I have a cough. Not in itself too big of a deal, but the fact that it’s the most violent and persistent cough I’ve ever had is especially inconvenient. For the last few days I’ve been having a half dozen or so little naps throughout the night instead of a solid chunk of sleep. And during my exams I had to leave the room more than a few times just to clear my throat and keep my lungs in my chest and off of my test paper. I’m quite confident I’ve diseased the entire Classics department at U of T, over which I might normally be regretful if it hadn’t been causing such trouble for me recently.

Yes, as if it weren’t bad enough that this has been the most execrable undergraduate semester I’ve yet had, the bloody thing still isn’t over. My term paper for Latin Prose Authors (in which we read the first four books of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses and the first third of his Apologia) has set off the plagiarism alarms in my professor. Due to my inconsistent attendance and performance throughout his course, he doesn’t believe that I’m capable of the paper I wrote, claiming that it’s “too scholarly” and “suspiciously good,” and that the writing itself has a graduate student degree of confidence.

Naturally, I was flattered. While I’m not too crazy about the paper I wrote (most of it was fluff and I thought that my arguments were textual leaps of faith and insufficiently presented), it’s nice to be recognized as a talented writer. In fact it’s even quite ironic how he praises the confidence of my writing when I don’t view myself as a confident writer at all, such that I genuinely thought he wanted to speak with me about my paper because it was so bad and not because it was so good. I can’t decide whether or not this means I should stop writing my papers the night before they’re due with a bottle of scotch at hand.

At any rate, he had three major concerns, two of which were easily dispatched (how do I know so much about my topic, and how am I able to write so well?) while the third is causing my present troubles.

The subject of my essay is essentially a character comparison between a minor character in the Metamorphoses and a major character in the Aulularia (The Pot of Gold), a comedy by Plautus. I’ve taken courses on both Apuleius and ancient drama before and done rigourous studies of Aristophanes, Menander, Plautus, and Terence. So while I do know more about the subject than most undergraduates/classicists, I agree that demonstrating such knowledge might be suspicious to a professor who is unfamiliar with my particular interests. Fair enough. I explained my history with such material and told him that I’m contemplating a focus on ancient drama and ancient comedy should I ever commit myself to graduate school.

As for my writing abilities, I explained my leisure pursuits as an amateur writer/journalist to him. Working and writing for campus media for more than three years, editing pieces and developing other writers, how my dedication to the newspaper directly interfered with his course when I’m up all night Wednesday helping to put out an issue which meant I’d show up to his Thursday morning class without having slept, etc. “Oh, so you’re a practised writer…” he said as if to renege on his earlier words of praise.

While these explanations seemed to have convinced him, he still had to bring this charge of academic misconduct to the attention of the department chair, the reason being that his academic integrity is also now involved. Whether or not I wrote the paper and know what I know about the topic is now not the major issue; it’s the third concern regarding the possibility of intellectual theft.

Unfortunately, my paper bears such similarity to another piece of scholarship (which I’m aware of and skimmed over in the most basic act of preliminary research) that, in the opinion of not just my professor and the department chair but also to any classicist who read that scholarship and my paper side by side, it would be “a colossal coincidence” for my paper not be a “synthesis” of the existing scholarship. This is the headache. After speaking with the department chair on Monday afternoon, coughing constantly and likely with the faint hint of soothing scotch masked by Altoid peppermints on my viral breath, I learn that the possible academic offence I committed was purloining the ideas of another and presenting them as my own; that my paper does not contain my ideas which I developed myself.

In short, I’m screwed. How the hell am I supposed to argue that my ideas are my own? How the hell can I be charged with stealing ideas, not through simple “copy/paste” but through cleverly insidious “synthesis”? It seems like my only hope is the realization that it would be impossible for them to prove what they’re accusing my of having done, as much as it would be impossible for me to disprove it. Which I don’t say to suggest that I’m admitting academic misconduct while reveling in how I got away with it, but rather that the legitimacy of my high calibre writing is being doubted on coincidence, “colossal” or otherwise. It’s my essay, dammit, and I developed the ideas I put forth! In fact I’m disgusted with myself for even considering that I should just say, “yeah, whatever, I did what you think I did, so give me an F and let’s save us all some time…” as if it’s somehow my fault that my good work on a meagre 10% assignment has created this much inconvenience.

