Episode 346: Finding the Education for Your Vocation with the Hornstra Sisters

0:00This is not just another book chat podcast. Lifelong readers Cindy Rollins joins teachers Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks for an ongoing conversation about the skill and art of reading well. Explore the lost intellectual tradition and discover how to fully enter into the great works of literature. Learn what books mean while delighting in the sheer joy of imagination. Each week we will rescue story from the ivory tower and bring it to your couch, your kitchen, and your commute. The literary life is for everyone because in the words of Stratford Caldacott to be enchanted by story is to be granted a deeper

1:01insight into reality. Join us for an ever unfolding discussion of how stories will save the world. This is The Literary Life Podcast. Welcome to The Literary Life Podcast. I'm Angelina Stanford and here with me as always is the man behind the mystery. The mysterious Mr. Banks. Hello, hello. See, Sam mysterious that is. I don't even know who you are. It's a mystery. Today we have a fun episode. We have the updated literary lives of Addison and Ella Hornstra. You may recognize their names. They've been around a lot. They both now work and teach at House of Humane Letters with Mr. Banks and I. Ella teaches fundamentals of Latin. She is director

2:06of the House of Humane Letters Tutoring Center, which is something we're quite proud of. This is our free, completely free tutoring center for our students because we want them to feel very supported and we want our language students to succeed. So she directs that. Both Ella and Addison are TAs in the HHL Fellowship that I run. Addison is also an Anglo-Saxon tutor and the T.A. in the Anglo-Saxon class. Both of them, I'm sure you've seen, right? You've been around the website. You get the newsletter. You know they're everywhere. Both of them teach webinars and mini classes for us. Addison is probably most known at this point for her Lewis Carroll webinar in mini class and when she blew our minds and showed us that everything we thought we knew about Lewis Carroll was wrong and we don't know how to read the Alice books. But now we do. And Ella's probably best known for her series on nature, understanding the grammar of the natural world and that grew into a full grammar of the natural world. Mini class, it grew into a Shakespearean nature class, all

3:10kinds of fun stuff from both of them. They also have both been on the podcast. Ella was on last year about this time where she helped us go through Brave New World and Addison is going to be on the very next book we do. She is going to lead us through Liliths because she's excited for that one. She says Lilith is just George McDonald's through the looking glass. So welcome Addison and Ella. Thank you. We're very excited to be here. Got a reputation to uphold now. Thanks, Addison. This is your twins. Okay, so here's how we're going to help people distinguish your voices. Say you're say hi. I'm and say your name and we'll do your voices. Hi, I am Addison Hornstra. This is my voice. And I'm Ella. This is my voice. They sound very similar. So if you can't tell us apart by audio, you are not alone. We also can't tell you apart by video. So there you go. It makes it more surreal and interesting. Maybe I should have called you all the mysterious twin sisters. Who is who? No one knows who is who? No one knows. All right. Before we

4:11jump in though, since all of us teach and work at the House Humane Letters, which is our day job and which is the business that allows this podcast to be not only free, but advertisement free. We'll tell you what we've got going on in our classes at House of Humane Letters. So we've got a lot of good stuff coming up this fall. Mr. Banks on September 30th, you have a webinar coming out entitled Bunyan's Progress, the Life and Genius of an English Puritan. Tell us about that. So it's a going to be kind of a primer on John Bunyan and of course his most famous book Pilgrims Progress. But I'll also I'm also going to make a point to try to reveal some of the excellences of Pilgrims Progress by reference to some of his other and perhaps deservedly lesser known books. So we'll go into both both the Bunyan you know and the Bunyan you probably have never heard of. Nice. I am really looking forward to this webinar. You have

5:11really you have had your nose in a Bunyan book for several months now and actually the idea for this webinar came about because you were just reading all this Bunyan stuff for fun and you kept giving me like these little mini lectures in the morning. I was like this is so good you have to share this. This should be a webinar and it is. Yeah. Yeah. And then in October, Addison has a much anticipated webinar. We have been talking about this for well over a year and I'm finally excited. I'm so excited. It's finally happening on October 29th. That's right. It's Halloween. Addison is going to give a webinar called Prisoners of Time. Why Reading Ghost Stories Matter. And I'm going to let you tell a little bit about this. But just this morning you and I were chatting about this and I said it seems to me it's the same sort of thing that I did with the Edgar Allen Poe webinar. Last year where I showed people that it's not just stories to make you scared. There's something deeper going on. And when I said that you said about ghost stories. Oh, what did I say exactly?

6:15Oh right. That they're not. We don't tell ghost stories to make ourselves scared. It's actually exactly the opposite that we tell ghost stories to give ourselves courage. And so part of this webinar will not just be a little bit of a history of the English ghost story, but really a deep dive into the question of why is there a tradition of telling ghost stories? And why is it important in terms of our whole literary tradition? And part of that will be my crazy theory that I've held for a long time that the ghost stories are really the second half of detective stories. And how the two work together. So okay, you had me at second half of detective story. Now this is fascinating and I think it's one of those things where bringing in the literary tradition is going to help us to understand because there's so many things that are highly symbolic and a little confusing for us in our rational modernist minds. But when it comes to ghost stories, I think we just assume it's an unhealthy fascination with death. It's an attempt to scare us. It's

7:18maybe even an ungodly obsession with death. It's the thrill of adrenaline that we all want to be scared. I think really for me one of the biggest pieces was seeing that the Eastern literature has an entire tradition of ghost stories. And then that leads us all to ask the question, why is it an almost universal tradition? There must be something that is going to be expressed in these stories that we don't understand anymore. Absolutely. Oh, I am very very sorry. I said I'm very excited about yours, Mr. Banks. And I said I'm very very about hers. So no offense, but yeah, I do find ghost stories more interesting than John Bonnett. I will be at all of these though. Okay, maybe the ghost of John Bonnett. That could that could interest me. And then in November, Addison's lovely twin sister Ella, November 19th, we'll be doing a webinar on sacred numbers, the symbolism of numbers. And we kind of we didn't kind of we got into this in the secondary Potter class I taught when I explained what she was what rolling is trying to do with Erath Mansy and sacred numbers. And there was such an enormous interest in sacred numbers after that that we decided we'd go ahead and do a

8:23whole webinar. So Ella, tell us a little bit about your interest in sacred numbers and what someone can expect to learn in this webinar. So my interest in sacred numbers of course began where a lot of my interests did and that is in medieval cosmology. And that is the subject also which kind of spurred on the series of classes we've had on symbolism and nature and the grammar of the natural world, which is relearning how to understand the natural world symbolically in the way that all previous centuries have done up until our modern day. And math and numbers are a big part of that and they are one of these subjects that has been emptied of its former significance and kind of reduced to the empirical. And so we'll be talking a little bit about the old way that numbers were read. And maybe, maybe numbers were closer to magic than they are now. Oh, I like, okay, well, now I'm very, very, very, look, look, it's going to be just building here.

9:26I'm very, very, very excited about sacred numbers. Yes, we might find out that our interest in numbers primarily being pragmatic and utilitarian and as a way to have, um, wield power over the natural world, perhaps numbers held a different significance. Perhaps numbers had a primarily spiritual significance. So I'm very excited in about all of that. All right, and you can find out about that at our website, houseofhumaneletters.com, click on that mini classes webinars tab, browse around, find out more, sign up. And again, if you can't make the dates, everything we do is live. Or later, the video is yours to keep in our wonderful new MyCoursees dashboard. Very easy to access all your purchases there. Um, I asked for a Netflix style dashboard on the website and our tech team delivered. So I'm very, very happy about that. Much easier to navigate all of that. All right, now is the part of the podcast where we each share a quote from something we've been reading. Shall we do ladies first, twins first? Go ahead. All right, Addison. Okay, so to give you a little background about what

10:31I'm going to be reading from, I was in a bookstore one day, the start of all great stories, with a good friend of mine. And I found this book randomly on the shelf and it had a Chinese name in it. And I thought, I just need to pull this down and start reading it. And I am so glad I did. So this is the only English translation we have of any of the work of quite our now classical Chinese scholar named Chan Mu. And the book is called Chan Mu in the world of seven mansions by Jerry Dennerlein, probably pronouncing his name wrong. I might get the Chinese right, but the English wrong apparently just the Chinese names with the English names. So this is a quote from that book that has really been resonating with me recently. Okay, when studying, one should think only of studies, when wandering among hills and streams, one should think only of hills and streams. One rides on enthusiasm in a band-ins, one's mind to it. That is why the first lesson in the Analyx that is of Confucius says to learn and then to practice when it is timely. Isn't that the meaning of pleasure? Whether it's studying or hiking in the mountains, it's the same mind that

