All My Classes, a Meeting, and Planning

I've now had all my classes meet once. A few won't meet again until after the holidays, but oh well. Today's classes were intense, but interesting. Biblical Literature and Religion seems like an interesting set-up, although I'm a bit miffed at the idea that this is yet another "condensation"- the course used to be two semesters and now they pretty much crammed the majority of that material into one semester to make space for a biblical theology class next year instead. Talmud went well so far, although it's hard to tell from a first day when we didn't get to any gemara yet, of course. But I realized that we're doing chapter 1 of Masekhet Ketubot, and the first daf of that was the first piece of Talmud I ever picked up, with nuqotw in the Brandeis beit midrash my freshman year (at 8am, when everyone else was at minyan or still asleep, and we'd just gotten back from helping to make a minyan at "Beth Bingo"/Beth Israel). It was an oddly reassuring sort of full-circle sort of realization. This Talmud class is going to be intense, but if I work at it, I'm thinking that I should be ok.

I met with my dean/adviser to check in about how I should deal with the fact that I'm taking a codes class but not the required halakha class, and he didn't have a full answer for me besides not to worry too much. But we did go over my college transcript and I have now gotten out of my two "required bible electives" for third year, and am going to be talking with the relevant teacher about whether I need to take the biblical grammar course or not. If he decides that I should take it, I'll get credit for a Jewish philosophy elective instead, but either way, that will eventually give me a little more freedom to take some courses of my own choosing... And I think I kept the meeting pretty directed, so all went well with that. And I got a JTS baseball cap, with which I'm not really sure what I'll do. I suppose I can always dress up as JTS paraphenalia for Purim at some point...

And Rosh Hashannah meal planning is falling into place, and I'm making a meal that should have a really fascinating set of people at it- so far they're ranging from a friend from dancing who's a sophomore at List to zodiacmg to wildblueyonder to a student in the education school whom I've been seeing at ma'ariv. I'm rather looking forward to it- now I just need to figure out what I'm making. It's a dairy meal, so I can do a bunch of my usual favorites. I'm just rarely any good at main courses: I can do a gazillion side dishes and desserts and whatnot, but main courses are a hard concept for me.

All My Classes, a Meeting, and Planning

I've now had all my classes meet once. A few won't meet again until after the holidays, but oh well. Today's classes were intense, but interesting. Biblical Literature and Religion seems like an interesting set-up, although I'm a bit miffed at the idea that this is yet another "condensation"- the course used to be two semesters and now they pretty much crammed the majority of that material into one semester to make space for a biblical theology class next year instead. Talmud went well so far, although it's hard to tell from a first day when we didn't get to any gemara yet, of course. But I realized that we're doing chapter 1 of Masekhet Ketubot, and the first daf of that was the first piece of Talmud I ever picked up, with nuqotw in the Brandeis beit midrash my freshman year (at 8am, when everyone else was at minyan or still asleep, and we'd just gotten back from helping to make a minyan at "Beth Bingo"/Beth Israel). It was an oddly reassuring sort of full-circle sort of realization. This Talmud class is going to be intense, but if I work at it, I'm thinking that I should be ok.

I met with my dean/adviser to check in about how I should deal with the fact that I'm taking a codes class but not the required halakha class, and he didn't have a full answer for me besides not to worry too much. But we did go over my college transcript and I have now gotten out of my two "required bible electives" for third year, and am going to be talking with the relevant teacher about whether I need to take the biblical grammar course or not. If he decides that I should take it, I'll get credit for a Jewish philosophy elective instead, but either way, that will eventually give me a little more freedom to take some courses of my own choosing... And I think I kept the meeting pretty directed, so all went well with that. And I got a JTS baseball cap, with which I'm not really sure what I'll do. I suppose I can always dress up as JTS paraphenalia for Purim at some point...

And Rosh Hashannah meal planning is falling into place, and I'm making a meal that should have a really fascinating set of people at it- so far they're ranging from a friend from dancing who's a sophomore at List to zodiacmg to wildblueyonder to a student in the education school whom I've been seeing at ma'ariv. I'm rather looking forward to it- now I just need to figure out what I'm making. It's a dairy meal, so I can do a bunch of my usual favorites. I'm just rarely any good at main courses: I can do a gazillion side dishes and desserts and whatnot, but main courses are a hard concept for me.