Independent study
The second class with Professor G. went exactly the way we expected, and worse. It wasn’t even ten minutes in before I stopped trying to write complete sentences and just jotted down words: inflectional suffixes, Proto-Germanic shifts, diphthong reduction. He didn’t pause, didn’t ask if we were following, didn’t offer examples. Only occasionally did he throw a question into the room like a grenade. “Who can name the three main phonological changes that occurred between Old and Middle English?” Silence. Again. We sat frozen, every one of us gripping our pens like life preservers, trying to keep our heads above the flood of information. When the class finally ended, it felt like surfacing from a storm. The hall outside the classroom seemed louder than usual, though no one was talking. J
Great novels start here
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