11:35applies to both. As soon as one knows how it is that studying is like hiking in the mountains, studying itself becomes a wonderful form of recreation and proceeds rapidly. Otherwise, one considers studying painful and hiking fun and something is lost in both. That is beautiful. That is a beautiful quote. And Ella, how about you? So I today have a quote from Jorge Luis Borges from an essay of his called The Gospel According to Mark. And I actually pulled this quote because it is something I put in my commonplace book almost four years ago, three years ago, about the time we were on the podcast the first time. But it has increasing significance for me because not only because Borges continues to be an author that has haunts me for some reason, but also because as my sister and I have expanded our studies and our studies have taken us all around the world in kind of an important sense, we have also found more and more that there is a universal tradition of story. So this quote, generations of men throughout recorded time have always told

12:40and retold two stories. That of a lost ship which searches the Mediterranean seas for a dearly loved island and that of a god who has crucified. I like that quote. You knew I would like that quote. Have I ever shared with any of you the story of Borges oppression at the hands of the Argentine government? Oh no, but do you know it's my favorite. This is my favorite petty dictator move. So Borges, um, during much of the mid 20th century, Argentina was under the rule of the dictator one Perron. So if you know the musical, Evita, the, yes, Evita Perron's husband. Madonna takes over Argentina. Got it. All right. So, um, Perron was not a fan of Borges whom he saw for some reason as a political enemy. So instead of throwing him in prison or having him, you know, assassinated or something, um, he made him inspector of poultry in whatever district of Argentina he lived in. Even though Borges was blind after all. So this would seem a very, um,

13:43inappropriate and unkind job to give him. But, uh, yeah, it's an interesting way of dealing with someone you see as a potential dissident, I suppose. I feel it's not discussed often enough that one of the dangers of being a scholar is being thought a political enemy, whether you are or not. Yeah. I know. Yeah. Um, but there you are. I'm gonna add this to your list of like, you know, petty punishments. Yeah. I've, I've been known to pet, to punish students in very creative and, sort of, yeah, passive aggressive ways. Students, you're not gonna make anybody chicken inspector in your class. No, no, no. All right. I decided to do something a little bit different. I mean, in some ways, this is like a classic Angelina Commonplace quotes. But in other ways, it just, I think I marked it in the book because it just felt like such a Mr. Banks quote. Okay. So let's see how I do. So first of all, the book I'm reading, many of you will be delighted to hear I'm reading this. Uh, this is a book that my students have

14:46been trying to get me to read forever. It's well known that I have never read Winnie the Pooh. I know. Yes. Yes. I will eventually get around to reading Winnie the Pooh. I promise they, are my students. At this point, I'm glad I don't read it because all of them come and give me like these impassioned pleas and do these amazing like, you know, Natalya sets up some medieval romance and you have to read it like this. You know, like, that's just very fun for me to hear them make their case. But they know that I love Golden Age detective novels and they had pointed out to me something I did not know, which was that A.A. Melm author of Winnie the Pooh wrote, in fact, one classic detective novel, one locked room detective novel. And I have started reading it. Now I haven't finished it yet. So, you know, maybe a couple of weeks from now you'll hear me say, oh, it was garbage. I hated it. But so far, I'm like five chapters in and I'm really enjoying it. And I got a kick out of the fact that the dedication was to his father who had a great love of detective novel. So he wanted to try to write, you know, take the challenge on of coming up with the great locked room mystery. So I started reading it and he's describing the different characters.

15:50And this is a description of one of the characters and I was actually reading this while it was on a treadmill true story. Reading the actual physical book while I was on a treadmill and I wanted to mark the passage and I tried to mark it while I was still walking. I don't advise that folks. I actually had to get off to mark it. But anyway, I marked it. So here we go. I feel like this is in Mr. Banks school. I think you all like this though. He was not what most people call a snob. A snob has been defined carelessly as a man who loves a lord. And more carefully as a mean lover of mean things, which would be a little unkind to the purge of the first definition were true. Mark had his vanities undoubtedly, but he would sooner have met an actor manager than an url. He would spoil, he would have spoken of his friendship with Dante had that been possible more glibly than if his friendship with the Duke. Call him a snob if you like, but not the worst kind of snob. I hang around, but to the skirts of art, not society, a climber, but in the neighborhood of

16:55pornasses, not hey hill. That was a fabulous paragraph. We're going to love that score, right? That is so good. A social climber who's trying to climb up porn houses. I feel like we're going to be able to use that particular image for so many people we know. Okay. As long as none of them are me than you know, great. No, you actually do climb up. All right. Well, oh no, Mr. Banks, I left you out. Come on, place, quote. Yeah. Mine I introduce with no comment. Few people know how to be old La Roche Foucault from his book of Maxims. It's true. I would also say few people know how to be young. That also is true. I think the old people know how to be people. Well, that is it. We don't know how to be any age, right? But I feel like the older I get, the more I've realized it's hard to be young. And you guys are young. So this is a perfect segue. You know, my my children are all in their entire hard knock life. Yeah, exactly. Hard luck lit life off. That's right. Right. I was

17:57good. Right now. I want to sing the theme song. Yeah. That's probably going to be right. It'll come after me. I'm seeing it on the podcast. So I got to be careful here. But two people who have found that maybe it's hard to be young. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's hard to be old souls in young bodies. But we have with us, as I said, Addison and Ella Hornstrand. Now you may have heard their other literary life of Addison and Ella Hornstrand that aired several years ago. We just rebroadcast it last week as a fun kind of introduction to this episode. And let me set the stage. You were on that first podcast episode several years ago. The summer right before you were about to start college. Yeah. And I had made a joke there like, well, see you in four years. And we had quite literally cried our eyes out on the last day. What we thought was the last day of our HHL classes. I know. It was very extreme. But the things turned out very differently. Actually, it wasn't see you in four years within a couple of weeks. You were contacting me with a different

19:00set of tears. And we were right back at it. But before we talk about where you are now and what you're doing now, let's catch our audience up. Okay. So in the last episode, you are both about to start your freshman year at one of these quote unquote classical colleges. And within a few weeks, you both left that college. So tell us about that. Well, if I were going to put it in a nutshell, I would say that as soon as almost as soon as we arrived at that college, we very quickly realized that it did not fulfill our expectations. And I think we left about after eight weeks. And really, the turning point was a realization of the fact that this education delivered at that college was not going to fulfill our vocational needs. But tied to that, I would say that that whole process kicked us into a journey of discovering what our real vocations were, which has brought us to where we are today. Anything about that? No, I think I think many people have asked us after going

20:07to new college. I mean, why we went in the first place if we were going to leave so quickly. To which I say we clearly did not go expecting to leave after eight weeks. I mean, we wouldn't have known until we had gone what we were that this place was not going to meet the expectations that we had the needs that we had. But at the same time, as as Adi mentioned, in going there, we were able that much better to clarify for ourselves what our needs were. And I think we had clearly had them. We had we had a vocational leaning, but it was easier to enunciate those to put words to that while realizing that they were not being met. I think it really kicked us into a conversation of what does higher education look like when you're coming from the kind of background we've come from. What can it look like to customize that? Do you have to settle for something that is just, you know, so-so and you get through safely? Or are you actually looking for true education? And what does that actually look like? And so on on both sides, it was a disappointment in a way, but also

21:12almost an indispensable one. One that was needed for us for our particular journey. Right. And at the time, so this is several years ago, at the time when people were when our students who were graduating would ask us, you know, what should we do? Obviously, I was not highly recommending that they go into any kind of humanities program at a state school. I still, I still won't recommend that. You'll hear in just a minute what I do recommend. But at the time, I had so many students with an interest in the humanities that I thought, well, you can't go to a big state school, but maybe maybe, well, these smaller classical colleges seem like the answer to that. And seem like there was a place you could go and they would still be respectful of the tradition. And you would be able to, you know, explore the humanities in a non-hostile environment. That's what I thought. And I had visited this particular school and had seen something that turned out maybe not to be your experience. We'll put it, we'll put it that way. I think there was a disappointment

22:14and surprise amongst all of us once you actually got in there to see what the reality was. And as a result of your experience, of course, I no longer make a recommendation to that. In fact, I'm now just recommending to my students that they go to big state schools and you'll talk, we'll talk about why that isn't just a minute. But, yeah, we don't endorse, we don't endorse any college. We certainly don't endorse the college that you came from. It became very quickly that it was not going to be four years where you could be immersed in a respectful tradition to the liberal arts. It was going to be four years of frustration, wasted time, and worse. And so we all started with that. And it wasn't even that from a university education, we expected to have only things worth our time and absolutely no busy work. We didn't have that as an expectation, but we did have as an expectation the ability to glean some things that truly would further the most important parts of our education. And we unfortunately found that there were no possibilities

23:14for that. Right. And I guess it comes down to you and we have a very particular vision of what education should be. And it's not shared by these small classical college. They have their own vision. And maybe it's a vision that people are excited about. It wasn't the vision we wanted. And so you went elsewhere. So let's talk a little bit. Well, actually, there's a lot of things. Let me just let me just get everybody home is like, well, where did they go? What did they do? So let me just say this. Okay, because we'll talk about the process, which was a long process. It was a long process of figuring out where to go and what to do. And you know, you guys dropped out. You enrolled in a ton of H. H. L. classes. L. A. You began studying Latin, which ended up being really important. Addison, you began studying the Anglo-Saxon language in classes that we offered. Both of which ended up being a real part important part of your journey, which you can talk about in a minute. But just to put everybody out of their misery, okay? After determining your

