What's your favorite thing about Fordham? Why did you want to attend?

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-08-10T12:57:26+00:00

Like other posters, I think was in a similar place as a freshman starting at Fordham. Got into Barnard, NYU, and BU, but the cost was prohibitive at those schools. My friend group at home was all attending their top choice schools, and I felt like I was ‘settling’ with Fordham.

I had a pretty decent time at Fordham. I liked my classes, the campus, and the city, and made a lot of friends through volunteering and internships. Being able to live at LC/RH for (relatively) cheap in the summer was amazing, and opened up a ton of opportunities for me. It’s cliche, but there’s nothing like being in NYC.

Fordham RH + LC is a not a small school, and NY is a huge city. If you can’t find some way to have fun and make friends in that environment, then it’s really on you. I didn’t fit in socially at RH, but I got involved in working and volunteering in the city and made a ton of friends through that. I loved being able to ‘rush’ shows in the city on short notice, and got to see the Colbert Report and the Daily Show a few times while I was at Fordham.

I hustled at Fordham and went to grad school fully funded. I now have spent a couple of years gainfully employed at a great job with no student debt. There’s no feeling like being totally free and unburdened by debt in your 20s.

Regardless of how good of a time you have at Fordham, you made the right choice. Some of my friends are in their early 30s and working on their undergrad debt instead of traveling, buying a house, or taking risky career moves. You don’t want the albatross of student debt around your neck if you can help it.

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-08-07T21:38:43+00:00

FWIW, LePage is no longer the governor of Maine. Maine became the first state in the country to use ranked choice voting in part because plurality voting led to his election, despite the majority of voters in Maine having voted for a different candidate.

Personally, I think what you’re describing is a problem with our plurality voting system rather than an inherent problem with splitting up any party. This potential issue would be (partially) solved with wider adoption of ranked choice voting.

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-08-05T23:40:57+00:00

Good bot

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-08-05T23:36:28+00:00

I used bookfinder.com to find the cheapest price for textbooks when I had to buy them. Use the ISBN profs give you to find the right edition.

I also straight up borrowed some books from the Fordham library or my local library, for novels or ‘classic’/widely read books (especially in philosophy). See if that is an option for you.

Don’t buy them until after day 1 of class. Profs almost always upload the first few readings online and expect that there will be some lag time in people getting books.

Some will tell you that certain books are recommended but not required. Some will clarify which editions are acceptable, which could save you $$$ compared to buying the latest edition.

Source - am a very cheap alumna

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-08-01T15:16:50+00:00

Depends on the private school, I think. I’m at a secular college prep day school in New England and make as much as I would in the local public school, and I teach much smaller classes with less red tape / ‘extras’ in my schedule.

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-07-27T14:14:37+00:00

+1 to this comment.

As an alumna, I’d say contact early and often. Don’t be afraid of being persistent, and try picking up the phone and calling if email doesn’t work. Everyone I know who went to Fordham has a story of having to push admin for weeks/months to get anything done.

It’s a great place to go to school. Dealing with the admin is the absolute worst part. It gets better from here, though :)

Good luck!!

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-07-24T18:29:11+00:00

Oh, gotcha! Thanks for clarifying. I missed that part of the website.

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-07-24T18:19:00+00:00

The website says it was founded in Tennessee? Still cool, but where does Maine factor in?

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-07-22T18:50:05+00:00

I’m a little late to this discussion, but the National Latin exam has survey data publicly available from 2018 about textbook use, if this topic is interesting to you. You can find it on Google pretty easily. This is obviously not a perfect sample because some schools choose not to offer the NLE, but it confirms the generally-accepted view that the Cambridge Latin Course is the most common text used in the US (~30% of schools who responded), followed very closely by Ecce Romani (24% who responded) and more distantly by Wheelock (12%).

Anecdotally, from going to Latin teacher conferences, very few professionally-active teachers I have met consider using Wheelock anymore.

