The first semester...

It's been so long (again) since I last wrote. But the first semester was really something. In one word: It was awesome!

And that's not just meant in a positive way :D

But from the beginning:

The semester started late in October and I was super euphoric! The first-year introductions were as exciting as they can really only be for first-year students :D

The selection system in the course catalogue is...interesting :D For certain courses, it's enough to simply click on "Register", for others you have to send an email to the lecturers individually and hope that not too many have done it before you. Of course, this didn't always work and the particularly cool courses were usually already full. But I still got into a few super cool courses. Especially a course that helps to evaluate a current excavation from Sudan. I am responsible for reproducing a part of the walls in a stone plan and had to learn a new software for it. I had to familiarise myself with a new software (QGis), which was a lot of fun.

The photos taken during the excavation are placed on the correct coordinates in QGis and then the stones are drawn with polygons in a layer that is placed over them and each one is put into a database.

Then I had introductions to Egyptology, Coptology, Near Eastern Philology and Near Eastern Architecture, and History of the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages were great in terms of effort and time frame, and Egyptology and Coptic Studies are also great to do, but Philology and Archaeology were really hard!

We had to learn the rough processes and contexts from 15000 B.C. to about 250 B.C. (with names, of course, which I don't like at all, especially when you have names like "Dur-Shurigalzu", which has what feels like 100 spellings...).

We were really shocked by everything that came up in the exams and I have to admit that I failed one of them, which I now have to make up in April.

You can't really call the semester break that, I have to write four papers, study for two exams (including Latin, which I'll be glad about when it's hopefully finished) and I have to learn Middle Egyptian (i.e. hieroglyphics). But I'm trying to take the week before the semester starts off and just relax completely.

I'm already looking forward to it!

One of the term paper topics is super interesting: I'm writing about whether or not two late antique volcanic eruptions had an influence on the Justinian plague. Yesterday I wrote to the DVG (German Volcanological Society) and hope that someone will find time to help me reconstruct the eruptions. This is the first time I'm writing about an interdisciplinary topic, which is pretty cool!

I'm trying to write more often again now. Now I know better what to expect next semester :)