24:15vocations, you both landed at a major prestigious university on the East Coast, where Addison is studying the Chinese language and literature and culture. And Ella is studying classics, both Greek and Latin and Persian. They are both on track to complete graduate degrees in those fields in a few years. And before you all freak out, but what school is it? You're going to see that there's a reason why we're not saying the school, because this is not going to be the answer for everybody. This school is the answer for you. And we're going to talk about how to think about college and how to make the decision, because there is no quote-unquote grade school, okay? That the state of higher education is there might be a school who can fit a particular need. You have to start with what are my needs. There is no paradisal option. Right. You have to begin where you are and your journey with what you need. It begins with your personal interests, your personal goals, and then forming personal relationships with teachers that you actually respect. Right. So the first thing we did then is we spent

25:18gosh, like a year, you're carrying out what your vocations were. So who wants to take this one first? Let's talk about this. This was a really interesting time of your life though. This is scary. And so we totally understand anybody who's out there who's a gap year student saying, I don't know what to do or a parent saying, I don't know what to do. And not only was this such an interesting season, but actually this school that we found that we found because of the teachers we wanted to learn from, not because of the school itself, rejected us the first time. And we have now been there for a while, learning from the teachers we wanted, but this was not like a smooth, straightforward path. There was a bit of interest in here. I would also say that since having been there, since having continued our college education, I have met a surprising number of students who have anywhere from one to 10 gap years in between their high school and their college education. It is a lot more common than you might think. And so I know a lot of times there is a bunch of societal pressure thing, you know, you know, one thing to the next. Even if you graduate at 17, you're going to college early. And while that may be the path for some people, there is by no means

26:19no way for you to go to college later to wait a couple of years to have discernment in your vocation, which could actually be extremely helpful in choosing where you want to go. And we have often said that if we had ended up going actually going to college at 18 fresh out of high school, as we would have done if we went to that original classical school, we might we definitely would not have known what we wanted and needed from the university, but it was the failure of that school experience that taught us what we needed. No, that's exactly it. And I think, you know, I think there's like a little bit of a disjointedness between the generation of people who are now entering college and their parents who had very, very different college experiences. I'm one of the parents, right? So college is not what it was when I went there. And the expectation that you would go at 18, 17 in my case, and sort of figure out who you were and what you want at college that is not that is not your you're both shaking your heads. But now you need to use the system

27:23before the system uses you. And this is something even people teaching in the system will acknowledge it is a gigantic system and you will get played by it unless you learn to play it. So sometimes having those extra years is extremely foundational. So that you don't just get swallowed whole by this gigantic system that sees students as numbers bringing in money rather than you. And we'll talk in just a minute about how you're approached to the university system is kind of plundering the Egyptians and regions, which your professors fully support you in as they recognize they are in fact standing in a ruin and come on, let's let's find the little pieces of rubble that that still apply. But before we get to that, let's talk about the journey of determining your vocation. Let's talk about that. How did you figure out what you want? Because it's really funny if you think back, you guys were in the panel for the back to school conference. I don't even remember how many years ago, but it was right after you graduated high school. And I think Cindy had asked each of you like, what are you reading? And Addison, you said you were reading the dream of the red chamber. And I remember I just bursted in to Cindy's interview and I was like, wait, I'm reading

28:27that too. We need to talk about Chinese literature. And I we kind of laugh about that now because holy cow, that's like all we do. I know boy, did we talk? What if we're years? No, I think this is very funny. This is actually one of my favorite stories, part of partly because you have no memory of this, which on it all, I find completely hilarious. So it had been a little bit I think after we had left that previous school and it was one of the long conversations we were having and I was just info dumping on you, something that I was reading about Chinese literature. So to give people background, I have been interested in Chinese literature and Chinese stories for probably a little over four years now. I had already been reading them last time we were on the podcast. In fact, my mom actually dissuaded me from an extremely complicated and probably irrelevant Chinese quote that I was going to bring to the first podcast. Okay, I'm not even joking. So I had, I've had an interest in this for a very long time. And I was telling Miss Angelina all about it. Here's my student voice, Miss Angelina. She's been Miss Angelina since I was what, 14, 15,

29:30so we're stuck in that still at 21. Anyway, telling her all about it for a very, very long time and we had many conversations and at the end of this conversation, she just paused and she said, how do you know? I don't think that this is just a hobby because I've been, I joked. I said, you know, maybe I'll, you know, go get a second degree someday in Chinese and learn Chinese because that would be so amazing since I love these books. She said, you know, I don't think it's a second degree. I think you need to make it your first degree. It's not a hobby. It's your vocation. And for me, that was kind of a monumental moment of she really, really had insight into what my passion was and honestly, the next three years would prove that that was indeed my passion and was indeed my vocation. And I've always looked back on that moment as sort of being a cornerstone of the journey, but she has zero memory of it. She has no idea that she said that. No memory at all. But that's classic me. I say it and then have no idea what I just, but it's like a symbol. She just writes it on leaves and then just float away. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. So I mean, really, it just started with pursuing your loves and the things that you were interested in.

30:32I think that, um, that experience of leaving the classical school put us in a position where we were able, instead of thinking, we were able to think a little bit more outside of the box than we were before and to think instead in terms of those things that we loved, the kind of work that makes us feel like we're not working and what if we actually pursued those things? And so Adi, of course, started chasing after her Chinese and has has never looked back and I took my own path that has already been fulfilling the dreams I had of childhood. I had two dreams, two main dreams as a young child. One must have a bunch of keys and the other was to know a bunch of languages. Language is our keys. Exactly. It's metaphorically the same. It's not senior curing. I would say you have to solve the problem. Yeah, because I like them. Actually, most of them don't go anywhere. That's the ridiculous thing. Or go to anything, although, yeah, not get sidetracked with keys, but, but yeah, yeah. And it was interesting too. Okay, so even though both of you are pursuing

31:39languages as a vocation, and I mean, if I can talk you into each of you speaking these languages on the air, I would love that because I get such a kick out of when both of you write to me in these languages that I don't understand because they just Persian is beautiful, Greek is beautiful, Chinese is gorgeous. And then when I hear you, I mean, it just feels my heart with such joy to hear you guys speaking these languages. But you came to the study of formal language late. So, Addison, you ended up starting with Anglo-Saxon. And I should just say, your particular interest is in comparative studies between the Chinese romances and the Anglo-Saxon romances. But taking Anglo-Saxon sort of on a whim like this seems interesting, ended up opening the door to wait. This could be a life's calling. Yes, and I think that actually is something that both me and Ella have had in our experience of language learning. We've kind of been gathering languages like a bouquet. I think I also took about a year and a half of Latin during that opportunity. She knows enough for the 12th of a fight on occasion. I know enough to read Augustine in Latin, and I enjoy it. And I think

32:41the great blessing of Latin in my life, it's not a huge passion of mine like it is for Ella. The great blessing of Latin has been the organization it has given my brain and understanding of grammar. Latin can equal no other language in the amount of beautiful order it has to the grammar. So that really informed the way I understand how grammar works. But, aside from that point, there were two different paths really. Two are language learning for me. Anglo-Saxon was very much, this is what's available. I love bail wolf. I've always loved bail wolf. I'm going to take Anglo-Saxon right now. And part of the thing that inspired that was an understanding that if I want to build a bridge to the east, I have to know this side very well too. Right? It's not just rooted in the east. It's also rooted in the English language. If I'm going to translate, I have to have an intimate knowledge of the language that is my mother tongue as well as this new language that I'm learning. And that's part of what inspired it. But, as Miss Angelina mentioned, also comparison between Anglo-Saxon in Chinese specifically because I had read the great Chinese romance. One of my favorite books, probably my favorite book of all time. I think I can actually say that, called the romance of the three kingdoms. And I just keep insisting that this

33:45is the Chinese bail wolf. And I wanted to be able to read both in the original languages and compare them. But for me, Anglo-Saxon was not something that I initially had a passion for. It was something that was interesting to me, something that I could see connecting to my future vocation. Whereas Chinese was in remains very much my heart language. I'm completely passionate about it. I adore it. I think Ella could say the same experience that even these two languages learned for different reasons, for different motivations have turned out to be such a blessing in my life in different ways. So yeah, and for myself, I had decided a while before I graduated high school that I absolutely must learn Latin at some point. And there was a short of a short shortage of good teachers in my life at the time and no doorway opened for that. And then HHL offered Latin the year that we stopped taking because we graduated. And so Latin became available right as we went to New College. It was truly crushing to me. I spent a lot of time obsessing about it. But as soon as I

34:50realized, I had been laboring under the impression also that I would be able to learn some languages at this classical school. And that was not the case. And I was becoming increasingly aware that this was something that was very, very important to me. And so as soon as we left, of course, Miss Angelina, Mr. Banks, let me join Dr. Phillips's Latin class, self-paced. And I worked on catching up and then catching myself up and all these things with with everyone's help. And I think a lot of loves that I had had for many years came to life with the language. And in a lot of ways, Latin was a direct doorway into so many of the things I had loved for a long time. And Latin led to Greek and Greek led to Persian. And I have been chasing up the Indo-European language tree. And I think I'll stay there because they tend to be like Adi said, my heart languages. Um, and I think the distinction I was trying to make is sometimes you have a fiery passion for something that won't let you go, right? And sometimes you learn to love something slowly.

