Hilary Term 2006 and beyond

Full term doesn't begin until next Monday, but school has officially started for me! I met with my supervisor today and we planned out our tutorials for this term.

First, what is "Hilary Term"? Rather than boring old names like "Fall" or "Spring", university terms have much more colorful names that seem to be based on feast days. So the fall term was Michaelmas Term, early spring term is Hilary Term, and late spring term is Trinity Term. But at Cambridge, Hilary Term is known as Lent Term. Confusing.

I never figured out when Michaelmas was, but my official Oxford University datebook tells me that St. Hilary's feast day is January 13. I believe this must be St. Hilary of Poitiers, a 4th-century French bishop who defended the orthodox Christian faith against the Arians. This turns out to be quite appropriate, as I will be studying the Arian controversy this term. Hilary Term is January 15 to March 11, then I'll be on Easter break until April 23. Wahoo!

This term will be centered around weekly tutorials with my academic supervisor, Dr Morwenna Ludlow, a very nice and very smart lady. She is going to teach me ecclesiastical Greek (slightly different from New Testament Greek) in odd weeks and early church history (303-451 AD) in even weeks. I'll write a 5,000-word essay for each of the history sessions, which will eventually be submitted as part of my degree. I get to pick the subjects from some general areas set by the examination board. We mostly settled on those today, but we may tweak them as we go. The tutorials will be on Wednesdays at noon.

So here's what my next 8 weeks look like:

week 1 (Jan. 18) - Greek
week 2 - Constantine and the Council of Nicea (325 AD)
week 3 - Greek
week 4 - Christians and pagans in the 4th and 5th centuries
week 5 - Greek
week 6 - primacy of Rome (i.e. rise of the papacy) in 325-461 AD
week 7 - Greek
week 8 - early Christianity in Ephesus or Milan

The tutorials will be supplemented with attendance at lectures almost every day, a couple of which Dr Ludlow suggested but most are just what I'm interested in. They range in subject from Roman history to Christian doctrine to "the Nature of Religion." I may also pop in on a Hinduism or Islam class if I have time!

One big piece of good news I learned today is that I won't be sitting any exams (or even turning in the above essays) until Spring 2007! It's because I'm doing the two-year master's (which leads to the PhD), so all my testing will happen in my second year. That means I'll have to remember everything from last term then, too! But I'm glad - hopefully with a full year of Oxford education under my belt I'll be fully immersed in early Christian history and all brushed up on my Greek, and will do a lot better than I would have this year. (I don't know if I mentioned that part of the exam has to be done on a Greek or Latin text, so it's a good thing I have more time!)

So what will I be doing until then? Next term (Trinity Term, Apr 23-June 17), will focus on another exam I will have to take in 2007, on the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD). I'm not terribly interested in that council, but I guess I will have to be! I will have tutorials and essays focused entirely on that subject in Trinity Term.

This summer break, I will begin reading and preparation to start my master's dissertation, which I will expand into a doctoral dissertation in my third year. (And possibly working at a pub if I don't get a scholarship!) Then I'll start writing the dissertation in Fall 2006, pause to take all the exams in Spring 2007, then continue work on the dissertation until I'm Dr. Holly in Spring or Summer 2008!