And for what? Because I freely admit in the interest of full disclosure to having glanced at the article from which they think I stole? What about my other voluntary admissions that the impact of that scholarship was so minimal that I didn’t even pay attention to who wrote it until I was made aware of this charge and was compelled to retrace my browser clicks and have a look? Or that most of that scholarship wasn’t even available to me because it appeared as a Google Book result with most of the pages cut out; that the only reason I did this most cursory amount of research was so that I would feel confident in the knowledge that this is a topic worth pursuing if others have gone there before? Or that most significantly I obviously would’ve made mention of utilizing this scholarship in a bibliography had I felt that it made any contribution whatsoever to the development of my essay and ideas?

If in that essay I made use of ideas not my entirely my own, surely those ideas came from professors in past courses I took on the subject, courses which are responsible for my current knowledge yet from which professors I’m not being accused of intellectual theft. The ideas of those courses and professors were far more influential than that scholarship and likewise went unattributed in my essay, yet that’s not the charge.

This is infuriating. Regrettably nothing more can be done until January since the university is now closed for the holidays, and I was really rather hoping that it would all be over Monday afternoon. In the mean time, this academically miserable semester drags on.

At any rate, here are the five articles I’ve done since my last posted article on the LGBT Activism honour. And in case anyone’s wondering, I’m effectively done with the newspaper until January. There’s just one issue left to publish, and I’m not doing anything for it except the usual puzzles (I’ve got two essays to write and some furious studying to do). Besides, our last issue is full of flighty Christmas/holiday crap, and I care for absolutely none of it.

• December 1 – Waging the war on cyber terror

This article was a massive headache to write, and I’m still not very happy with the finished product. It lacks cohesion, the headline is deceptive and manipulative, and I took the subject too seriously. The seminar, The Future of Crime, certainly had serious topics, such as the 2008 Mumbai attacks, but it also had lots of intriguing ethical stuff, some of which is quite humourous. For example, should there be real world laws for dealing with crimes in virtual communities? Should it be a crime to rape an avatar? Should it be a crime to have sex with the avatars of children? Should police departments be equipped to deal with the theft of virtual items in online games (apparently, there’s an entire branch of police in Seoul dedicated to dealing with theft in World of Warcraft and other such games)? Fascinating stuff, really, and I dealt with none of it.

• December 1 – Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) debate

This one was pretty straightforward, although to make the debate fairer, we changed the question. Instead of debating whether or not SOPA is a good thing (which it’s most definitely not), we debated the extent to which intellectual property owners have a right to protect their copyrights. To that I end, I argued that IP owners are going about it the wrong way with SOPA, and that they should fight piracy with revitalized business models and practices and not with Draconian legislation. For example, we now have iTunes after the “death” of the recording industry. We have Netflix with the downward spiral of the film industry, and we have Steam with the rumblings of retail revolution in video games. Piracy is a result of changing consumer preferences and demands and the reluctance or inability of businesses to change with the times.

• November 17 – “This isn’t a debate, this is a hoax”

Another dull article. I sat in for the three hour U of T Student Union Annual General Meeting, recorded the whole thing, and spoke with a few people after the fact. Pretty simple, with the only trouble being the absolute lack of anything interesting worth talking about. I also felt that the spicy headline was, again, disingenuous to the actual content of the piece. How do I get away with these things…

• November 17 – Butting heads on bikes debate

I’m notorious among my colleagues for hating cyclists and everything for which they stand, so naturally I was the perfect candidate for the negative side of this debate. The gist of my argument? Under the Ontario Highway Traffic Act, cyclists are governed by the same rules of the road as drivers, yet they do whatever they goddamn please.