35:53No, absolutely. It's true. It's true. And that was all part of the process of discerning your vocation. It wasn't like obviously clear what it was going to be. And I, in starting Latin, my family joke that I became a hermit for at least a year. And they almost didn't see me ever again, because I just was completely lost to it. And I was in my room constantly. Adi was like, I'm sick of that relox book, please, um, please stop. But you flew through it too. I have so many good memories of you, um, reading Latin with Mr. Banks. And that just always gave me such joy. And, um, I should say this because there are some unique things about your story. But then I also, there's some, there's some principles, I think, that apply to every human. And one is the two of you are just simply put, the two most gifted people with languages I have ever encountered. You, you, you pick them up so quickly, you master them. Um, you, you, it, I mean, like, come on. You guys both know Addison. You're in a Chinese class where you, you give presentations in Chinese

36:55and your classmates are like, so how long did you live in Taiwan? And like, no, I started learning this last year. Right. Y'all are just, y'all are just breathtaking at it. It's a gift. At the same time, the principle here is you didn't find the thing you were gifted at until after you had graduated college. It's true. High school. All right. And so, you know, you don't need to be stressed out at 17 that I don't know what my gift is. I don't know my vocation is, right? You, you went and tried a few things and you found your gift. We would not have no-ness and hill and less. We had gone to this classical school, found out they didn't teach languages and suddenly realized, man, I, I really wanted that. I think I need that. And then that's what's available in the year in between. And so that's where we go. And suddenly, if you find that this is, I would also want any, you know, language students out there listening to know that when she says we're gifted with languages, I will, I will concede my, I don't really want to concede, but I'll concede. But I think part of that gift is more a willingness to undergo what Ella has called the ritual humiliation of learning a language. We are willing to just suffer through it. Sometimes language learning is like that. And

37:58it's long and tedious. And I can give presentations in Chinese and also mess up presentations in Chinese and just work through it. And that has been one of the most beautiful aspects of this journey has been the things that learning a language has taught us about all learning in general that you're not ever coming to something feeling fully prepared. You're not ever coming to something like I know this. I'm completely confident. It's the willingness to be a little bit out of your depth, the willingness to be uncomfortable, the willingness to mess up, that is the part of learning anything, whether it's reading an old book or learning an old language. Which is why I have often thought that the ritual humiliation of language has taught me to be a better reader. Oh, tell me more about this because I am much more comfortable with being out of my depth while I gain my footing in a new world. Even in English, then I probably would have been before. Go ahead. Yeah, I wanted to ask, how would you say that your study of Persian, say Ella and yours of Chinese Addison, how would you say that that has affected the way you read your own language?

39:03In one important way, just to start off, it's given me a greater patience in allowing the experience of a literary work to be a part of my reading process. I think there's an aspect of my personality that might always be a little bit eager to understand something. And that's totally fine, but as C.S. Lewis talks about, a big part of reading a story is the experience. And it's something that can't be logically explained, a language, a new language that's foreign to you, brings so much foreignness into your experience of whatever your reading that it forces you to slow down. And that has taught me what that looks like in English as well. Because as my imagination is expanded with these new languages, there's now a little tinge of foreignness even to the things I read in my mother tongue. Oh, I like that. How about you, Eddie? I would say something very similar that it's kind of like Narnia, honestly, for me, venturing into the East sends me back to the West

40:03with completely new eyes because I'm now not only seeing the East through Western eyes, but a little bit of the West through Eastern eyes, which is a completely different perspective. And so when I was first reading Chinese literature, and now that I'm learning Chinese, I constantly have to stop and constantly ask, wait, what is this? What is the meaning behind this? What is this referencing? Especially in Chinese literature, every single word almost seems to be a reference to another story or a tangential poem or something that's related to this. But that practice, which I began to do with so much more depth through Chinese, has been brought back into my own reading of English so that now I'm much more attuned to the meaning of characters' names, for instance, than I would be when I was reading English before. And I think the other aspect of that for me would definitely be learning Old English, learning Anglo-Saxon, learning the roots of my own language, has brought me to an attention to how our words hang together, that I did not have before, and I think also a greater awareness of how flat English has become in terms of ability to express

41:04things in the modern day. Whereas in Anglo-Saxon, you have this beautiful, pandeple of verbs that we just don't use anymore, and they don't have that same beauty. And so I think an appreciation of that opened me up to why C.S. Lewis says, if you study English literature, you need to study Anglo-Saxon because you have to understand how the language itself works. And that has changed how I read. I would, I say, has changed a lot about how I process English as a language in what I read as well. Well, that's fascinating. And you know, anybody who's listened to this podcast know that I am committed to the idea that there is a universal story, that there is the tree of tales, and that the tree of tales is not Western literature. Western literature is one branch, and all the other branches are also part of the tree, and they're equally valid, and they're all branches, you know, fitting into the tree of story, capital S, the archipelitanic archetype of story. And I had been praying that God would bring people to house of humane letters who could start to fill in some

42:09of these other branches. I had no idea that the answer to that prayer was already in my classes, you know, that you would grow up and either just one of you would be able to to bring in the Persian branch and the other the Chinese branch, and suddenly all the east, the Far East, the Near East, they feel like the tree just started to populate for me, and it was so thrilling. And part of why I love to talk to both of you about Persian literature and Chinese literature is because the things I am learning about the other branches helped me to understand the Western branch better and back and forth and to see, okay, there's some things that the East would come. We need to become unused to what we think of as a room nerd. And I think familiarity can sometimes dull our senses. Well, that's what Tolkien says in on fairy stories, that that's the whole recovery of sight that you do in a fantasy story is that you have to make the familiar a little bit strange. And I think that's what you're saying when there's so much strangeness in a foreign language that you come back and you can start to see the strangeness of your own. Which is why in so many ways studies of Eastern things have has been influential in my understanding of classics.

43:15And Latin, Greek, because I'm coming to this culture with and these languages and their literary works with this new perspective and also realizing the Greeks are very Eastern people. So that's its own thing. But yes, I think in a lot of ways, especially with the advent of classical education, we're used to thinking of classics in a certain way that maybe is not entirely true to the very heart of the actual classical tradition. No, I agree that I'm learning more about how Greek is not Western, it's Eastern and quite in the center of the world has been very eye-opening. But I want to circle back to some things that you said because of course I think about parents listening to the podcast or even seniors listening to it and you know they're not sure where to go and what to do. I heard you say things like you have to be willing to suffer. You have to be willing to be humiliated. I'm hearing all this talk about plenty of friction and I think one of the things that has happened in our culture for many reasons. But we're afraid of

44:18friction. We want everything to be smooth and easy and we think if it's not then it must not be for us or it's over our head. And one of the fears I hear regularly from homeschool moms is oh we tried X, whatever it is, Latin, Mass, we tried X, we tried this book, this old book, it was too hard, my child was suffering, we had to stop. Suffering is part of the process. Okay, not needless suffering. Okay, there's a suffering that comes from like mindless busy work. I'm not talking about you know, sycophants pushing, you know, this is the refining fire kind of suffering. That's good. It's like the suffering of building muscles where you're in pain because the suffering of someone who loves something and wants to understand it and every time they open their mouth, their accent or voice does not match the language they're trying to speak in yet. Yeah, and there's a reason. And I mean, it's, it made me cringe for months whenever I first started speaking for it. And I did not like speaking front of people. I didn't want to say anything because I was still learning how the alphabet works and it brings you back to being a child. And before my teacher ever said to me, Khobachu, very good. For a long time she was like, oh, no, no, no, no,

45:25back up, you forgot how to pronounce this letter. And it goes back to, I mean, to being a child. You have to be willing to be a child again, but honestly, maybe that's learning in general. I know, I know a lot of people may say this and for me and Ella, our first language, our steps into the language learning were very literary, very on the page, very in the book. But we're both learning languages that we now want to speak with fluency. And it's very, very true that one of the best ways to learn is to mess up. I think there's actually a Chinese principle about learning the game of Go that you need to lose your first 100 games as quickly as possible because that's the only way that you can actually learn. And that is true of all learning in general, I would say. Absolutely. As it went, you know, you guys have heard the stories of what's up on a time. I was a, you know, a top junior Olympian athlete, but one of the things we always said is you learn more from a loss than a win. Yeah. You know, that there really is something enobeling and stretching and growing about suffering. Yeah. And we don't mean this in like some sort of weird, sadistic way. It's

