as revealed in creation and human knowledge. So then, while they have missed the mark, along with many other schools of thought, the resemblance between Stoicism and Christianity is unsurprising and actually, pretty darn cool.

When I’m stuck on something while writing a paper (like, you know, deciding what my thesis should be), generally I spend a good hour wasting time on the internet or cleaning my room and if I’m still stuck by then, I get out old papers I wrote and read them, hoping to catch a bit of leftover genius from previous nights spent with the muse.

Sometimes I get this feeling–and I’m pretty sure Suzanne knows what I’m talking about because I recall her mentioning it before, except she probably put it better than I will–that goes something like this: “dang. I wrote this…apparently I’m pretty amazing or something.”

Tonight, while slaving over this year’s Greek term paper (which is to be some sort of comparative paper involving the epistle of James and Epictetus’ Enchiridion, I pulled out last year’s Greek term paper and I read it and got that feeling. It’s 10 pages of sheer undergrad genius, and it was a one-night wonder, and it got an A and I could really use some comparable awesomeness right now.

Here’s the paper in question, if anyone should care to peruse it:

Luke’s Use of (fancy greek word that doesn’t render in HTML) in the Acts of the Apostles:
Presentation and Significance of Three Speeches

Also, I’ve had requests to see my Seneca/Calvin paper. I shall publish it in due course (like, on Saturday after I finish it).