Sophomore Year

     Hello, world! I’m Maria, a sophomore at Thomas Aquinas College, and that means I spend every minute of every day either in class, at work, at Mass, or studying! Sounds nice, huh? It is, but the lack of free time/sleep really gets to you. Which is why, on Christmas break, I am enjoying an abundance of free time and sleep. And I have time to write a blog post.

     Sophomore year is crazy. Everyone says it’s the hardest year at TAC, and that seems about right to me. The step up from freshman year, in terms of both workload and content, is huge. For instance, we’ve gone from reading ten pages of the Gospel of Luke for a theology class to reading 60 pages of St. Augustine’s arguments against the Pelagians and wondering if predestination takes away free will. We’ve gone from naming the Ten Categories in philosophy to arguing about whether chance exists and analyzing Aristotle’s deceptively concise definition of motion in the Physics (with little help from the Coughlin translation). 150-page seminar readings, which were horrifying and infrequent last year, are now the expected norm. It’s a ridiculous amount of work, and there’s little payoff at this point.

     But I love it. There’s something exhilarating about getting into the nitty-gritty of the intellectual life and literally devoting all your time to your studies. It feels medieval, in a way. You really get to know what the vocation of Student—with a capital S—entails. The human mind is incredible, and the capacity of an average 19-year-old girl to understand and retain thousands of pages’ (and years’) worth of knowledge is incredible.

     As we are finished with first semester finals, part of me feels like we’ve hardly learned anything. But that’s because we’ve finally begun to wade into the waters of the truth, and now we’re realizing just how big the ocean is. How can our 90-minute discussions of a few paragraphs of Aristotle’s Physics, or a few lines of St. Thomas’ Latin, get us anywhere, in the grand scheme of things? Well, you’ve got to start somewhere. And, in a way, you have to forget about the size of the ocean in order to have courage to step into the water. It’s going to be a long journey—a lifetime long, or more—but that is all the more reason to get started.

     This life is not for everyone. That is evident, now that we’ve begun it in earnest, in how many people we’ve lost from our class this year. None of us really knew what we’d be getting into when we came back to campus after the summer, and I think none of us can say we were pleasantly surprised. We’ve lost the bright-eyed enthusiasm of freshman year but don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel like the upperclassmen do. But you learn to keep going, because the end goal of all your lost sleep and eyestrain and scribbled pages and chalk drawings is worth the suffering involved in reaching it. No one said it would be easy. If we want the truth, we have to work for it. We have to desire it with a persistent, almost foolhardy desire that doesn’t let us give up before we’ve reached it. The more we learn, the more we realize we don’t know, and that’s a good thing. Anything which leads us to greater dependence on God is a good thing on some level. Participating in this vocation of Student, and knowing that every time I open my City of God or practice a prop or do a science lab, I am doing God’s will, is a difficult and beautiful way to live life. As Pope St. John Paul II put it, "Study is an expression of the unquenchable desire for an ever deeper knowledge of God, the source of light and all human truth." (Vita Consecrata, 98)

     They say that “sophomore” means “wise fool”. Typically that isn’t a compliment. But there may be some wisdom involved in realizing how much of a “fool” you are—how much you don’t know. And that, it seems to me, is what sophomore year is all about.

My Favorite Readings of Freshman Year

In college, we read a lot of amazing books, from science experiments to tragic plays to Sacred Scripture. In this post I'm going to share, in no particular order, some of my favorite readings from freshman year.

1. The book of Ezekiel

     For freshman theology, we read the entire Bible throughout the year. I enjoyed it as much as I expected to - maybe more - but I loved certain books of the Bible far more than I thought I would. Most of the books of the prophets were great, filled with solemn pronouncements and the various anecdotes so familiar to us. The book of Ezekiel was a whole different experience. Of course, I knew a few of the things that occurred in Ezekiel beforehand, but I had definitely never read it straight through before. It felt a lot more like reading Revelation than the other prophetic books, with all of Ezekiel's strange and disturbing visions. I didn't actually like reading it all that much, but our class discussions on Ezekiel were out of this world. 

