Sitting on the couch behind the computer (and with Jerry) helps me to realize what a crazy, wonderful week it has been thus far. It's also the first real slow moment of this week.
I've been spending all this past week at a conference in Leiden: Biblical Scholarship and Humanities Computing. I'm surrrounded by people who not only understand what I am trying to do with my dissertation project (structural/discourse analysis in the book of Ezekiel) but are also asking similar questions and are as at least as excited about this kind of work as I am. It's been great to participate in the project: wonder with others, get new ideas and inspiration, and be able to network with others.
But it's also been crazy tiring - from 10.00-12.00 we have speakers, 12.15-13.15 is lunch together, and from 13.30-17.00 we have organized group discussions. Monday evening there was a wine and cheese party, Tuesday evening there was dinner on a boat (home at 22.30!), and Wednesday evening we had dinner at a sponsoring organisation (home at 22.00). Outside of the lectures and official discussions, we still continue to talk about Bible and computer stuff. It's a lot to process - and even if there's only fifty of us, it's still a lot of people for me to be around so much of the time!
As my ideas start getting more worked out, I'll hopefully write more about them - although possibly not here, but on my "academic" blog (www.brendasbiblioblog.wordpress.com). I've been doing a poor job of updating that blog so hopefully all the inspirtation and ideas of this past week will be a good incentive to work harder on being more proactive in interacting with other scholars.
No comments:
Post a Comment