My language project.

This is an email exchange from almost 5 years ago from the prof who teaches the Coptic dialects class...

I had had the beginnings of some ideas which led into my current paper, and though he never replied to an email, I met him at office hours and then at his recommendation met another (nicer) prof who recommended I ask him again about getting into his class...

This is what I wrote to him:

Hi Professor [his name], This is [my name and program] who met with you about a month ago about taking your winter quarter Coptic dialects class.

As you suggested, I met with [the prof who turned out to be nice] to discuss what I could cover in an independent study with her about the linguistics of Coptic dialects and how this would overlap with or be fed into by your Coptic dialects class you're teaching this upcoming quarter. She thought that my not knowing another stage of Egyptian would not prevent me from benefitting from the course as a whole and thus recommended that I take it, and then after this move into an independent study with her.

Please let me know if this would be possible as I look ahead to winter quarter classes; I would very much like to take your class [blah blah blah]

Thanks,

[my name]

Then, he replied -

Dear [my name],

As I said to you in our meeting, my class is explicitly restricted to those who have taken the basic Coptic classes offered by our department. As I told you at that time, the issue is not knowledge of another stage of Egyptian, but a sound knowledge of Coptic that cannot be gained from self-teaching by reading Lambdin or any otehr grammar. All the students in the class will hae learned not only basic grammar, but idioms, lexical history and aspects of textual genres. There can be no opportunity to reteach these in the advanced course designed specifically for the needs of upper-level Egyptology PhD students. You would certainly be welcome in a future class after you have had the obligatory 2 Quarter sequence. Sincerely,

[his name]

It would be funny if my project gets off the ground to the point where he has to re-learn his language or read my papers to teach what he's been teaching.

Isn't that sad that I had some valid ideas I was working through, but he was so close-minded?