     We focused especially on chapter 16, which is a rebuke of Israel for her faithlessness in view of all God has done for her. The imagery of a virgin bride turned harlot, which occurs in countless places throughout the Old Testament, here holds a unique bitterness, a tone reminiscent of a jilted lover. The author details how God brought up Israel to be a beautiful bride and adorned her with finery, but she turned away from Him and sold her beauties in sordid places. The comparison of Israel's sins with those of notorious cities such as Sodom and Gomorrah is harsh to the point of damning: "You have committed more abominations than they, and have made your sisters appear righteous by all the abominations that you have committed." (Ezekiel 16:51, NRSVCE) 

     One of the themes we brought up all year in theology was identity (I actually wrote my first semester final about it), so in Ezekiel 16 we talked about the repercussions Israel's sin has on her identity as the Beloved of God, as belonging to Him. If marriage is a choice to forever be identified with another person, a kind of renouncement of one's identity, then adultery and harlotry are forceful rejections of that identity. Sins of infidelity are a selfish severing of one's identity from that of one's spouse, thus losing a sense of self-identification. Israel has lost who she really is in turning away from God, and only returning to Him will restore her true "personhood". All sin, really, is this kind of rejection of our identity as belonging to God. When we sin, we turn away from who we are and seek to make for ourselves a new, autonomous identity. And since we are nothing without God, it never works. 

     Despite all this railing against Israel's harlotry, Ezekiel 16 ends with an affirmation of God's continuing fidelity and mercy. "I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord," it says, "in order that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I forgive you all that you have done, says the Lord God." (Ezekiel 16:62-63, NRSVCE). Nothing that Israel can do, not even this most abominable of sins, can stop God from loving her as His own, and He is willing to re-establish His covenant with her again and again, as many times as she repents and turns back to Him. There is no vindictiveness in this jilted lover; only deep and unutterable mercy. 

     These are only a few of the things we discussed in our two fabulous classes on Ezekiel. Since I don't have my Bible with all its notes in front of me, I'm sure I've left out a good deal. But here is a taste of why I loved freshman theology so much!

2. Aristotle's Posterior Analytics

     Yes, I was one of the few who thoroughly enjoyed our voyage through formal logic in freshman philosophy. I really like reading Aristotle, actually. His writing is dense, but he explains things in the same way that I think about things, so it is easy going for me. After going through all the valid and invalid syllogisms in the Prior Analytics, here we finally arrived at the real thing: unqualified scientific knowledge, and how to obtain it through demonstration from first principles. I wrote 1500 words on demonstration for my philosophy paper (it happened to be my favorite paper I wrote all year), so I could go on and on, but I will spare you. Suffice to say that I loved going through Aristotle's exposition of demonstration and its necessity for scientific knowledge. All this experience of logic really makes me aware of people's arguments and what makes them valid or invalid. (Shoutout to Mr. Oleson, too, for giving us two non-syllabus classes on formal and informal fallacies!)

3. The Oresteia

     The first set of plays we read in seminar was Aeschylus' Oresteian trilogy, made up of Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides. Back in eighth grade, the Oresteia was my first introduction to Greek tragedy, and it has held something special for me since then. The plays are about the homecoming of Agamemnon from the Trojan War, how his wife Clytamnestra murdered him, and how his son Orestes returned from abroad to avenge his father's death by killing his mother. The main theme of this trilogy is a certain family curse which was called down upon Agamemnon's father, Atreides, after he committed an atrocious crime against his friend. As the actual substance of the curse is never explicitly stated, much of our discussion was taken up by looking at the clues and figuring out what the curse was.
     There is a disturbing cycle of guilt contained in the plot of the trilogy: before setting out to war, Agamemnon sacrificed his own daughter, Iphigeneia, to appease Artemis, who otherwise would have sent unfavorable winds and not let them sail safely to Troy. Clytamnestra, later, kills Agamemnon on the grounds that he killed her daughter, which seems justifiable, though whether that was her only motive is highly questionable. Then Orestes, who is heralded by the Chorus as a kind of "savior from the outside", returns home and avenges his father by killing his mother. The Furies turn on him in the final play, condemning him as a matricide. The horrific cycle of killing a family member to avenge the somewhat-justified dmurder of another family member thus goes on for far too long before the gods step in and the Furies are sated. This, so my seminar thought, was the curse called down upon Atreides after he forced his friend to unwittingly eat his own children. It is a haunting and truly tragic chain of events, in which no character is either totally wicked or totally justified in his actions. One of my seminar tutors, our president Dr. McLean, brought up at the end of our discussion how this tragic cycle of guilt and need for a "savior from outside" to make things right sounds a lot like the state of mankind in need of a Redeemer. It just goes to show that the greatest minds of the ancient times, even before God's revelation, had some inkling of what was to come--and why it was necessary.

