TB Goes (Back) To School: Reading And Writing

One of the questions I had when I started my "Back to School" experience was what the workload was going to look like.  

Having finished my formal education a very long time ago, I had no real idea of what diving back into a formal program with the advent of the InterWeb and the remote nature of the program would be like.  All I had to go on were memories of my previous programs, which involved a great deal of reading and report writing.

The reading is definitely there.  The writing - at least for this course - has changed a bit.

My current class is a little atypical of what a "regular" class would be (or at least I assume it to be) as it a seminar, so we are covering a great deal of ground on more of a weekly subject nature (the overall class is about the survival of Greek and Roman Art and culture into the modern world).  We receive a combination of reading materials:  selections from different ancient texts (For example, Ovid's Metamorphsis, The Iliad, The Odyssey, Plato's Apology, The Aeneid) and somewhere between 3 and 5 articles a week to peruse.  The book selections are usually only sections, but I have overachieved by reading the full of The Iliad (and probably should do so for The Odyssey and The Aeneid).  The articles can run anywhere from 5 to 30 pages; longer articles may tend to have pictures which cut down on the total text.

For writing, we are required to produce a weekly blog post that deals with the subject of the week and includes two pictures of ancient art and two pictures of post-classical art that deal with the theme (the post-classical definition can be pretty broad:  Disney movies, musicals, anime, and computer game images have been presented).  Additionally we are required to produce 4 reports, a combination of article reviews and something about the subject of the week.

I say "reports".  They are really PowerPoint presentations with a speech and run time of 10 minutes.  

The report aspect is very different from what I expected - although if I think about it, maybe not really:  I had to do such things once upon time, just verbally or with (gasp!) transparencies.  The technological aspect makes it a bit more challenging though (for example, I completely messed up my presentation this week because I cannot operate in Teams as effectively as I thought).

Total workload a week?  I do not keep hard numbers, but with reading and writing I would estimate it at not less than 8 hours a week plus an hour of class.  A manageable number if I space everything out.

And besides - I get to spend time reading about and thinking about things that are terribly interesting to me.  That, no matter what else, is a solid win.