This week I was reading (through a haze of illness!) the fascinating essay by Sententiae Antiquae on Classics, class and identity, and thinking about its particular relevance to Open University students and their attitudes to social identity.
I’ve worked with a lot of part-time distance-learning students over the years: well over a thousand, at a rough guess. Some of them have been card-carrying, branded-hoodie-wearing members of the Open University community, who happily claim ‘Open University Student’ as part of their identity. Others are much more guarded in their claims: they tell me that they don’t talk about their studies much in ‘real life’, or that they’re planning on keeping their studies from their employer until they graduate. In more extreme cases, it’s not uncommon for students to ask me not to contact them by phone, because they don’t want their partners to find out they’re studying for a degree.
That’s quite a spectrum, and those at either end are the people who, I think, see ‘student’ as a core element of their identity, whether that’s a public identity to be celebrated or a secret identity to be kept hidden.
I realised recently that I too have a secret identity. I was talking to a neighbour in the street, whom I’ve known for many years. She advised me kindly that I should ‘pick up a few hours’, now that my son is at school. I smiled and nodded: and it wasn’t until I got home that I realised that she evidently didn’t know I’d had a job for all these years! True, I work from home much of the time, so my work habits aren’t particularly visible: but until that conversation I hadn’t realised how little I talk to non-OU folk about my work and my studies. Perhaps my reticence is down to Explanation Fatigue: it’s difficult enough explaining Classics to people, but when you combine that with the need to explain distance learning (and a second doctorate!), I’ve found that it becomes a conversational black hole.
As secret identities go, though, it’s something of a disappointment. There should be a cape…
How about you? Do you tell people, when they ask you what you do, that you’re a student – as well as all the other things which make up your social identity, like your job or your family commitments? Or do you keep your studentness under your hat?
This week’s links from around the Classics internet
News
Crimea Greek settlement – Archaeology News Network
Unearthing Tenea – Reuters, and numerous other outlets, including the BBC
Obituary: Alistair Elliot – The Guardian
History with knobs on – The Guardian
Interview with Donna Zuckerberg – The Guardian
World’s oldest computer? – The Daily Beast
Staging The Suppliant Women – Vancouver Sun
Proposing a Journal of Controversial Ideas – BBC
Finding cat mummies – The Guardian
Comment and opinion
Emily Wilson recommends books on the Odyssey – Five Books
An inscription and an eccentric collector – LA Review of Books
Subversive women’s crafts – Literary Hub
Self-funding your PhD – The Guardian
… and on not having a PhD – Perspectives on History
The Statue of Zeus – Classical Wisdom Weekly
Viewing ancient musical instruments – Neos Kosmos
Testing ancient cures for asthma – The Recipes Project
NASA Classics – Eidolon
Greek opulence – Smithsonian
Negotiating class anxiety in Classics – Sententiae Antiquae
Becoming a public scholar – Inside Higher Ed
On women teaching Classics – Eidolon
Hypatia’s birthday – Cosmos
The legacy of Black Athena – Eidolon
Why 536 was a bad year – The Daily Mail
An Ovid Anniversary – In Media Res
On rhapsodes – Kosmos Society
A man-eating mosaic fish – National Geographic
Digital Cicero – Society for Classical Studies
Aliens and racism – Hyperallergic
Commenting on the New Sappho – Sententiae Antiquae
Phryne the model – Greek Reporter
Remembering Empire – The Sphinx
‘Oriental’ embarrassment – Nature
Diocletian the gardener – Ancient Origins
Podcasts, videos and other media
Roman poisonings – Ancient History Fangirl
Eleatics and atomists – The History of Ancient Greece
The dangers of visiting a Roman toilet – BBC Sounds
Talking about the Odyssey – PBS
Reconstructing Vindolanda – Stori3d Past
Ovid’s early works – Literature and History
Classical Studies Support 
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