46:29just the, the, the embarrassment of messing something up, locks it in your memory like nothing else. And it also ignites this deep desire to be able to communicate that I honestly hadn't experienced before. This desire to put in Chinese words, Chinese thoughts, you know, not just my English words translated into Chinese, but actually think in this language and exist in this language and understand this culture on an end. And that is, you know, well, this is why Tolkien talks about the, you know, the tongue and the tail and the mind all being co-eval because, you know, one of the great things about old books that we talk about all the time is that it gives you insight into a different perspective of reality, a different way to perceive the cosmos and yourself and other people. And the flattening of modern books, of course, is erasing that. But the same thing is happening when you study the other language, right? You're seeing that it's not just that they're speaking English with different words. There's a fundamentally different way to organize their thoughts and to think

47:30about things and to think about the things that are happening to them. And that's one of the great joist to me of studying the foreign language. But let's pivot just a little bit since we're talking about languages. So, you know, you spent this time figuring out your vocations and then, you know, it was me, it was Mr. Banks, it was Jen Rogers, it was Dr. Phil, we were all trying to answer the question, where do these girls go? Where should they do? You know, where should a person go? And after a lot of discussion and looking into different options, we kind of landed on while I don't, and I still do not feel good about recommending anybody go into a state school humanities program, because all you're going to learn is how to write papers about bias. But you won't actually learn anything. It seemed to us that that a department that you could go to in a state university and be sure that you would come out with a body of knowledge, having learned something was to study a language. Yes, because you either study a language or you don't, you can't just say, oh, this, this meaning of this word. The bias of this language. You know, literature professors love these days to talk about how all words are completely subjective and don't mean anything. And that's just not

48:33possible in a language classroom because language has rules. And so really, if you're studying a language, you are going to walk out of that degree with something tangible and real that you have gained in the realm of knowledge because they can't help but pass it on to you. On a fundamental level, the requirement of a semester long Plato class in ancient Greek is that you leave reading Plato, which is not going to be guaranteed in a literature class or correct, correct. You will read about Plato. You will write article right. Yeah, which is actually more complicated than Plato himself, right? Right. So not only were you going to in the language departments study the language, you were going to read the works. And reading of the works was going to be focused on what does this mean? I will direct here. I mean, is someone who coming from a classics background, they're, this is sadly not true of all sorts of language programs across the country. I mean, just, I mean, you can find all sorts of classics departments in America where you do not have to

49:34read a word of Latin or Greek, even at the Ivy League level. This is becoming true. No, this is right. And this is why. So no, we don't want to say that like, it will solve your problems to go into languages rather than which is why we have been saying you find what you want to learn and who you want to learn from first. Will they teach you what you want to do? You're not going by the name of the school, the name of the department or anything. Yes. And so even, even to say you can study a language. I'm just trying to describe our thought process here. You're right. It is not a panacea. There's, okay, there's plenty of classics departments who have abandoned the texts, who have abandoned the languages. There are plenty of classics department that don't teach you Latin and Greek. So, but that's what got us started to think about where can you go to pursue languages. And then of course, that led to, well, what departments are actually teaching the languages because there are so many that have abandoned the language, have abandoned the literature, have made become, you know, politicized or interested in other things other than, you know, the body of knowledge. But not only did you guys each find a department that had what you want,

50:36it happened to be in the same school. Yes. To be not far from where I live. Like that was crazy to me. And it was basically the answer to the question that we had been trying to answer. It was in my backyard. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was, it was crazy. And I would say the process for us, as far as discerning, can we actually learn? We had taken with us from that other school, the knowledge that we needed to find people. If it was one, or if it was two, if it was three, even better, that we could learn from a new, we respected going into it. And then kind of like cling to the him of their robes. So to speak, please just teach me, right? And so, even though the university was better when I was in it 30 years ago, what I did was attach myself not to departments, but to people. And that has still been my advice. Don't look for a department, look for a person and say, okay, I can learn from this person and then go where that person is. So for us, we weren't just googling on the internet, like what are the best, you know, such and such language departments in the US.

51:36We had both actively read the published work of professors in those departments. And we wanted to know what is the actual output? What are these scholars thinking about? Is there someone that I would be interested in sitting at the feet of this person and learning from them? And we did go and sit in on a lady's phone. And we did go and sit in and we also interviewed them. And it was really funny because almost across the board, they all thought we were PhD students because no one interviews, no one cares. But I think we really wanted to have that assurance of knowing, no, I have chosen these people to train me. And I think that's one of the things that a lot of times students will think that they need to be chosen, you know, that the school has the right over saying you get in or you don't get in, right? And the system chooses where you will go. Not true. You get to choose. You fought this. You play the game and you decide I want to learn from this person. I want to learn this thing. This is what I'm going to do. It's entirely different. It's valid to say what I

52:40want to learn I can do outside of the university. Exactly so. Right. So because your interests are scholarly, I mean, it's very clear to me, you have the gifts of a scholar, your vocation of scholarship, then the university is the place for you. It's not necessarily the place for everybody. And it's certainly not the place to go figure out who you are and what you want to be. It cost way too much money for it to be that kind of thing. Go backpacking in Europe and figure out who you are. Yeah. It's way cheaper. Yeah, I would absolutely second all of that. Tell us a little bit about because I know, especially in the circles we're in, there's a lot of fear about the culture of the big state university. Tell us what your experience has been like just personally, spiritually, intellectually, because the stories you've told me has not sound like you went over there and you were assaulted mentally, physically, spiritually from day one as everybody fears. I think it's actually been quite the opposite. I think it's so big they don't have time to mess with you, which has been a huge blessing to me because I want to be left alone to love what I love. That's what I care

53:44most about. And I think a lot of times there's a lot of fears surrounding, oh, I'm going to have this ideology pushed on me. I'm going to have this agenda shoved on me. Actually, I have not found that to be the case. Now, there's a certain degree to which. Not in the department. Not in the department. I mean, but again, this goes back to we chose our professors. We chose our professors. Well, and that is not to say that we haven't had to take classes that we think, oh man, this is really super boring. I have to take the science. You've had the usual we have had to do with the required credits that people have to do to graduate. Everyone has to do, but that's also not all consuming. It hasn't been something that has eaten away so much of my life that I'm not able to actually pour my energy and my time into what I actually love. One of the things we have been learning in this season, which will change as our our season of learning changes, has been the balance between we do have some busy work that is for the greater goal and we can stand the busy work and the boring classes that are requirements because we have a goal in doing them and we're not

54:45just here trying to figure out what we want to do while doing these boring things. But at the same time, we're balancing that with these languages that we care a lot about in in the departments that are really feeding us in what we want to know and with our time spent at the Asperian letters too and outside of the university. I would say there's a lot of fear. I know I've talked to a lot of people who are worried that you know you're coming from a homeschool background. You're coming from maybe not having done a formal writing curriculum or if you did a writing curriculum and so you know one of the homeschool ones will I be able to survive in college and write essays. The answer is resoundingly yes because one of the things that I think I hadn't suspected but just really had not realized was quite to this point is the functional illiteracy of the majority of mainstream college students in the US. It's almost unbelievable. In fact, I had my own kind of moment grieving over that because I had grown up. You know, I'm taking House of Humane letters classes. I'm loving this literature. I'm loving language and to go into a situation where

55:52nine times out of 10 year encountering students who barely know you know beyond basic English vocabulary. They're talking like text messages. What is this? But aside from that, you do not need to worry about going into a college classroom writing essays that you're going to be behind. Quite the opposite. In fact, my experience in talking to other homeschoolers who have gone to colleges and they have had the same one is that they're actually writing very well so much better that it shocks the professor. It shocks people because they're thinking how can you possibly write this well? You sound like your Charles Dickens or something writing. I think you might be cheating because you know you're just too smart. That in fact, what happened to you? Right? Yes. You wrote a paper so well that it got flagged as an AI written it got flagged as AI. Why? And so of course it got flagged as AI and I thought I've never it is a point of pride for me that I have never opened AI in my life and I don't say I judge anyone who uses AI. I know there are people who find uses for it. I just can't stand AI because of what it has done to language, right? Okay. So you won't ever use AI to write a paper. Never. Never. I don't even have the grammar correcting stuff installed on my laptop.

