All Wabash seniors have to complete a “Senior Seminar” class for their major, usually in the fall. It helps to unite students in the larger, less sequenced majors under some common knowledge and methodology. This is especially helpful for comprehensive exams–questions from a student’s senior seminar often dominate the written exams. Most involve a paper of at least 20 pages, which can be a convenient source of writing samples for grads schools. However, Classics is a bit different. Since our written exams are already written to reflect our class experience, and we all vary in our experience with Latin, Greek, and civilization classes, the Classics seminar is in the spring, after comps. So though we don’t prepare for comps with it, taking it without the burden of them allow us to do research without any restraints.
Dr. Hartnett is leading it this year, and, considering his background, is approaching it from an archaeological/socio-historical angle. The beginning of our class revolves a statue of Lucius Flavius Agricola:
I don’t know much about him yet, save that he was a Roman aristocrat who enjoyed pleasure. This statue would have been in some public place. I’ll know more about him once I write a 5-page paper by Wednesday.
Anyway, the statue is in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, so we visited there as a class yesterday. Then we ate out at a Vietnamese restaurant Dr. Hartnett picked out. None of really knew what we were ordering, so I ended up with “make-your-own” spring rolls, with all the ingredients separately on a platter. I also got some mango-flavored bubble tea, which is less of a tea and more of a slushi.
