Flagh.

I just finished the Latin exam, which I am 99% positive that I did not pass. I'm not disappointed, since I did not expect to pass going in. It consisted of four sections of translation work without the aid of a dictionary. I got through the first section pretty easily and I am relatively confident that I got most of it translated decently. It was about King Alfred driving off some pagans who had be besieging an Anglo-Saxon town. The second part was a dialogue between a teacher and his Latin student, who kept begging the teacher not to give him any hard words to translate. Thanks, profs. The third selection was a section from the rule of St. Benedict which luckily I had read in English before. It was about how much wine monks should be allowed to drink and under what circumstances. The fourth selection was a brutal selection from the 13th century in which John de Tombray sold some of his land to the church and I think also got a crypt in the church for both himself and his wife. Provided they would die in good standing, of course. Anyways, that one was absolutely wretched and I had not idea about its middle section.

Like I said, I'm not disappointed. I spoke with doctoral students earlier in the week and they both said that they didn't pass the exam when they first came in either. It just means I'll be taking the MA level Latin course this year (which is the general expectation of the program). I guess the MA Latin class is one of the more bonding areas of the degree, so that will be fun. My only fear is that I scored below a 30%, which would mean I would have to take Beginning Latin, which would be wretched.