4. Gregor Mendel's experiments on genetics
     Natural Science was definitely the hardest class for me in freshman year. Despite it being the most intense and lively class for my already wild and combative section, I didn't find the subject material very engaging. That is, until we read Mendel. I have always been interested in genetics, and reading Mendel's own account of his experiments on his thousands of pea plants was fascinating. His simple method of observing and opening every single pea pod to record its characteristics yielded some remarkable results: probability ratios of offspring genetics, ratios of hybrids to constants, and proportions of how offspring would actually look compared to its genetic makeup (because of the tendency of the dominant trait to always manifest when present). It was amazing how, when he had enough samples (tens of thousands), the numbers he counted by observation matched up almost perfectly with the numbers he predicted by his probability ratios. Mendel's discoveries are still relevant today, as the quiet little botanist monk is now known as the father of genetics.
     Reading Mendel's report, I was so enthusiastic about his successful experiments that I explained it all to several people, including my suite mate Emily, whose section had the misfortune of skipping the Mendel reading due to schedule constraints. I had never experienced such excitement about natural science, and it was really a treat to participate in our two class discussions on Mendel's work.

5. Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War
     Thucydides was one of the two things we read in seminar that effectively killed almost all freshman enthusiasm. Our three weeks spent on him involved 150-200 page readings of dry historical accounts every week, which turned even finishing the seminar readings into a rare occurrence, let alone liking them. To be honest, I'm not really sure why I did like Thucydides so much. The military aspect of his history (it was about a war, after all) did not make it appealing, and the speeches interspersed between the accounts of battles were interminable and almost worse than the battles. But his style of retelling the events of the war kept it interesting for me, in large part because it was reminiscent for me of learning ancient history in elementary school, when my mom read to us aloud from A Child's History of the World. I understood the military maneuvers and strategies much better than I expected to, and found myself well able to comment on the advantages and disadvantages of the various decisions the generals and rulers made. My favorite part of the history was when the Athenians decided, against Nicias'--and Pericles'-- express advice, to try to conquer Sicily, which failed horribly. (As a side note, I was hardcore on the side of Sparta the whole time.) Another fun aspect of Thucydides was that afterward we read Aristotle's Rhetoric, which gave us new knowledge with which to analyze the numerous speeches in Thucydides, including Pericles' famous funeral oration.

These, among other things, were some of my favorite readings of my freshman year of college. It was an amazing year, as I can't stress enough. What an opportunity God has given me!

Sword of Honour

     The latest book I listened to was Sword of Honour by Evelyn Waugh. It was my first experience of Waugh's writing, and I greatly enjoyed it. Apparently the book is actually a trilogy of novels, but the edition I listened to seamlessly connected them and I didn't even notice. 

     The plot follows Guy Crouchback (lovely name, I know) and his experience as an English soldier during World War II. Most of the action takes place in a military setting, which is usually boring to me, but Waugh does a wonderful job of being just technical enough--but not too technical--that it's both informative and engaging. My favorite part of the book (as usual) is the array of gloriously diverse characters. Despite the complete absence of physical descriptions, I felt as though I knew each character personally and could picture each one with ease. I was laughing out loud countless times while sitting at my computer at work. The close of the story is not as satisfying as I would like, but I can't think of a single book ending I did enjoy completely! 

     Sword of Honour definitely got me interesting in reading more Waugh. Especially if all his books are so hilarious! It is a great story, with a wonderful balance between plot and character. A must-read for anyone who enjoys British literature!

