Throughout this week one of the themes that really stuck with me was the contradiction between work and leisure and how the definitions of these words have changed over time. I studied Latin for 6 years before coming to Bucknell and we always talked about the fact that the Romans did not have a true word for “work”. They had words for vacation, leisure, rest, and slavery but they did not have a word for “work”. To them the only people that were supposed to truly work were slaves and that already had a word: slavery. To them, their time should be spent in leisure. Of course many of them had a craft that they kept up with to make a living, but to them it was not important to strain themselves making a lot of money. They sold their craft when they needed to and other than that they enjoyed life.

I see a similar mentality shared by the people of the 6th century. When Hank first arrived he was so astonished that nobody was working. They were all wandering around with no sense of where they had come from or where they were going, and they lacked all sorts of drive or motivation. Hank presumed that he must be in an insane asylum because nobody of their right mind would spend the day just walking around with no purpose, destination or any sort of work. Hank’s view bring us to the more modern view of our definition of work and leisure. To us work is a necessity for all to live. We believe in the “American Dream” where if you work hard, you can move up in the world and in society and make a good life for yourself. We see leisure as a time of reward and something that is earned. It does not come around all the time and it must be earned and it is enjoyed in small doses. However, leisure is not always so accepted when it is abused or when it becomes the focus of ones life. In modern day we see work as the main time commitment and leisure as a small reward at the end. Most of our lives are spent in work not leisure. In contrast, the Romans saw work as a time when they weren’t in leisure, we see leisure as a time when we are not in work.

These are two very different viewpoints and shows that throughout time, work and leisure took up a different amount of people’s time and was regarded much differently in their lives. Currently, those who are unemployed are seen to be in a state of unrest. They are looked down upon by society for not having the ways and means for providing for a family, and they rush to the unemployment office or their next interview to try and fix this. It is very interesting how work has evolved from something only for the slaves, to a coveted position in life that ensures (or we hope that it will ensure) stability for our lives and our families.

Throughout this week I began my reading of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court” by Mark Twain. In the beginning I found it a bit challenging to get used to the way that Twain wrote and I found myself reading a whole page and having to go back and re read it to figure out what was really going on. As the book progresses though, I find that it is easier to read and keep up with.

I really found Thursday’s class to be very interesting. I enjoyed picking a time period in which I would like to live in and one in which I dreaded. For the time period that I dread, I chose the Holocaust. I chose that time mainly because it was a time of great distress and terrible things were happening while innocent lives were being taken.

When describing my role in that time period. I said that I would want to be a person who lives really far away from Germany during that time because I wanted nothing to do with what was going on in that country. At first I felt that I was being a little selfish and sheltered because I would just be avoiding the problem and watching like a bystander; although, as we opened up to discussion I felt differently. We talked about how this was a very narcissistic exercise. Most people wanted to go back in time and be in a position of power, or be a person that survived the terrible things and were able to come out on the other side stronger. It just got me to thinking that, in an ideal world, we all really want the same things mostly. We want to have power, and be safe and be free of the terrible things that are going on in the society at that time. Now there is nothing wrong with that, but I think its very telling of how humans and the human brain works.