Summer Latin Institute - DAY 8, 7:18 p.m.

I did learn from my mistakes (see yesterday's blog post). This morning in drill I got through all of my sentences, finished right on time, and included appropriate drills on yesterday's third-declension noun morphology and indirect statement syntax.

One student has left us. As attrition rates go, that's really not bad. We have a couple of others who are struggling, but we're doing all we can to retain them, and they are making sure progress.

Today was our last 2-hour grammar lecture. Starting tomorrow, we have one hour of grammar and one hour reading a poem. In fact, I'm starting off the poetry survey tomorrow with Catullus 13. Very exciting, both for the students and for me! This is the stuff that led me to pursue a doctorate in classics in the first place, so many years ago. And I'm just as thrilled by it now.

I don't really have a lot of charming anecdotes to share regarding today. It was fairly routine. I worked with students individually in my office first thing in the morning; I led one hour of morning drills; I conducted the optional lunch-time sight reading (a liberally adapted passage from Cicero's first Catilinarian, which students will read in full, in the original, unadapted, in a few weeks); and I worked with students individually in my office last thing this afternoon. They're paying me to teach Latin all day, every day, in the best intensive Latin program in the country—what a racket!

More soon...

Note: The opinions expressed in this blog entry are those of the blogger, and do not represent the opinions of the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, its students, faculty, or administration.