56:57I took it all off. Okay. Which by the way, this was an easy solution because she doesn't have it installed because I don't have it installed and I can prove I don't. But so I got flagged for AI. Why? Because my language was too poetic and I used antiquated words and the the reasoning behind that here's the great irony for you by the way they turn papers into an AI program to see if AI has been used. And so the AI program came back and said this person can't possibly know this language because no one knows this language anymore. Because AI didn't know it. Yes. Because AI didn't know it because it was too poetic. I feel like I should explain that when you got flagged for cheating and writing an AI paper. It wasn't all ha ha funny. No, it was horrible. It was terrible. It was horrible. It was very upsetting. And that caused you into research. What is happening here? Right. Actually think of it. That is behind it. Right. In an old fashioned or poetic way, AI cannot interpret the word. And it is as simple as compound sentences triggering the system. Right. So semi-colon's trigger the AI detector. So for everyone freaking out, how did you? How were you? Tell them how you were able to

57:59the solution to this is quite simple. Actually, there is a very, you know, set in the stone appeal process within the college. But one of the best ways to ward off this happening is write your papers on Google docs because Google documents have a long version history that will show every little word that you have typed onto that document. And that person you didn't copy. Right. So people using AI will typically copy and paste long form stuff from, you know, they've given AI or prompt it's written something up and they've copied and pasted it onto the work. So if you have that document history and I think word actually just updated to have a more detailed one for this very reason, you can very easily turn it in and say, Hey, I'm contesting this grade because I did not use AI here. But also the context for this happening is in a class where the professor was not reading the work herself. Yeah. And so all of this is avoided. If you have a professor who is reading your work, this is not going to be an issue. Right. But occasionally when you are doing these required classes, the professor may have 500 students and they might not read what you write. This is not something that happened to you in the classes with professors that have become mentors to you. And I think

59:04another thing that people worry about is I'm just going to be like a nameless faceless person. But you have found mentors. In fact, far from it being an antagonistic place, you have found that the professors are overjoyed to find students who actually want to learn and who know things. And I think one of my favorite, one of my favorite stories is from both of you going into your departments and meeting the professors and them saying, Where did you come from and are there more of you? The answer is yes, there are. But you know, that's just, that's, that's, that's amazing. So tell us about the mentor relationships that have developed. So I think that's very important. Because we've just told you know, maybe a horror story of you could get flagged for AI, just for writing well, but there is encouragement in that. Do not worry if you can write well. You are already better than everyone else. But that is, you know, one of those required classes where the teacher has no relationship with me by and large, the classes I actually care about, I have personal

1:00:06relationships with these professors that have been built over the course of the classes I've taken, they know my work, they know my train of thought, and they are so kind and generous with their time, and so eager to see someone who even has questions, because believe it or not, a large portion of the student body just doesn't even have questions, that we are spending hours in their office just asking them questions, asking them, How does this work? Can you please explain this to me? Can we talk about Chinese literature and they are pouring themselves into us because their heart is to actually teach students who want to learn. And so that has been my experience in the Asian Studies Department. I know Ella is a secretary. I have many professors, I've met in the Classics Department, my beloved professor who is teaching me Persian, they all feel the same way. Just having a student that wants to learn, they are professors or teachers by vocation. And I think some of that is probably included in the fact that they're actually teaching the languages still here. But because of nothing, nothing is a greater blessing to them than having a student who wants to learn.

1:01:09I was just going to say that because you guys have been strategic about the way that you have approached this, what you have really done is carved yourself out a small intimate university experience within a giant system. Yes, very much so. Yeah, I mean, I have, I'm in a class right now on Greek rhetoric that has eight people total four of which are auditors, so there's really four people that including me. Yeah, it's really an experience. No, and you've kind of circled around this, but I wanted to bring it up again because one of the fears I think that whether you're a homeschool or a private school, or if you have given your child a very liberal arts heavy high school, like somehow they're not going to be able to, you know, they're going to get to college and it's going to be like, oh no, STEM, STEM. And I know that because of that, we always sort of have to be in a position where we're trying to justify having a language rich pre-college education, right? Whether that be actually studying

1:02:16languages, whether it be reading old books. And maybe this is a good time to mention that story is itself a type of language, not everyone is meant to go out there and learn Latin and Greek or Chinese. And I try to teach it story as a language. It's a symbolic language. Take my classes. But one interesting thing you told me in your, I believe this was in your first upper level Greek class. I can't even remember if it was poetry or prose, but you know, the class I'm talking about and you guys were reading Plato and you call the mean and said, it's not that my classmates are struggling because they don't know Greek, they are struggling because they don't know English. They don't know how to translate the Greek into English. And these are modern English American speakers. So their native speakers, okay, it's just that their grasp of their own language is so modern that they think that my role in the class quickly became the person who can throw out archaic words that fit the Greek because we can translate, we understand what it means, but it was very hard for them to be able to put into English words

1:03:18what was happening. So I'll add another note to this, which is a liberal arts education. A language, an education in the language of stories of how to read and even of how to learn languages doesn't just teach you how to learn languages it teaches you how to think. And that is the one key thing that is success to whatever field you go into. And I know we've had other H.H.L. students who have graduated who are going on to scientific fields, they're going on to fields that involve math or completely, you know, you know, majoring in music, all sorts of different things, but they have had this education that has taught them how to think, has taught them Charlotte Mason's habit of attention. That is the thing that makes all the learning easy. It's all the habit of attention that forms imagination that makes you human. It goes back to my quote, right, that that's the meaning of pleasure discovering the delight in paying attention to something is what makes learning worthwhile. I know and everyone agrees that education is supposed to teach you to think, but unfortunately we have come to think that that means taking a how to think curriculum. Sorry, I don't think it's possible to learn to think from a one two three.

1:04:23It's not manual, but it's not rely on the manual. If we're going back to the medieval idea of the hierarchy within the human mind itself, the imagination rules over the reason. So we should be starting with imagination first. Right. We're working for you down. Right. So we've talked about you at the university where you are absolutely thriving, you're working very hard, your most of you, I think you're going to be duking it out to see whose valedictorians that you both have straight a's and setting all these records and scholarship money and winning awards and prizes and look at their faces. They're too humble. They don't want to hear it. They're like, she's jinxed us now. No, it's said the book of part of the year. Oh, the book of part is in me. You should know that it's written. It's now it's that's it. It's done. It's long. But you also are humans having a life. So one of the things we like to do on these interview episodes is to talk about the literary life. Look different during different seasons of life. So what does your literary life look like in this season? L.A. You go first this time. Okay. Well, it used to be for many, this is a small thing, but my daily

1:05:28rhythm for many, many years of my life, especially in high school was that I would get up and read things in the morning. But nowadays my class schedule has me up and and doing things and it's not that reading for classes is not its own kind of pleasure, especially when I'm reading for my language classes. But it also by virtue of being what it is is part of the list of things to accomplish on the day. And so the evenings have become part of my balance time that balances out the schedule for the day. And I think I have been returning to some favorite selections of poetry and my novels in the evening. And Adi and I have shared audio books, especially. And I have a couple favorite lecture series and things like that. And that's kind of the rhythm is very different now than it used to be because languages take up a lot of my reading time, which has changed a lot of what I read, what I find interesting. Actually, there are lots of things that I commentaries I find fascinating that I probably wouldn't have six years ago. But um, but yeah,

1:06:32very good. How about you? How has it changed? I think one of the ways I was remarking to L.O. the other day kind of looking at my bookshelf, I now have like an entire bookcase full of Chinese books. I think a significantly larger portion of all the reading I do is Chinese or China related tangentially. And that has been a change in my reading life in that I am constantly reading these long Chinese romances. There, you know, like 4,000 pages long. And I'm working my way through them and reading, you know, a couple chapters a day and loving them. One of my favorite habits recently actually that is a more recent beginning for me. It was kind of started as prep for my last webinar and has lasted on after that is reading some folktales every morning from a bunch of different places. And so I recently got to read Tibetan folktales for the first time. I'm reading some old Japanese tales right now. You can see I'm kind of addicted to Asia. So, you know, I might stay in that area for a bit, but um, Chinese folktales I did read. I did read some grems as well as part of that. That's been a wonderful sort of rhythm for everyone. And on that note, I found in this season where I do have

1:07:37a decent daily list of work to accomplish every day having small things to hand. And also giving myself permission to read one page or two, because I have 15 minutes and it would be fulfilling in life, giving to read something, but I don't have to force myself to sit here and read six chapters, I can read one page. And so folktales do are great for that poetry, but also longer books that just take me a very long time to get through because I enjoy reading a page here and there. That's really good advice because I know that a lot of the people who listen to the podcast feel like they're in a very stressful season of life. Maybe they got a lot of small kids. And so that's a good encouragement. So I like it a little bit at this time. With my fellow language students, I like discussing the fact that one sentence well-read is a good is a good job done. And the case in your that's the case in your native language also. One page at the appropriate time is wonderful. I wanted to ask both of you, what is a book since you've begun your collegiate studies? What is a

1:08:41book that you have fallen in love with that has really nothing to do with your vocational reading in Chinese or Persian or Greek or whatever? So my recent and very enjoyable reading has been Nancy Mithford's novels, which are not to be confused with the Mithford novels by Jan Keren, which I confused the two for a really long time, but Nancy Mithford's novels like The Mithford Sisters. I read two of her novels recently, One The Pursuit of Love, which there's also an adaptation on TV and many series. And also Don't Tell Alfred. And I think I might have loved Don't Tell Alfred. I recommend reading The Blessing Next. Oh, oh, oh, oh, the blessing is my favorite of first. Okay, so I'm working my way to that trilogy. I read, um, Pursuit of Love and then I just finished Love and a Cold Climate. And so now I'm about to read Don't Tell Oh, yes, yeah, quoting it to me. Oh, it kills me. I died a thousand deaths of happiness.

