Time transcripts of ToddResized

[00:00:00:00]	I guess the general question is "Why am I studying the Classics?"

[00:00:06:09]	I guess it starts as a kid. My parents loved reading to me. 

[00:00:10:01]	They loved having me get books and look through the books 

[00:00:13:19]	even if I didn't know what the words said or anything like that.

[00:00:16:03]	If I was a good boy in the grocery store, they would give me the Little Golden Books

[00:00:19:05]	that were, like, a quarter apiece at the time.

[00:00:21:17]	And so, you know, I just kept collecting those until we had a good number of them, 

[00:00:27:04]	as well as all the other odds-and-ends sorts of books that we had around the house, 

[00:00:30:18]	and I always liked the stories of dragons and wizards and that sort of thing. 

[00:00:35:26]	As I got older, I became much more interested in 

[00:00:39:02]	more advanced fantasy and Star Wars as well.

[00:00:46:18]	Just the sense of wonder and whatnot that they brought across...

[00:00:53:10]	That sort of thing. The...

[00:00:56:26]	I didn't get into any of the, like, the traditional classics at the time. 

[00:01:00:24]	I was reading a lot of stuff based on, you know, 

[00:01:02:21]	D&D games and Star Wars and other things like that. 

[00:01:06:28]	I actually had a teacher who forced me to read "Dracula," "Tom Sawyer," 

[00:01:10:05]	and "The Time Machine" just because I was reading too much of the other stuff. 

[00:01:14:24]	Then as I got older, my tastes continued to sort of go in that direction.

[00:01:20:04]	At the same time, I was discovering things like, you know, 

[00:01:23:04]	I was having to read "Oedipus" in school and other things of that nature.

[00:01:28:04]	Still always loving the good adventure story,

[00:01:32:04]	at the same time, like, becoming interested in languages a little bit.

[00:01:37:13]	When I was about 23 or so, I became very interested in C.S. Lewis.

[00:01:44:09]	I read just about everything I could get my hands on, although I saved the best for last:

[00:01:48:23]	"The Chronicles of Narnia" and "The Space Trilogy."

[00:01:53:20]	And through him, like...

[00:01:57:11]	Originally in college I was going to be an English major or a philosophy major

[00:01:59:19]	or something like that, but through him, I became very interested in the ancient myths

[00:02:05:14]	and that sort of thing and started wanting to sort of...

[00:02:10:02]	to take on the myths, the language,

[00:02:14:24]	the original sources of all those fairytales and whatnot that I loved as a kid.

[00:02:18:10]	And so I... When I finally came to OSU, I was like, 

[00:02:21:20]	"I know what I'm doing. I'm studying Ancient Greek."

[00:02:24:12]	And it's been difficult;  I have a hard time getting my homework done, 

[00:02:30:03]	but it's worthwhile--I hope--in the end, and it's interesting. 

[00:02:37:01]	A lot of times I get to find English words that I didn't know were so

[00:02:40:01]	deeply embedded in things like "The Iliad" and that sort of thing. 

[00:02:43:23]	[ Interviewer ] Okay, what are you anticipating doing with your Classics major? 

[00:02:51:11]	[ Todd ] Well before my wife got pregnant, I was going to go for a PhD 

[00:02:54:14]	and go through the whole professor track. 

[00:02:55:26]	But now that I need money, I need to go find a job, which...

[00:02:59:16]	The job market for Classics majors isn't as dismal

[00:03:02:05]	as it may seem when you first think about it. 

[00:03:05:04]	Things like World War II Classics majors were used as cryptographers 

[00:03:08:04]	because they were used to looking at funky languages and trying to figure out

[00:03:10:23]	how they worked and trying to figure out what was going on.

[00:03:14:16]	People like Classics majors because they think differently than the modern man

[00:03:18:17]	because they're so embedded in the ancient man.

[00:03:21:17]	And so nontraditional ideas come up which may work better

[00:03:24:20]	than what is currently being put out by, you know,

[00:03:28:18]	the average, you know, census taker or whatever.