The Brothers Karamazov

     I recently read The Brothers Karamazov by the Fyodor Dostoevsky. On the whole, it was very interesting and I enjoyed it, despite the fact that the plot was difficult to follow most of the time. There was a distinct lack of likable characters (only one to my count), but that doesn't usually stop me from enjoying a story, and it didn't this time.
     The story follows the Karamazov family: Fyodor Pavlovich, the dissolute father; Dmitri (Mitya), the military son who follows somewhat in his father's footsteps; Ivan, the atheist and scholar; and Alexei (Alyosha), the kind and quiet would-be monk. Relations among all the members of the family are strained, and there is talk of theft and mental illness--especially when Fyodor Pavlovich is murdered.
     A good chunk of the story is a murder mystery, but with one downfall: you never find out beyond doubt who the murderer is. Woven into the seams of the mystery are many tragic, frustrating, funny, and entertaining encounters between characters. I know this book is considered great literature by many people, but if there is a deeper underlying theme, I definitely missed it. Wouldn't be the first time, either. I'll leave the analysis to the scholars.
   Anyway, this is a book I would recommend to anyone who knows what to expect from Russian literature and is looking for an entertaining and not-too-deep story!

Gone with the Wind

     This week I finished listening to Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell for the second time. I loved it just as much as I did the first time (and still hate the ending). It is often called the "great novel of the South," which I think is an apt description. Reading it definitely made me more interested in the Civil War and the way it changed day-to-day life for both the North and the South.

     For some reason, I tend to enjoy books whose main characters are not likable...Gone with the Wind is definitely an example of that. In fact, you could argue that there isn't a single likable character in the entire novel. But somehow that makes it more enjoyable, more compelling. Vain, manipulative Scarlett O'Hara; coarse and unpredictable Rhett Butler; maddeningly sweet Melanie Hamilton; ineffectual Ashley Wilkes...they're all obnoxious in their own ways, yet somehow the reader can't help but love them. Or at least care what happens to them.
     One nice aspect of this book is that no character's actions are all good or all bad. (Not even Melanie's!) They're much more human in the way they all make mistakes and all have moments of goodness. There are misconstrued motives, miscommunications, volatile characters, stubborn characters, some who are both stubborn and volatile. It's easy to be pulled into a book which is so like real life. Pulled into it enough to stick with it through the entire lengthy saga.
     I listened to Gone with the Wind as an audiobook. The whole thing was just over 49 hours long. (For comparison, Les Miserables is over 60 hours and War and Peace is almost 62.) It's an exciting 49 hours! Murders, romances, parties, escapes, danger, death, humor, history...it all happens between the pages of this book.
     There is an old and very famous movie of Gone with the Wind starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. It was made in 1939 and is the highest-grossing movie of all time in Canada and the USA. It was the first major film in color, too. It's more than four hours long, but man they had to cut a lot from the story! The original cut of the movie was over seven hours. I wonder if even that was time enough for the whole story. Anyway, it's a very well-done adaptation. It would be interesting to see a newer version of it (now that film in color is no longer a novelty), but it seems that no one has undertaken the task since 1939. Ah, well, perhaps for the better.
     The main downfall of the book is its abysmal ending. Talk about no closure whatsoever! Remind me never to write an ending like that in one of my books.
     So anyway, I really like Gone With the Wind. I know some people who hate it, which I can understand. But I'd say it's worth a try for anyone who's interested in a great civil-war romance!

Quotes

I like to collect interesting quotes.
Here are two from The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius.

"But folly, driven by self-deception, cannot change the merits of the case; nor can I think it right either to hide the truth or concede a lie."

"How could hostile fury drive men to take up arms when war offers no reward for gaping wounds except the blood that was spilled?" 

I have been re-reading Story of a Soul by St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who has some comforting words.

"But when God stretches out His hand to ask, His hand is never empty, and His intimate friends can draw from Him the courage and strength they need."

"Ah! Poor women, how they are misunderstood! And yet they love God in much larger numbers than men do and during the Passion of Our Lord, women had more courage than the apostles since they braved the insults of the soldiers and dared to dry the adorable Face of Jesus. It is undoubtedly because of this that He allows misunderstanding to be their lot on earth, since He chose it for Himself."