1:09:42And you know, and I picked it up for a similar reason because it's smart and light and funny, satirical and you know, when you read for a living and you do too, it can be extremely difficult for like I like all the reading I do, even if I'm sitting here with a stack of North and Fry articles like I like all of it, but it's hard for my brain to be like, oh, we're resting now because it's everything reading work, right? So like picking up this AAML detective novel or the Nancy Mimfer something where my brain's like, oh, no, we're in rest mode. And um, and Nancy Mimferd has the habit of making delightful connections that tend to connect to other things I've read. Well, it's just the chaps and things time period. So yeah, like, you know, I kind of was on an Evelyn walk kick. So I was kind of putting them on the Mimferd side by side. And one other thing, I just recently like that last week finished reading Ac the Christie's novel, The Sittaford House Mystery, which I had never heard of before now. And it has one of our amateur detectives, Emily Trafuses. And I really enjoyed it. Wait, what was that called? The Sittaford House Mystery. Sittaford?

1:10:50Okay, well, never heard of it. All right. Yeah, I know I had neither. Who can keep up with all the Agatha Christie and how about you, Adi? What are you reading? There's actually two things that spring to mind. So when I was thinking first Japanese detective novels have been a very recent just I love to listen to them on audio actually. So the first name that springs to mind is Sishii Yokamizo. I don't know Japanese. So don't come after me. Okay. Um, but his the first book in the series is called The Hungyan Murders. It's on Audible. I love that book. And I love all of his books that have been put on Audible. I like I've listened to them while I cook. I listened to them while I'm walking to school. I highly recommend. Honestly, audiobooks have been one of the best things this last year because sometimes I'm just too tired to sit and read my eyes. I've been reading something all day and I need to listen to something and draw or something of that sort. But the other thing I can think of besides Japanese detective novels are the novels of W. Somerset Mom, which Mr. Banks had been recommending to me four years. Indeed. And I was very slow off the start to those. But the first

1:11:56one I read was the painted veil. I think I probably read it last year. I don't remember. And I also got me to read that. Absolutely adored it. I've read it multiple times over since then. I love them. Everyone's the movie. Yes, we did. And I read the moon in six pints and loved it. Mr. Banks actually just gifted me a biography of W. Somerset Mom. I'm very excited. Autobiography. I'm very excited to read it. So that has actually been one of my favorite authors to dive into in the last years. And here's actually another small example of a book I kept literally by my bed. And the chapters are kind of short. So I would read your chapter four bed every night. Another Mr. Banks recommendation was Evelyn Walsh Helena, which was fantastic. And his own his own favorite among his novels. Yes, well, it's now my favorite among his novels. Yes. And then he had recommended Vile bodies to you. Yes, and I'm going to read it in law because it has the opening epigraph from Lewis Carroll. We all survive off of Mr. Banks's novel. He is the best.

1:12:58He does. You could you're like the most you would have the most like specific obscure one 800 hotline. Like you can call him up and tell him I need a book for this. Let's tell you which book to read. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. We just should hand you a list and be like make my book shopping list for me. Please. This is why he buys all the questions. Happy to a bludge. He's he's he's so good. You know, I think that people are going to find this conversation encouraging. And I know that there is just a lot of fear about everything right now. And then we live in a fearful time. I totally understand that. I'm not saying, you know, just throw your kid in any school. It's going to be fine. I mean, you guys have approached this very strategically, but you have not found the the university to be hostile into you in anywhere. In fact, I dare I say the atmosphere of the day right now is tolerance. And to the point that you're unlikely to be criticized for your core beliefs in a public way right now in the classroom. Because there's a great emphasis placed on

1:14:05balancing different perspectives, which I mean can have a negative side when taking to an extreme and could also have positive effects. So I think the other interesting thing that's happening where you are is that you're in a time where everything old is new again. So you wanting to read the old books in the old way. It's been so long since anybody's done that. It's like comparative literature is becoming more and more of a sort of fad in scholarship recently, which you know, it works in our favor because that's exactly what we're doing. And so anything comparative, everyone is very open to receiving work on that. By comparative, she means, for instance, also like comparing, like comparing angle section and trying to explore. Yeah, it's a good time to do that. And I know everyone listening is probably maybe many people at least are hyper aware of the fact that our educational system is in shambles. And it's true. It's like it's we're living in the ruins, but we're also, I always think of, um, Jin Rogers webinar on token in the Old English tradition. I think

1:15:07it is that she talks about the metaphor of the tower, right? That what we're doing essentially is rating those ruins. We're going in and saying they still have treasure troves hidden in here. One excellent example is the library system. I mean, we are using that university library system. It is the best thing ever. I can find anything I want. Probably. I think I'm going to say, probably not your peers are doing the same thing. You are single handily keeping the librarian employed. I know I love it so much. And they can look at my book history. And they're like, what funny stories about this person doing? We do this so often that the librarian at this massive school, at this point, knows us personally. And it's become a little bit of a joke because they keep accidentally giving one or the other of us the other ones books. Because it's like, there's two people, which is it. And they just now 50, 50 chance hand me something Chinese. And I'm like, no, no, I'm the Greek person. Yeah. But anyway, we're going into the it may be in ruins,

1:16:08but there are still valuable pieces of the tradition buried there. And you can go in and and raid those ruins. And I think that's hopefully an encouragement to people listening that it's not all is not lost. Just like HHL is keeping a light, a hope for this tradition, right? There are places in the big university system that are doing the same. And they're not part of the big system. That's the key. They're kind of these little alcoves carved out of the giant system where people are trying their best to still teach the tradition and still cling to it. I even have a Chinese professor of mine from Taiwan, whom I'm very, very much greatly respect, who used that metaphor with me. She said, there's an old school and a new school, right? And the old school wants to teach the old things and wants students who love the old things. And then there's the new school. And they're focused on being socially relevant and what not. And also to add another bit to this, we have encountered students who want to learn. And they are not from homeschool backgrounds, because that's a little bit more rare that we haven't encountered a few of those. But there is a part of our generation that is feeling the loss of these things very keenly. And we have met

1:17:13several fellow travelers on very different paths, but who desire some part of the same thing, nonetheless? I would also add as that another caveat I've noticed recently. I think maybe some homeschoolers potentially would be worried about going into a university and then outing yourself as a homeschooler, right? You're different. You say you're come from a homeschool. I have news for you is. That's cool these days. That's cool these days. It's very surprising. Everyone I know who has, we've somehow ended up in a conversation about the fact that I was homeschooled, their reaction is not, oh my gosh, you grew up under a rock. It's, oh, that's so cool. That means you didn't have to do all this nonsense I had to do. And so, you know, don't be afraid of that either. Don't feel like you're going to be completely on the outside. And I think mostly we look at the fact that education is a shambles right now from the perspective of the student. But if you are, and of course I'm friends with some of you or friends with some of them, if you have it from the perspective of the professors, they are more frustrated than you are. They are upset. They have devoted their life to

1:18:15somebody of knowledge that now everyone is not interested in and is being told it's irrelevant. And let's cut these classes. And truth is, it is not an understatement to say they are desperate to find someone who wants to learn what they have to teach. I mean, even down to the practical matter of if you don't have X number of students in this class, they will cut said language class because we're getting to the point where it's hard to find eight noble souls to take Chinese. So, you were making me laugh the other night at a seminar and you were saying you felt like it was a lot and saw them and the more like if there's one person that wants to learn this, if I were even 10 righteous men, if there were 10 righteous students, you would see would teach Norse again or, you know, Dr. Draup would have more students in his classes. Pointed out that the universities are suffering so much that it has never been easier to get into a big school. Correct. Because the numbers are down, the population numbers are down and they need

1:19:19people who and they need people who want to learn enough to stay. So, for years. And so, if you can find, if you know you're interested in something and you can find the professor who knows it, go email them. Email the professor directly and they will pull the kinds of strings for you. They will help you make a path because they want you and they want you, they want students who want to learn like, listen, 30 years ago, when I was in school, actually, more than that, I graduated grad school 30 years ago. So, I just outed myself, I graduated grad school in 1996. So, there you go, that's 30 years ago. But I remember my younger sister at her graduate department really running into the problem of trying to find somebody to direct her dissertation because they were just too busy with their own stuff. No, no, no, too busy, too busy, too busy. And now I feel like it's the other way around that the professors are like, we have no one to teach. We're not too busy. Come to me and I will teach you whatever you want to learn. In fact, you guys have found that if there's not a class on the books, they're like, I will just teach it to you in my office. Like whatever you want to

