Reflections on a Semseter of Death

My final semester as an undergrad is finally coming to a close (assuming I pass all my courses of course). It has been one heck of a ride. There have been ups and downs, wins and losses, many lessons learned and much sleep missed. Being so close to the end is both exhilarating and terrifying. I am ready to be done, to embark on a new chapter of my life. I also have no idea what that chapter might entail which is more than a little frightening.

My last semester has been one of the hardest of my undergraduate career. Trying to balance a heavy course load, job searching, and training (I'm a Canadian national team athlete) has been incredibly draining. I also struggled with the myriad of different projects I had to complete for my various classes. It seems we are finally saying goodbye to lecture, essay, exam course formats. This semester I gained invaluable new skills through professors encouraging engagement with a variety of different mediums. I helped to created a webpage (It's on Anglo-Saxon execution cemeteries), I started blogging, I worked with databases, and I learned basic statistics (not a new medium to the education system I know, but certainly new to me!). Learning these news skills is incredibly relevant to the job-market today but getting there inevitably involved a good deal of frustration and exhaustion.

I suppose it may not have helped that all my courses seem to be focused on death and human remains, which can at times get a bit depressing. Interestingly though, I think my engagement with death has actually made me think about death in more positive terms. Death surrounds us all. It is common to all humans, in all cultures, in all time periods. It is the common factor between all the remains that archaeologists study, no matter what race, or sexual orientation, nationality, identity; they are all dead. So in a way death unites us, and that to me is strangely comforting.

I lived dear to my family, I gave up my life yet a maiden.

Here I lie dead and I am ashes, and these ashes are earth.

But if the earth is a goddess, I am a goddess, I am not dead.

                           Roman tomb epitaph (CIL, vol. VI, no 35, 887)

 

For anyone interested in tomb epigraphy, here is a link  to a selection from the Roman Republic, Enjoy!