And a few miscellaneous quotations:

"Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st Live well; how long or short permit to Heaven." (St. Michael, in John Milton's Paradise Lost) 

"There are some who desire knowledge merely for its own sake; and that is shameful curiosity. And there are others who desire to know, in order that they may themselves be known; and that is vanity, disgraceful too. Others again desire knowledge in order to acquire money or preferment by it; that too is a discreditable quest. But there are also some who desire knowledge, that they may build up the souls of others with it; and that is charity. Others, again, desire it that they may themselves be built up thereby; and that is prudence. Of all these types, only the last two put knowledge to the right use." (St. Bernard, Sermon on the Canticle of Canticles)

"God accepts our desires as though they were a great value. He longs ardently for us to desire and love him. He accepts our petitions for benefits as though we were doing him a favor. His joy in giving is greater than ours in receiving. So let us not be apathetic in our asking, nor set too narrow bounds to our requests; nor ask for frivolous things unworthy of God's greatness." (St. Gregory Nazianzen)

"Who could know that, at a certain point in time, when it was very hard for you, you said through tears that you love Him and always want to love Him?" (Fr. Tadeusz Dajczer) 

2016 in Review

The new year is here, and it's time to reflect on the year that just closed. I'll look at the highlight of each month of 2016.

January
In January I got to go to the March For Life, spent 74 hours in a bus next to my best friend, attended Mass in a roadside ditch during a snowstorm, enjoyed sleeping on a gym floor with nothing but a blanket, and most importantly helped make history and gain media attention for the pro-life cause.

February

North Central ACDA Regional Honor Choir was by far my favorite of my honor choir experiences. Dr. Head was an amazing director and over that magical weekend I learned so much about myself as a musician.

March
Sang for four Masses and one Good Friday liturgy over the Easter Triduum. And early Easter meant that when I turned 17, it was no longer Lent!

April
In April BHS choirs went on a trip to Omaha to see Phantom of the Opera live at the Orpheum Theatre. The production was too fabulous for words.

MayMy best friends graduated from high school. Crazy how time goes by.

June
Got to live with Nicole for two weeks while my family traveled around the country going to weddings and getting proposed to. Also, Shakespeare Camp began in late June.

July
TAC Summer Program. I wish I could relive those two weeks exactly how they happened. So happy to be returning there for college next year!

August

South Dakota Honor Choir, though exhausting and a bit much right after TAC, was still an unforgettable musical experience. Good ol' Randy Stenson and the IlluminAltos.

September

After my last Broomtree, I started senior year. Which I wish were already done.

October
Mom and I went to Germany, stayed in a picturesque abbey, ate delicious food, spent time with my now-professed aunt, and witnesses the miracle at the tomb of St. Walburga. So much history. So much Catholic. So much joy.

NovemberNaNoWriMo 2016. Wrote a novel which I changed into a novella after meeting word count quota. Kind of a tragic story but beautiful in its own way. Also, official acceptance from TAC plus a free t-shirt.

December
The twins came home from college and we went on The Bestie Roadtrip. Great music, laughs, conversations, hugs, food, everything. The ultimate road trip.

So yeah, 2016 was pretty cool for my life. I can't wait to see what 2017 brings my way!

NaNoWriMo 2016...done!

All finished with NaNoWriMo 2016! Final word count of 50,166, written in 28 days! 

I'm so glad I got my third book written...but man does it need editing! The agenda for next semester is revisions, revisions galore! 

It was so cool to participate again in a project that is so intimately related to a huge part of who I am. I think I will miss it next year, but in college maybe I'll be too busy to notice!

Things Galore

November always seems to be a busy month. What with NaNoWriMo, quiz bowls, choir rehearsals, standardized tests, and other random events going on, there hasn't been a lot of downtime. Today was a snow day for the high school so we had a relaxed "sweatpants day." The musical, Beauty and the Beast, opened yesterday, but they had to cancel tonight's performance because of the weather. Tessie was glad for the break.
On day 18 of NaNoWriMo, my current word count is 34,287. It's been a pretty steady climb. The most I've written in a day was 4,200-something, so I'm well ahead of the daily quota, but not crazy-ahead (like some of my writing buddies are). This book has definitely been more of a challenge to write than last year's, but I'm hoping the finished product will make it worth it. It's so cool to have time to write books in high school.
We have had three high school quiz bowls this year so far. My team has placed first, second, and third at each one, respectively. There were 46 teams at Monday's, so the competition was heated! The one scheduled for Monday will have 34 teams, so it shouldn't be quite so overwhelming.