My original piece was quite combative, which my colleagues felt might have been in bad taste since the impetus for the debate was the tragic death of Jenna Morrison, crushed by a truck while cycling on November 7. So it was toned down a bit, but the core of the argument remains: There are far more bad cyclists on the road than bad drivers, and I’ll be more sympathetic to their reckless transit choices when they begin to take traffic laws more seriously (red lights and stop signs aren’t suggestions, and I don’t drive on the sidewalk or in the wrong direction, and neither should they).

• November 10 – Indie Game Spotlight #9: Hero’s Adventure

My indie game column has fallen by the wayside, partly because of other responsibilities, mostly because we haven’t been scrambling for publishable content as fiercely and no longer need it to fill up space. I haven’t been writing any additional entries because I have a trio of pieces (Hero’s Adventure, The Binding of Isaac, and Atom Zombie Smasher) in reserve, should we ever decide to bring it back.

Hero’s Adventure itself is an interesting little game. In three minutes, it undermines the core gameplay philosophies of most RPGs, especially those in the Final Fantasy mode. For that reason, I quite like it. The fact it’s by VVVVVV developer Terry Cavanagh just makes it all the more worthy of attention.

In the summer, my productivity grinds to a halt. I lose all track of time, struggle to find a sense of purpose, and find myself being aware of all I’m squandering without really being bothered to do anything about it. During the academic expanse before summer, I tell myself I’m going to spend May through August getting on top of things. Yet once it’s over, I find myself reflecting on all the nothing I accomplished. My time feels worthless.

We’re a little past the midway point of July, and what have I done so far this summer? A crappy six week science course for a bloody useless distribution credit, and that’s about it. Sure, I read some Aristophanes, Aeschylus, and Petronius, but that’s not what I need to be doing. What I need to be doing is cracking down on a pair of dead languages, my proficiency in which will determine exactly just how viable my post undergraduate academic prospects are.

I was told that by autumn midterms (so essentially mid-late October), I’ll know for sure whether or not I’m cut out for graduate school in my program of study. That means I have three months to prepare for a (presumably) week long batch of exams that will effectively determine my future.

Somehow, I don’t think dividing the bulk of my time between work and Fallout: New Vegas/Team Fortress 2 is helping my chances. I’m starting to think I might not even deserve the opportunity.

Nevertheless, I’ve got two years of undergraduate study to go (it’s back up from 1.5 years because of the way the department offers its courses) , and 6.5 credits left to earn. Here, for no one’s benefit except my own, is my fourth year plan of action:

Fall:
GRK343 – Greek Prose Authors
GRK351 – Greek Comedy
LAT443 – Latin Prose Authors
LAT453 – Latin Verse Authors

Winter:
GRK341 – Greek Historians
LAT430 – Advance Latin Language Study
LAT441 – Latin Historians
LAT451 – Latin Drama

Highlights for me are Greek Comedy (because it’s awesome), Greek Historians (because I’m told it’s easy), and Latin Drama (because I enjoy the professor). I’m worried about Latin Prose Authors and Latin Verse Authors because I’ve had the professors before and feel that they were impressed neither by my performance nor by my diligence. And Greek Prose Authors deeply worries me because I made it abundantly clear that I did not like that particular professor because of her awful Women in Antiquity course two years ago. I really hope she doesn’t remember me.

As for my fifth year, that will be entirely comprised of Greek language courses (Philosophers, Orators, Epic, Tragedy, and Advanced Greek Language Study) in a schedule I cannot predict. All I know is that it will be two courses in the fall and two courses in the winter, with Advanced Greek Language Study somewhere along the line. After that, my undergraduate career will be finished and I’ll hopefully be on my way to graduate school.

The above breakdown is assuming I commit to the idea of graduate school in Classics, of course. However if that doesn’t go according to plan, I’ll probably switch from a Classics Specialist to a double major in Classical Civilizations and Latin, take my bachelor’s degree, and run. After all, they say that a bachelor’s in classical studies prepares you for the real world just as well as any other degree from the humanities, which is a fairly sad truth I’m inclined to believe.