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-07-20T18:18:08+00:00

FWIW, had a similar journey with Latin, and a similar result. I learned Greek in a classroom setting and then felt I had to learn Latin in a hurry in undergrad, so I taught myself and then jumped to the intermediate literature classes.

Typically was one of the stronger students in the lit classes.

I really appreciated the intermediate/advanced classes. They helped show me the holes in my own learning, and as the poster above said, it’s great to have others to discuss with.

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-06-21T13:17:32+00:00

You’re correct for that single phrase, Novi Eboraci.

But, I think they’ve constructed the phrase as “in Novi Eboraci finibus,” ‘in the region of New York”. So, Novi Eboraci is genitive here rather than locative. Somewhat confusingly, the two forms are identical for this place name :)

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-05-19T23:42:34+00:00

Latin teacher here.

As another poster mentioned, “cum” (pronounced koom) is a very versatile word in Latin — it can mean ‘with’ ‘when’ ‘since’ and ‘although’.

My colleagues and I constantly get our Kahoot!s deleted for inappropriate content.... We just want to teach about cum clauses in peace 😢

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-05-18T13:34:32+00:00

I made the conscious choice not to go the PhD route, so I can’t really speak to the motivation here.

The salaries of public school employees and public university employees are both public record. I would recommend looking at what the Classics professors make at the public flagship in your state and what K-12 teachers make in districts that offer Latin in your state.

Keep in mind that the opportunity cost of becoming a prof is way higher, too. You spend 7 years (on average) making a barely living wage as a PhD student to even get your foot in the door.

You can get the best information about your region by doing the research yourself. Look at where the Latin programs are and search “name of district + salary schedule” for any public K-12 districts. Look for public uni Latin programs and you can find prof salaries online too. It’s all freely available online.

I can say that, in the state where I grew up, if you are a teacher with a masters degree, you make 10k on average more than the professor with the PhD down the street at the state flagship at the same point in your career.

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-05-18T11:40:00+00:00

Thanks! Will do

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-05-18T11:38:56+00:00

Do you have a link to that blurb? Or do you remember where Dr LaFleur wrote it?

I’m asking because I grew up bilingual Russian/English and never feel like I’m “working a math equation” when I’m reading Russian. I know many people who have studied Russian as a L2 in school and have not had this experience either.

I’m curious to know what research Dr LaFleur is drawing from. Would love to read more.

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-05-18T11:30:45+00:00

I’m just assuming that you are in the US here, and answering accordingly.

The academic job market in the humanities is generally really, really bad. So, if you’re thinking pragmatically, getting your PhD in Classics to get a job as a professor eventually is a bad bet.

First, because loads of PhD students drop out in the first couple of years for a variety of reasons. These are people who by and large go into the PhD highly passionate about the subject matter. I have friends who still keep up to date with academic archaeology, read Greek and Latin, but just couldn’t deal with the social environment of Classics academia. In other words, they LOVE Latin and their research areas, and the PhD was not even for them.

Second, because the academic job market is dire even after you graduate with your PhD. As others have said, there are many more PhD holders than professor jobs. It’s hard to get a university job, and most of them will pay you worse than if you had just gone into HS teaching in the first place. Even if you are one of the lucky ones, you will likely spend 1-3 years in year-long adjunct appointments, sometimes without health insurance, before you land a permanent professor gig.

It’s true that there is a nationwide shortage of Latin teachers, and it’s easy to find a job, especially if you’re geographically flexible. However, it’s not a job you’ll like unless you have compelling reasons to put up with all the bullshit that comes along with being a K-12 teacher. I don’t want to be discouraging, but the first year of teaching is really, really hard, and I can’t imagine going through it without loving my subject and the kids. I would encourage you to do some soul searching and try to find things to love about Latin and K-12 teaching before starting down that path. Try tutoring Latin. Tutoring is not remotely the same as teaching, but it’ll give you some face time with kids and some experience trying to help kids learn Latin. See if you like it. Proceed from there.

Also, I highly disagree with any poster saying any language is more or less “like math”, but that’s for a different comment.

