My own self

Sulla?

I was thinking more of Jesus and the whole calming-the-storm thing, what with Him urging His frightened companions not to be afraid, because He was with them...

Ah, no wonder I didn't catch on to it, then. It's a shame to admit it, but my only knowledge of the Bible comes from the not-very-credible source Christpher Moore's "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" and the admittedly slightly more credible but still fairly brief "Son of Man" by Peter Madsen...

Instead of seeing the presumably blindingly obvious biblical reference, I noticed the "fortune" part, and immediately thought "Sulla Felix".

The Sulla-thing is a much more obscure, but equally valid, catch, so do by no means feel bad. I've written entire pages in my thesis on Sulla and his positioning himself as The Gods' Chosen One, and "Felix" is a big part of that. As is, by sheer logic, Fortuna - you cannot really have the favour of a god without also having the favour of fortune, that doesn't add up. Interestingly, Sulla's patron deity Venus was also the favourite of both Pompey and Cæsar - whereas Augustus in many regards chose Apollo instead. It's truly odd, because those three where in chronological order the three "Great Man" or what have you, that whent above and beyond the career-limits of the Roman Republic. Before Sulla the divinities such generals identified themselves with were more varied (Scipio Africanus maior, for instance, cultivated a special relationship with Jupiter, and Sulla's older rival Gaius Marius built a temple to Virtus and Honos, probably on account of being a homo novus who had gotten where he did exclusively on his own merits and virtues), so I find this sudden three-in-a-row who all claimed to be adored by Venus to be fascinating.

Looking forward to reading that thesis of yours, Loki. I assume it won't be too much trouble for you to mail me a copy once you're finished with it?

And speaking of which, aren't you due to be finished this spring? How's that working out?

No, that won't be any trouble, but I would much more like to mail you what I have right NOW and have you read it while feedback can still help me out.

Yes, it's supposed to be handed in on May 15th. I'm so angsty and stressed I have no words. I only found a direction for the paper that worked in mid February, so in effect, I feel I've only had a month and a half to write the thing where I should have had seven. And tomorrow I have to waste eight hours at a ridiculous compulsory symposium-thing where I have to sit in front of 25 people I barely know and let them spend forty minutes telling me why the chapter I brought suck. I'm so not looking forward to it I actually have a stomache ache.

But hey, this time tomorrow it'll be over and done with, right?

As for getting started late, I've heard the same thing from master students here at NTNU; they get way too little guidance the first year or so, with the result that most don't know what they should write about until the next-to-last term, which in turn leads to them having to use an extra term to finish up. In fact, I seem to have heard that finishing on time is something of a rare thing to do here. The girl who manage to finish on time in the Nordic department, for example, has takes on an almost legendary status...

Sure, but my self-esteem with regards to the paper will be even lower... and it's pretty damn low already.

Nobody - or virtually nobody - that I've heard of take an extra term here, as that to anyone with aspirations for a phD is a virtual death-sentence. (Of course, most don't, but you don't want to make it LOOK as though you don't, if you know what I mean) I did feel a bit of the lack of guidance in the first year-thing, though, but I think that has more to do with my own struggle to find a topic than with lack of initiative from the University's side.

Sorry about not answering your messages on MSN; I was busy with another school project and then I had to catch a bus home. However, I hope your symposium doesn't go straight down the crapper. I'm sure you're cunning enough to make it work somehow

*laughs* No worries, I just saw someone I knew relatively well and seized the opportunity to whine some. As for the symposium, attendance and participating is compulsory, but there is no evaluation of performance, so it's not like it can go poorly in any way. (Except in the sense that too much criticism could demoralise me, of course.)

"Nobody - or virtually nobody - that I've heard of take an extra term here, as that to anyone with aspirations for a phD is a virtual death-sentence."

Really? Doesn't seem to be much of a hindrance here...

How'd it go, by the way? I mean, if you don't want to avoid thinking about it?

It went fairly okay. There were three major things I thought I'd get heavy criticism for. One was never raised (yay!), one was only raised by my guidance teacher who seeemed genuinely surprised nobody else brought up this shortcoming of the text and suggested maybe he was wrong to tell me to change that, then (relative yay, but _I_ agree with him that it's an issue, so, it only helps so much that others didn't think of it...), and finally the third issue was raised by many. Luckily the third one is the one that's probably the easiest of the three to fix, though it should say something about how difficult the other two would've been to fix when I admit that despite this I still don't know HOW to fix it. But we'll see, I'll try at least. Other than those three points, nothing else that was majorly problematic was raised by anyone (another yay!), and I got the feeling most who'd read it thought the paper was pretty decent.

In other words, I'm pretty happy with it. As I knew, I went away from it having gotten confirmed more issues to obsess about, but as it turned out they were only SOME of the issues I thought it'd be, and no blindsiding ones. There were also some minor suggestions here and there that might be helpful to spice the paper up a little. So all in all, it went better than expected, though I think "well" might be pushing it.

A qualified "yay" then!

Indeed. Thanks for caring. ^^