Intellectual Stimulation

Well, I'm two days into "classes" here in London. And I love it. Yesterday was absolutely overwhelming, with a three hour lecture in the morning and then my first experience in the British Museum that afternoon. I felt totally exhausted and worn out and like I had no idea what I was doing. However, this morning we had our first colloquy, or smaller discussion group. There are 25 students in the program, and 13 of us had a two hour discussion at 8:30, and 12 at 10:30. I was in the 10:30 group, and it was just wonderful. During the past couple days we've read Antigone by Sophocles and a large chunk of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian Wars, so those are what we were discussing today. It was so fabulous. I finally felt like I was with people who cared as much about this stuff as I do, and who are as smart or smarter than I am. We talked about the characters of Creon and Antigone and how they were portrayed and where their characters became too extreme and what their flaws and virtues were and how Sophocles was portraying the Greek gods and all sorts of wonderful things. And then we talked about Thucydides' historical method and why that was important and what he tells us about human nature and human reaction to problems and we were going to get into more than that, but we ran out of time. But it was all absolutely fascinating, and just really wonderful and I am so glad I am here.