To be brief, I don’t think it’s an earth-shattering revelation to say that I pride myself on being emotionally detached and comparatively independent. I don’t like living in the past and I’m always keen to move on with my life. Everyone else, however… not so much, it seems.

I was buying dinner on Monday night when the guy who was, for all intents and purposes, my best friend in high school walked in as I was walking out. And although it’s been more than two years since I’ve last seen him, it was almost as if nothing had ever changed. We picked up where we left off, reminisced about what we used to do, and talked about what we’re doing now. When we went our separate ways, we did that whole send-me-a-text-and-we’ll-grab-a-pint dialogue, and that was it.

I thought this link to the past was fairly well broken. Not because I had broken it willingly, but because time had run its course and we fell out of contact, as had happened to pretty much everyone I used to know.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think this is a dead connection. I’m sure as hell not going to contact him (it’s nothing personal; I just don’t contact people unless I need to), and I know from experience that people never tend to follow through on plans written in air or running water. It’s just… odd. The way people will carry on with one another – as they’re accustomed to – after a chance encounter, no matter the space between them.

What’s in the past tends to be in the past for a reason, I find. I don’t like to go poking around my personal history and testing what’s there and what isn’t anymore. Think of it as a combination of “let sleeping dogs lie” and “out of sight, out of mind,” which keeps social interactions fairly straight at the expense of a particularly vibrant existence.

Last night, however, I told another friend that I was on Google+ and asked her if she’d like an invitation to the service. She said she would (who wouldn’t?), but I’m actually quite worried about giving it to her. I’m worried about mixing my Steam/The Escapist friends with my friends from the newspaper. I’m worried about if/when this brings me into contact with old friends from elementary/secondary school and elsewhere who can’t leave well enough alone. I’m worried about what havoc my vulgar and coarse work friends could wreak on the images and reputations I’ve cultivated elsewhere. I have tonnes of anxieties about social navigation, let alone social networking, that worry me endlessly.

I can’t possibly be the only one who thinks this way, can I? I’m still not sure whether or not these anxieties are legitimate and rational. At the same time, I can’t help but view this – social networking, that is – as an inevitable future. Part of me is beginning to see reluctance and obstinacy in logging on as a mark of immaturity, almost as if the ability to navigate such sanely and with a clear head is a sign of personal growth and development. On the other hand, I can’t control what happens. While I’m infinitely conscious of wedging myself into the life of someone else as an unwanted nuisance, in my experience hardly anyone else is as considerate.

A friend of mine is far more optimistic. He can’t wait till the day all boundaries between real life and digital identities are removed and such distinctions are no longer made. I wouldn’t say that such a future genuinely frightens me, but it does leave me uncomfortable.

Still, even though I’m not the social networking type, I’m going to give Google+ a fair shot. The way I see it, it’s the opportunity to jump into the world of social circles and sharing with a clean slate. After all, to rejoin Facebook after three years of principled resistance would be a sign of weakness. To be a part of Google+ from the very beginning? How much more in vogue can you be?

I also must say that I somewhat enjoy being part of an exclusive social network that’s the current talk of the town without really wanting to be a part of it at all. It’s like being invited to the illustrious premier of Transformers 3 with absolutely no interest in the movie. Countless people would sacrifice so much for the opportunity, and yet I’m there wasting a seat with my head in my hands. In the same way, I’m tinkering around in Google+ hoping to god I don’t accidentally reconnect with some nuisance I used to go to school with.

If you’re familiar with the way Gmail first launched, then you know that Google likes to roll out their services with a limited run of invitations before actually letting it loose into the wild. And while Google+ did have a run of invitations, apparently that’s been disabled owing to the preposterous demand to get into it. At least for the time being. So while some Google+ users may still have invites kicking around and the ability to distribute them, I don’t yet have invitations to give away. However if ever I do get some invitations, feel free to ask me for one and I’ll probably give it to you. Aside from a handful of colleagues and the other handful of people that come across this site regularly, I’ll probably have more than enough to just give away with nary a care in the world.

Assuming they give you something like 10 – 25 invites, and even still that’s like 2 – 5 handfuls right there.