If you pay attention to my blog at all, you may have noticed the recent silence. Never in my life have I had such a full overflowing plate of responsibilities. I mentioned in my earlier post on my experience of acadadia that I had to put some academic responsibilities from the fall quarter on hold due to the birth of my son. So, this quarter, I had to finish up those things from last quarter (now completed), jump from a community college Latin course to the UCLA one (a big leap!), keep up with new research responsibilities, grade exams and papers for a Roman history course at UCLA, apply for a 09-10 TAship and a summer research grant, commute to UCLA every weekday, and be a good husband and father.

Thus continues the great balancing act of my life. Based on my experience so far, I would like to recommend to readers not to have a child in the first year of your doctoral program! One of my peers is in the ABD phase of his doctoral program and had a baby just weeks before we did. He is still having a difficult time, but at least has some breathing room. That’s my life lesson for today. That said, I love our crazy Declan to bits and wouldn’t trade him for all the stress relief in the world.

Next quarter should be interesting. I have to dust off my Hebrew for a Hebrew seminar in the NELC department on “Knowledge, Revelation, and Authority: Wisdom and Apocalyptic in Second-Temple Judaism and Beyond” with Ra’anan Boustan (the other person I’m working closely with in my program — aside from Bartchy). Even though those intense NELC folks will leave me in their Semitic language dust, I look forward to the topic and the chance to improve my Hebrew. When Boustan told me the topic, there was pretty much no way I could not take the class. Aside from the Hebrew course, I will continue taking Latin. And I will be sitting in on Bartchy’s undergraduate course, “Jesus of Nazareth in Historical Research.” That means my classes span three separate UCLA departments next quarter: NELC, Classics, and History. I may be taking a break from grading next quarter, which will give me an opportunity to focus more on my work and being a good husband and daddy.

By the way, I just joined the bandwagon at Twitter. Follow me, if you dare!