1:20:20learn, I will teach you. It's like, it's like some kind of underground education system within the larger university system. It's a little bit. That's it. Baby, that's how you plunder. Gotta do it. All you do is you send an email that says, I love this, help me learn. And they're like, yes, let's do it. So, I think that's our pragmatic advice. Stop looking at university website. Stop looking at university requirements because the admissions office is completely out of touch with the rest of the university. So, don't look there. Find people, like just like you said, read their published works. Find out who they are. Email them. And then, and then once you know who you want to learn from, then you can do the application process, but you're doing it with a goal. That's right. And you're going to have help. And it might look an untraditional way too. You know, right. There are other ways other than you know, going in there as a freshman. I will just I will put that out there. There are other ways for sure. The university system is in a state right now that there are many, many backdoor paths to getting what you want. And the truth of the matter is all education

1:21:26is self-education, right? You got it. You have been fooled into believing that we need a college system to educate us. No. You are going to play the system for the resources that it's giving you because there is knowledge there because there are teachers working within that system who believe the same things you do about there being a tradition, but you're not doing this so that the system can govern everything you do. Ultimately, it's still your own personal journey. If there's, you want to take a class that won't be on your transcript ever, do it because you love the subject because you're curious about it. That is the root of all learning anyway. And so, you know, and for those students who decide not to go to college, you know, this is the confirmation of that. You love something and you know that the university system is not going to help you love it better. That's perfectly fine. Right. The system is not the end all being all. That's right. An example of what you're talking about. Bolts of you have had academic advisors assigned to you by the system, both of whom you've experienced with the academic advisor telling you you could not take the class you wanted to take. You could not do this. And so, I went to the professor's office

1:22:31and the professor said, come on Wednesday afternoon to my office and forget about it. I'm taking a class right now that I love that my advisor insists is not necessary. Heavy air quotes there, not necessary for my transcript. We are not studying for the transcript. That's right. It comes out in the wash in the journey of everything I want to learn, which has nothing to do with the degree I'm getting in some ways. Right. Right. And you have been able to work around the system from everything from a professor saying, I'll teach you to do your private limo office to another one saying, oh, I will work it out with the advisor you're taking this class. Right. Or you just ignore the advisor altogether and go for it. Right. Within reason. But yes. Right. Because they don't understand the thing is they talk to hundreds of students again and they don't understand that it's the student's individual journey about what they want to love. It's not for them. They're just and this is them doing their job. This is not something against advisors, right. They think in terms of the transcript because that is their job. But you don't have to think in terms of the transcript. That's right. And you know, you would think homeschoolers are used to

1:23:33thinking outside the box. I don't know why suddenly they're just like must do everything the college wants me to do. Like the college itself doesn't even know what it wants you to do. There's so much conflict between the departments and the missions, but that's a whole other thing. But I hear plenty of professor friends complaining about the admissions office has an entirely different goals than the professors have of what they want to see in a student. But you know, the encouragement, I think that what you giving people is as it's crumbling, you can run in and grab what you want before it all collapses. Do either of you have any final words for anybody listening about? I mean, you're both extremely happy where you are in your life. And it went a different direction than you expected. And you know, we all need to be open to life being different than we thought. Working out better than you. I guess I guess one word of advice. Don't assume that a close door is a dead end. Oh, yes. It might be, I mean, there's an old saying a close door might be an open window, which is kind of silly, but also at the same time, yes, that that may be the case. And there might be a garden outside that window that wasn't outside the door. And you also got to know that turned out

1:24:35to be a not yet. And yeah, I've had to know that felt like a dead end in the moment until seven months later. I've also had a note that I later said, thank God that was a no. That would have been a terrible decision. And it's not wrong to push on doors. See if this is right. I mean, we went to a college and dropped out. So we did the greatest taboo of all, I guess. But, but if the door is firmly closed, and for instance, you have to drop out of college, you can trust that there's a reason for that. I think my final word would be an idiom in Chinese. I'm not going to say in Chinese, but if you learn a little bit in the morning, then even if you were to die the same evening, it would have been enough. So for anyone out there who has, you know, the busy life or you're a college student who's juggling, you know, listening to the literary life podcast and feeling like you love books on the side and then having to do a bunch of work that you feel is unfulfilling, or you're working a full-time job and listening to the podcast on your commute. And you think, man, I wish I could devote all my time to this. Even just listening to the podcast, reading a book

1:25:36in the morning, reading a folktale once a day, even a little learning in the morning, if you die the same evening, it would have been enough. It's worth it to add to that one page and also one tree noticed. Yes. Yes. And we have to stop thinking the goal is to get into quote unquote a good school. The goal is to be a human. And so you look around and you figure out what is the path to help me to be the fullness of who I am. And so even if you go, if you see that the college right path is right for you, don't let the college make you a part of the machine. Yes. Your goal is to remain human while using the system for what it can give you. And I think the rebel spirit you had as a homeschooler bring it with you to college. Correct. And the last thing I would say, one more thing is that we tend to think in huge chunks of time, we think in huge stacks of books, we think in huge lists of things we've done, that's not, you know, life is actually made up of the very small things. I keep a journal right now of singular new words. I think one of the greatest examples of

1:26:42this was I got my Spotify listening hours last year and I thought, oh my gosh, there is no way I listened to this many hours of music doing, you know, whatever work, but it was all of the little moments of time. I told my mom at the time, you know, this really teaches me that those folktales I'm reading in the morning matter because at the end of the year, this is how much it has counted for. And you are working not for this year, you're not working for your college career, you're working for your life as a human being. And that is. So the time spent taking the long way to class through the park is worth it. Yeah. Absolutely. Girls, it has been so great to catch up with you. And I know that people are going to be so encouraged and inspired by this conversation. And if you are listening at home and saying, I want more from them, I want to learn more from them sign up for their upcoming webinars, but also check out their back catalog where they have been taking, they have been pillaging, plundering and taking everything they're learning and bringing it to you in inexpensive classes and webinars. So Ella did a wonderful webinar on how the horse and his boy is actually a Persian tale. And so you can hear all about how her understanding of Persian

1:27:46tales affected her, you know, understanding of Narnia. And then Addison did a webinar on the outlaw in both the East and the West and showed these Chinese outlaw figures and how it connected with Robin Hood, which was fascinating. She did another one on Chinese folk tales. So go and check out their back catalog on our store at houseofhumaneletters.com sign up for their upcoming stuff, take their classes, enjoy, wow, as we all enjoy the fruits of your labor. As we all enjoy the gyms of your, if your plunder. But thanks again, so much. And then of course next week we're going to start George McDonald's Lilith and Addison will be back. And I'm expecting you to do the heavy lifting for both of us. We've never read this before. I'm terrified. You said it was through the looking glass and I thought, okay, I think I can handle it. It is. And I will say for anyone starting the book this week, George McDonald loved it. He considered it the masterpiece of his life. It was the last novel he wrote and his wife absolutely hated it. So if you read it and you think this is the weirdest thing I ever read, a lot of people have thought that. But you're going to show us how to understand

1:28:51the weirdness. Yes. Yes. Cannot wait. And you know, spoiler, she'll probably bring in some Chinese stuff in this as well. Well, well, thanks for acting in. All right. Well, thanks so much to go round to the end of this podcast. Mr. Banks has a special poem to read that the girls have requested. And remember, you can support this podcast by signing up for a webinar or a mini class or joining our Patreon at patreon.com backslash the literary life. We have a very active online forum of patreon members who are carving out a little community of like-minded literary life lovers in the midst of all the chaos of modernity. And they are all committed as we are to recovering the lost intellectual tradition. Again, thanks to Addison and Ella Hornstra. Thank you for listening. And until next time, keep crafting your literary life because stories will save the world.

1:29:53Thank you for listening to the Literary Life Podcasts brought to you by our loyal Patreon sponsors. Visit houseofhumaneletters.com to find Angelina and Thomas and to sign up for our newsletter with podcasts scheduled and more. And keep up with Cindy at MorningTimeForMoms.com. Join the conversation at our member-only Patreon forum or our Facebook discussion group. Visit patreon.com backslash the literary life to find out how you can sponsor this podcast and get great bonus content. Don't forget to subscribe, rate a review, and check out our sister podcasts, The New Mason Jor, and The Well-Red Palm. And now for a poem read by Poet Thomas Banks. To Orbee by Jared Manley Hopkins. The fine delight that fathers thought. The strong spur live and lancing like the blowpipe flame. Breaves once and quenched faster than it came. Leaves yet the mind the mother of immortal song. Nine months she then, nay years,

1:30:58nine years she long within her wares, bears, cares, and molds the same. The widow of an inside lost she lives, with aim now known and hand at work now never wrong. Sweet fire, the sire of muse, my soul needs this. I want the one rapture of an inspiration. Oh, then if in my lagging lines you miss the role, the rise, the carol, the creation, my winter world, that scarcely breathes that bliss now yields you with some size, our explanation.