Our first-place win in Brookings.

Both our teams at Roosevelt--we got third, our other team got second.

Yesterday we went to the opening night show of BHS's fall musical, Beauty and the Beast. It was a fantastic production, as always. I'm looking forward to going again tomorrow. 

She was such a cute piece of silverware! This is her smile after three performances in one day!

I've dug out the Christmas music books to start practicing for the season, and I'm enjoying it! We have some good repertoire in concert choir, and the Youth Choir Christmas program at church is going to be adorable. Now I just have to learn that music...

Next week is the flood of siblings for Thanksgiving. We're excited to have all seven kids together for the first holiday in two years!

Some Art

The twins had asked me for some art for their birthday, so I took the opportunity last week to do some art with books. I got a book from the antique store and had fun doing things with the pages.

 First I tried different styles of "blackout poetry." I plan to do more interesting versions of these in the future. It's hard to choose the words, but looks pretty cool once it's finished.

For the twins I made quotes on the book pages, which I'd done a watercolor wash on first. I was really happy with how these turned out.

The Queen's Thief

Recently I finished the Queen's Thief series by Megan Whelan Turner. I'd read them on the recommendation of one of my writing group members, and I'm very glad I did. The books were different than what I usually enjoy, but they were very well-written and the setting reminded me of one of my books, so it was interesting to see how the setting affected the story.

The books are in this order:
The Thief  (Newberry Honor) - it took me a while to get into the rhythm of this one, but it had an intriguing plot that made me pick up the second one when I finished it.
The Queen of Attolia - this was the book that really got me hooked on the series. It focused heavily on character development (I approve) and there was plot twist after plot twist...I couldn't put it down!
The King of Attolia - in choosing my favorite book of the series, I can't decide between this and the second book. Its heartbreaking plot, fabulous characters, and epic action sprinkled with humor dazzled me.
A Conspiracy of Kings - I have to say, this one disappointed me a bit after the third one. It's still really well-written and has lots of great elements, but the plot seemed relatively scattered, and I was left with a lot of questions after finishing it. That being said, it supposedly isn't the intended "last book" for the series, so there's still hope!
Overall, these books were very good. The plots were complex, fast-paced, and surprising, the characters were never static, the worldbuilding was excellent, and the writing was unique and beautiful.

Starting School

The end of August means the beginning of the school year, which is my senior year of high school! I'm so glad to be getting done with high school and moving on to bigger and more interesting things. Here's my (mostly-elective) lineup for senior year:
Statistics
American History (part 2)
Ethics (theology)
German (still teaching myself for fun)
History of the Church
Poetry (with Dad)
ACT math test prep
Concert Choir
...and the obvious piano and voice lessons.
With so little school to do, I'll have plenty of time for my favorite hobbies: writing, reading, baking, and music!

TAC 2016: Final Days & Dance

After our trip to LA, we stayed on campus for the rest of the program. We finished up the final week of classes (one of the days I got sick and slept through both...haha) and did some more activities, including an admissions Q&A and a "theology on tap" night with Fr. Sebastian (which was beyond amazing because Fr. Sebastian is the coolest priest ever).
On the last night we had a farewell banquet (pasta and shrimp, yum yum!), a talent show, Rosary, and Adoration, before an outside dance. The dance was incredibly fun and I got rather sore! We did lots of swing and waltz, with a little rumba and tango. Because of our previous dance practices everyone knew the basic steps, so we could all join in. It was what I call a "real" dance, which are always the best!
After the dance (so around 12:30) we sat down in front of the projector for a final slideshow of pictures from the whole two weeks.



The next morning I was in the lucky group which left at 6:25am, so I got around three hours of sleep and didn't get much of a chance to say good-bye, but at least I got home at a decent time!
It was truly two of the most amazing weeks in my life. I've already begun my application, so we'll see if I end up at Thomas Aquinas College next year! And hopefully I'll reconnect with some of the friends I made at the summer program.

TAC 2016: the Getty Center & the Hollywood Bowl

Two days after our trip to the beach, we boarded the buses again, this time heading toward Los Angeles.

