Professor Jacques A. Bailly
Classics Dept.
481 Main St., Room 300
656-0993
jbailly@zoo.uvm.edu
Attendance: Required. Assignments must be handed in in person in class.
Procedure:
We will work through the rest of Bradley's Arnold Latin Prose Composition at a slothful pace (compared to last semester).
Your assignment every day is as follows:
Graded Items: Your assignments for every day of class will receive a check (A - B range) or a check minus (C), or no credit for no assignment (F). THERE WILL BE NO LATE ASSIGNMENTS. The three midterms are assigned in the schedule. The final is assigned in the schedule as well.
For the midterms, I will not be pre-correcting them this semester. Instead, I will offer you half of the points you miss back if you accurately correct your mistakes. I will be available to help with those corrections.
In addition to the above, there will be 4 short (2 pages) stylistic comparison assignments. They will consist of writing up in concise, accurate prose what we discuss in class about the style of various authors, plus any insights you may have on your own.
Grades:
You earn them. I am, willingly if they are high, unwillingly if low, required to record them.
91-100%=A, 81-90%=B, 71-80%=C, 61-70%=D, 60% or lower fails. Plus and minus will be given for the top three and bottom three points of each range respectively, except an A+ is 99% or 100% (i.e. 98% is an A).
The daily sentences will be about 20% of your grade (attendance + a complete assignment earns 100%: a check minus earns 70%: absence earns 0%; you are allowed 3 absences), and the monthly sentence sets about 15% each. There will be 4 graded stylistic comparison assignments worth 5% of your grade each.
Please keep a record of your grades.
Extra credit: Memorize Latin poetry (hexameter). You can earn up to 4% added to your final grade as follows. 1% will be given for every: 4 lines if you have a "D," 6 lines if you have a "C," 9 lines if you have a "B," 12 lines if you have an "A-," and 25 lines if you have an "A."
Contacting me: E-mail is best. You can also try dropping by my office. If it is not during office hours and I am there, I might be busy, so be ready to make an appointment for later.
My Philosophy: Latin is complex, difficult fun and Latin prose composition is utterly perverse fun. We learn it for the sheer joy of learning and to sharpen our philological acumen. It, like most humanities, has no use. Rather than stoop to usefulness, it makes life beautiful and interesting. Oh yes, it gets you into med school, law school, the higher echelons of society and the hallways of power, etc., but that's not a reason to study it, now is it?
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
(John Dewey, UVM 1879)