Someone FINISHED already! I am pleased to announce that one student - Barry, in Indian Epics - has already finished the class. Wow. By working ahead and doing extra credit, he's reached 410 points for an "A" in the class. This is the first semester I've let people work as far ahead as they wanted, and it looks like it's been a good experiment! If there are others of you who are in the process of finishing up, remember to send me an email to let me know so that I can record your final grade for you in the Gradebook. Congratulations to Barry on finishing up the class early!
Storybook Stack. As usual at the beginning of the week, there are still LOTS of Storybook assignments in the stack. If you turned something in before 6PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me already. If you turned something in later on Sunday or on Monday, it is probably still in the stack waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.
Writing Center. In addition to the writing you have been doing for this class, some of you probably have writing assignments, such as final papers and projects, which you will be turning in for your other classes. So, I wanted to remind you that for any kind of writing project you are doing in any of your classes, the Writing Center is the place to go for help. Whether you are struggling with the overall organization of your writing (finding a focus, working with paragraphs), figuring our research strategies for a research paper, or whether you have some basic questions about writing mechanics (especially punctuation), the tutors at the Writing Center can help. For hours and services, visit the Writing Center website.
In addition... for those of you who are aspiring writers, the Writing Center is participating in something called The National Day on Writing. Apparently they are asking OU students to upload their best class writing assignments starting at midnight tonight, October 27 (CDT), for 24 hours for publication online in a nation-wide writing gallery - plus, selected pieces of writing will also appear in a published book. You can read more at the Writing Center website, which will also be the link for some kind of upload feature that will be activated on October 27. I'm afraid I don't have any details about how that will work (I only found out about it by accident, when I went to get the Writing Center web address for today's announcements) - but if you have a piece of writing from this class or any other class you would like to upload as part of this project, you can visit the Writing Center webpage for instructions!
October 27: Birthday of Erasmus. Today marks the birthday in the year 1466 of the Desiderius Erasmus, one of the greatest scholars of the Renaissance. You can read about Erasmus's remarkable life and career in this Wikipedia article. Of all the great thinkers and scholars in the history of the world, Erasmus is my own personal hero. One of his books in particular has been very important in my own life - a huge collection of thousands and thousands of Latin proverbs, with little essays about each one, called the Adagia. Erasmus is also one of the most important figures in the history of critical editions of the Bible in Greek and in Latin. Below is a famous portrait of Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger; along the edge of the book facing the viewer the letters read "The Labors of Heracles" in Greek (ΗΡΑΚΛΕΙΟΙ ΠΟΝΟΙ = HERAKLEIOI PONOI), alluding to the amazing feats which Erasmus accomplished in his life as a scholar.