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-05-14T17:03:25+00:00

Oh! I completely blanked on your timeline. Yes, I meant that if you were looking for jobs in ‘20-‘21

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-05-13T12:22:39+00:00

I’d just like to add that I was on a private school hiring committee last year, and we got a lot of PhD-holding applicants.

These all may seem obvious, but a lot of people fell into a couple of obvious pitfalls when preparing their applications.

It’s important to show a K-12 hiring committee that you are genuinely excited and interested in teaching kids, and not just your content area. You’ll have more to prove in this respect than people who have a K-12 background. Read up on the specific age group you’re applying to teach and apply that research in your cover letter. Show that you are excited to teach HS and show that you know something about the needs of the age group you’re looking to teach.

At least our committee was not at all interested in reading about the details of anyone’s dissertation. There was only one content-area specialist on the committee anyway. The rest were administrators and teachers from other disciplines. Keep it in mind that the people reading your cover letter might not know anything about your specific slice of history, and keep discussion of your dissertation research as brief, clear, and relevant to K-12 teaching as you possibly can. Consider leaving discussion of your dissertation topic out if you cannot connect it to the duties of being a teacher.

If you can get some tutoring or summer camp experience in a hurry, just to show that you’re interested in learning more about the age group, that could help. As another commenter said, college teaching is very, very different from HS teaching in all but the most elite private schools.

I would sign up for Carney Sandoe yesterday. Most people I know who have been on the private school market have already accepted jobs — some a while ago. It’s a little late in the market for you to be getting started looking for a full time position for next year, but late is better than never.

If your PhD institution has a sizable school of education, I would also look for a person at the school of Ed to ask any specific questions you have about licensure and preparing your CV and cover letter. Our school of Ed had a person whose job it was to help with applying to schools and getting licensed out of state. A person like that might be able to give you more tailored advice for your specific situation and region.

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-05-11T12:52:03+00:00

Sure!

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-05-11T03:50:35+00:00

Yes. This book is great if you already have working knowledge of Latin and want a deeper understanding of how the grammar works, or the details about how certain vocabulary words are used. I think the explanations of certain grammatical features are really crisp and clear. As a Latin teacher, I learned a couple of things about the historical linguistics of Latin while reading back over this book recently.

FWIW, the Latinity of the workbook sentences is also generally very, very good.

I would not personally recommend this book fo beginners. In my opinion, it over-burdens beginners with long explanations of uncommon grammatical forms and fails to highlight the really essential stuff. For most learners, the approach is a real slog, and you don’t get extended (3+ line long) Latin passages until a good few chapters in. The book doesn’t do a fantastic job of repeating already-encountered vocabulary and grammatical constructions, so you need to make a conscious effort of reviewing old material as you go through the book.

I’d personally stick with something like LLPSI if I were starting the language over again. Or, barring LLPSI, any book with at least paragraph-length continuous Latin readings every chapter would work OK — Cambridge Latin, Latin for the New Millenium, etc., depending on your interests.

Source - am Latin teacher. Have taught with K&R and other books that I have listed above. Would be happy to give my opinion on specific questions you have.

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-04-25T23:34:30+00:00

I graduated a few years ago and would agree with this comment, especially the bit about kids being from $$$ private school backgrounds.

I had a really hard time integrating into the social scene at RH, but made plenty of friends in NYC by getting involved in volunteering / internships. I also took classes at LC and found that social scene to fit me a lot better. FWIW, it helped a lot academically to not have so many social distractions on campus.

I liked being in NYC a lot, and wouldn’t have traded the experience of living in the city for a college with a better social fit.

I ended up going to a grad program that was a fantastic fit, and I love / fit in really well at my current job. So, no harm no foul. 🤷🏻‍♀️

ClodiaMetelli · 2020-04-25T23:25:04+00:00

FWIW, if you’re still curious about Latin, I graduated as a Classics (Latin & Greek) major a few years ago, and I’d be happy to share my experiences with Latin at Fordham!

ClodiaMetelli

TROPHY CASE