Brown and its majors

Uroogla
Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:45:19 +0000

In high school, we read 30-40 lines a night of poetry, for example, Vergil. For Greek, albeit in a course equivalent to 100 and 200, we read two sections, based on the standard numbering system for texts.

In my Latin poetry course this past spring, we read at 75 lines per class, so 225 a week. LATN1810 and LATN1820, one of which is required for a Latin or Latin and Greek concentration, goes at 200 lines a night, so 600 lines a week. While in high school, I felt we spent a lot of time stumbling over grammar, it’s assumed that one more or less understands it, with the exception of some trouble spots that may come up, meaning getting through the reading in class is not problematic.

The pace may fluctuate slightly depending on the class (if it’s too easy you’ll speed up to read more of an author, if it’s too hard you’ll slow down to better understand what you do read). I briefly sat in on an advanced Greek course where they started slow, but built up to 120 lines per night (but 2 meetings per week, so only 240 per week). As far as rigor…I had a bit of trouble adjusting at first, since I had gone nearly 2 years since taking Latin after having exhausted my high school’s courses as a junior and not having the space to take a course fall of freshman year. However, I found everything to be fair. I don’t know if this is pervasive throughout the department, but I found the tests to be relatively easy (a few shorter - 10-15 lines - passages to translate, then a choice between 2 big ones - 20-30 lines, perhaps a question on scansion or a couple dates you were told to learn within a 50 minute period), though because it was all reading one had done, there was little mercy for mistakes. The essays seemed graded fairly - writing, particularly literary criticism, is not my forte (I obtained the equivalent of a B in all my English courses in high school), and I continued to receive that grade on my essays (which were, for me, both 5 pages, no research necessary).

Double majoring is relatively common and not difficult, but one needs to decide if doing so harms one’s ability to thoroughly explore the Brown curriculum. And if it does, if one is fine with that.

I’m a Classics/Computer Science-Math double concentrator. I have a friend in my year who’s Classics/Cognitive Neuroscience (and Pre-Med). Although I toyed with the idea of going to grad school for classics for a bit (since to go to many of the better grad programs, one needs an extra year of each language beyond the concentration requirements to be considered, as well as German and French or Italian), my friend is doing classics just for fun.

Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions - I’ll do my best to answer.