These are pictures from my new digs...I'm not sure what to call this room. It's not the bedroom, and it's really huge so I don't want to call it 'the den.' It's kind of a combination living room, office, library...thing. Anyway, loves it.
I had my orientation yesterday! There were about fifteen new art history students, a handful of doctoral entrants but mostly beginners like me. As always in art history, almost everyone is white and female, although there were actually two guys, one middle-aged guy who's going back to school after "35 years in the fish business" and one guy who looks like he could be Jack Black's darker-haired twin. The professors trooped in and introduced themselves, and we met many seasoned art history students, who told us about the Graduate Art History Organization or GAHO, which, believe it or not, they actually pronounce "gay-ho." Then we split up for tours of the campus, which was basically re-covering what I saw in April when I visited (I was quite proud that I managed to navigate to the right hall when I got off the train without having to look at a map like a freshman!). I also got my ID card, which is hideous in the way all IDs are required to be.
Then I signed up for classes--all three of them, if you can believe that! I was expecting four, but apparently nine credits a semester is just how Temple rolls. I'm taking a class with Dr. Cooper on Palladio, a course with Dr. Hall on the making of a Renaissance painting, and an undergraduate-level course on medieval art with another professor that I get to be the random graduate student in. I don't have too much background in medieval (beyond Lucia Giardino's Romanesque and Gothic class in Italy, which was, shall we say, not academically rigorous?) so that should be good. I also have to work on teaching myself Italian and German, though, sigh.
Later in the afternoon I went to a reception for people who received fellowships. Both I and this other girl I was talking to had assumed there would be some sort of program, like a speech or something, but as the dean told us when he introduced himself (his name is Achilles!) it was really just a chance for us to stand around and eat cheese with people we'll never see again.
Tomorrow Phyllis offered to take me on a sight-seeing tour of Philadelphia, which is awesome because I'd been planning to go myself anyway, but going with a local who has a car is just so much better! However, the commute to school is really easy; the train station is a block away, and then it's fifteen minutes to Temple. I purchased a monthly pass, which was not cheap ($116) but it works for all trains, buses, and subways, so that's pretty cool.
And now, I should get back to my 'homework': I'm re-reading the chapters of Stokstad that deal with medieval art so I'm not entirely clueless next week!
No comments:
Post a Comment