First stop was the Getty Center. We didn't have as much time there as we would have liked, due to fires and bad traffic, but it was still a lot of fun. My group headed straight for the Impressionist paintings.

Monet

Renoir

 After seeing our fill of those, we moved on to Sacred Art.

a beautiful little Annunciation

 There was a whole room of old illuminated books and manuscripts. It was my favorite part! 

 We tried to read the Latin but the handwriting was a bit too intricate for our modern minds.

 There were also some stained-glass windows in an adjoining room.

St. Margaret of Scotland: the patron of our homeschool group.

After the Getty Center, we drove to the Hollywood Bowl. We had pizza and fruit around picnic tables outside the entrance, then went in for the orchestra concert.

You could almost see the Hollywood sign from our seats!

with Antonia and Bernadette before the concert

The concert was fantastic—Beethoven and Ravel.

We got back to campus around midnight, all exhausted but happy.

TAC 2016: The Classes, Etc.

Thomas Aquinas College has a Great Books curriculum, which means the students spend four years reading the "great books" of western civilization and learning about the world and God through them. To give an idea of the kind of things they read, here's what we read on the Summer Program (all of which are read at some point during the four years):
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex and Antigone
Plato - Euthyphro
Fragments from the Pre-Socratic philosophers
Genesis - chapters 1 through 25
Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling: "Exordium and Eulogy on Abraham"
Pascal - "The Wager"
Fabre - The Bees
St. Thomas Aquinas - Summa Theologica, Q.2, art. 3
Euclid - Definitions, Common Notions, and Propositions 1 - 32
Boethius - The Consolation of Philosophy
Flannery O'Connor - Everything That Rises Must Converge
We would read the assigned reading, then discuss it in class. We were all broken up into sections, led by a tutor, who would ask an opening question. Then he would guide the discussion, but the conversation was fueled by the students. My section got into some deep stuff, including how to prove the existence of the soul, whether or not faith is reasonable, the purpose of creation, the definition of piety, and much more. It was magical to be able to discuss these fundamental questions with my peers in the light of Catholic teaching. It's kind of mind-blowing, really.
We also had Study Hall every evening, which meant everyone was in the library for two hours of silent study. It was nice not to have to make time for getting the reading done!

the whole Summer Program group

photo credit

my section, Section 2, with our tutor Mr. Augros

Besides classes, we did a lot of sports, music, and prayer. There were two Masses every day, one Tridentine and one Novus Ordo, both in Latin. While we were there there were two to four priests present at all times, depending on the day. We had Confession, Rosary every evening, Stations of the Cross, and a Marian procession, in addition to praying before every class.
On Sunday we were allowed to sing in the choir, so I met the choir director. We sang Hassler's "Missa Secunda" for the Mass parts and all sorts of beautiful traditional hymns. The chapel was really cool from the choir loft.
There was constantly someone at the piano in the commons, and we had a bonfire one night and sang songs.
We also performed a Shakespeare play, the Comedy of Errors, which was a lot of fun and very funny. There was also a dance on the last day, for which we had practices throughout the two weeks. We would go down to the ponds sometimes to swim or wade, and we went hiking in the mountains one day.
We also took a couple of field trips, which will the subject of my next two posts.

TAC 2016: Around Campus

Now that I'm finally back from California and Honor Choir, I can sit down and blog. So here's the first round of photos from Thomas Aquinas College! The campus was beautiful—nestled in the mountains near Santa Barbara, half an hour from the beach. More on the actual program in a later post.

Waiting for take-off around 6am.

Flying over mountain/desert on the way.

Approaching Los Angeles.

The prefects decorated each girl's name-tag differently.

My room for the two weeks.

Looking toward the quad from outside the dorms.

The girls' dorm: Saint Monica Hall.

The statue of St. Monica just outside the dorm's gate.

The courtyard of St. Monica's.

 Closer to the Chapel.

Saint Augustine Hall, where my section had class.

One of the man-made ponds behind the Chapel. There were hundreds of tadpoles in it sprouting legs.

The mountains behind some other dorms.

Another view of the Chapel—I couldn't take enough pictures of it!

A panorama I took of campus.