By an amazing coincidence I set up this blog (dedicated to plotting the vagaries of my ongoing PhD in New Testament Greek linguistics at the University of Birmingham) only a few hours before I received the amazing and most welcome news that my application for AHRC BGP funding had been successful! My supervisor had left a message on my mobile answerphone telling me to check my uni email and, even with the message from admin. open in front of me, I had to read it several times to make sure it really said what I thought it did: that I was finally going to receive funding to support my doctoral studies! I immediately phoned my supervisor back and he confirmed that I had indeed been successful and that, barring a few formalities, the money was as good as in the bank. I still daren't fully believe it. I've self-funded both my undergraduate and master's degree, and after failing to get financial support last year, I've been self-funding my PhD thus far on a part-time basis. And it has not been easy, as postings (moans) in my other blogs (parablepsis and more books than sense) testify. I am extremely lucky in that my husband has been behind me all the way, from my earliest studies with the Open University encouraging me and buoying me up when I've flagged along the way. I could not have done any of it without his unfailing love and support.
What can I tell you about myself?
Well, I came to academia relatively late in life. After the birth of my fourth child in 1999, I joined the OU. My first course was Reading Classical Greek, and I was hooked. The following year I signed up for Reading Classical Latin, then in subsequent years, Advanced Greek, then Homer: Poetry and Society. This gave me a Diploma in Classical Studies and 120 credits. In Autumn 2004, I cashed these in to enter the second year at Leeds University's Classics Department as a mature student 'with advanced standing'. I spent a very happy two years studing Greek and Greek Civilisation, made some good, enduring friendships and emerged with a First Class Honours degree. In my final undergraduate year I was lucky enough to study New Testament Greek Textual Criticism under Professor J. Keith Elliott. I enjoyed this immensely and decided that I wanted to pursue this with a Master's degree by research in that discipline. In 2007 I submitted my thesis, A Textual Commentary on Paul's Letter to the Galatians. This stood me in good stead to apply to my current institution where, under Dr Philip Burton and Prof David Parker (who was the external examiner for my MA viva), I am currently undertaking doctoral studies. The title of my thesis is Aspect and Discourse in the Pauline Epistles. During the first couple of months I was also finishing off the OU Advanced Latin course.
But I digress....this particular blog is not intended to be an academic blog: anything remotely 'intellectual' will be posted on my logois KAI ergois blog. This blog is dedicated to posts detailing the day-to-day feelings, reactions, problems and highlights of a doctoral student. My parablepsis blog contains posts on life in general, particularly family life, and more books than sense contains ongoing confessions to do with my inordinate bibliophilia.
And the title of this blog? 'Skolex medaminos' is (I hope!) koine (New Testament/Hellenistic) Greek for 'worthless worm', a name chosen because, ironically, yesterday I was feeling especially lowly and worthless, having spent the whole day grubbing about and burrowing through texts with few visible results. Little did I anticipate when formulating the name that by that very evening, someone would deem this particular worm to be indeed of some worth......!
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