Hasty Study Techniques When You Have Only Several Weeks To Re-Learn Undergrad Latin for a 400 Level Latin Exam

Word Bank

I've changed my mind on the automated flash card pipeline I made in the last post. Besides the proofreading of the automated content being still time-consuming, there was also additional learning to be gained by manually creating study notes.

I decided to go an entirely different route with the definitions, and created a comprehensive Google Sheet of dictionary entries for every word in our assigned readings (one row per word), by first appearance order. I still do the initial pass where I place one word per line and remove obvious duplicates, but from there I manually insert them into the spreadsheet. Unlike last time I (almost) do not skip any words, regardless of how easy they are.

For the first pass of building the spreadsheet I scanned any reading handouts from class, and I used OCR to assist with copying the provided definitions.

Then for the rest of the words I consulted my translations, spot checked with several English translations of the readings to ensure I chose the correct entry in the Whitaker Words output (or triple check with my paperback dictionary), and manually entered all of this information into the spreadsheet.

Then I logged the following with filterable and standardized columns:

• Which reading it came from and the order of appearance.
  • I periodically redo the order number as I delete and merge rows. It doesn't really matter if there are gaps, just that I can restore the original appearance order.
• The word in its original form within the reading.
• Where the definition came from (provided or dictionary).
• Word attributes such as: Part of speech; conjugation, transitivity, and deponency if a verb; gender and declension if a noun.
• The Latin dictionary entry (non-abbreviated), ensuring every entry, provided or not, follows the same pattern for other rows of the same part of speech.
• The English dictionary entry.

• For both Latin and English an optional columns for commentary, either to: Draw attention to specific definitions, a principle part that was used for the source word, notes from lectures, etc.

Lastly I wrote formula columns to combine all of these columns into HTML for importing into Anki.

<b>morior, mori, mortuus sum</b><br>
<i>verb; 3 conj.; intransitive; deponent; </i>
<br>
<br>
attn: mortuus sum

Anki Flash Cards

I had a lot of false starts with the flash card decks, as I kept tweaking the formatting or finding errors, so I would delete the deck in the app, re-import, and started anew.

I don't have complete stats because, as a tertiary side project, I set up my own Anki sync server to sync data between my phone and laptop, so there are a few record gaps from before that was all in place.

At any rate, due to limited time (and kind of against best practice) I tried to review as many as I could between work and parenting, eventually pushing the daily review max past 100. Looking at the stats it appears I did hit that average:

I currently have 371 cards, and based on vibes I would say I have a decent shot at getting about 150 of them correct right now (roughly 40%). This also tracks with the stats:

Additionally, I created a quick and dirty deck of the top 300 Latin words from this word bank for when I wanted a break from the readings deck, as additional review. I also want to be able to participate in the lectures as much as possible without constantly being bogged down by re-referencing my notes.

Translation Work

I've also streamlined my translations homework workflow. I used a vector graphics editor to create a ruled line PDF template:

Similar to the flash card cleanup step earlier I make a text file with every clause on its own line, and run this text file through pandoc to produce a typeset PDF of the reading with the background above. I include the following LaTeX snippet that I trial-and-error tweaked to align and space the reading text with each ruled section:

header-includes: |
    \usepackage{fancyhdr}
    \usepackage{parskip}
    \pagestyle{fancy}
    \setlength{\parskip}{0pt}
    \fancyhead[CO,CE]{Judith Book 11 (LAT 471-01 - Medieval Latin)}
    \fancyfoot[CO,CE]{Lines 10-12, 14-19}
    \fancyfoot[LE,RO]{\thepage}
    \usepackage{background}
    \backgroundsetup{
        scale=.92,
        color=black,
        opacity=1.0,
        angle=0,
        pages=all,
        contents={%
        \includegraphics[width=\paperwidth,height=\paperheight]{background.png}
     }%
    }
linestretch: 11.50

Using this command I also set the margins and font: pandoc notes.md -V geometry:margin=.75in -V=fontfamily:arev -o output.pdf

The final result:

These get imported into my Remarkable eInk writing tablet, marked up, and saved.

Practice Sheets

I found this excellent set of Latin conjugations, declensions, and pronouns tables.

The author also provided the source code for generating the PDFs. It took a little work to port the code (the repos are a bit old), but I needed to adjust the colors to full black and white to work with the eInk screen, and to make more blank templates for the sets that did not initially include one.

Final Exam Prep

For the exam review I did the following, leveraging the knowledge that the exam would be a seen and unseen passage from the Book of Judith, using no materials and dictionary only respectively:

• Reviewed the flash cards as often as possible.
• Re-translated every prior section again.
• Work on conjugation and declension worksheets every morning.
• I sought out several Septuagint and Vulgate translations of Judith, and read through both several times, including an audiobook narration of the NRSV version for my work commute.
• I took a gamble that Book 13 of Judith would be the second passage, and translated all of it including updating the spreadsheet with 126 new rows.
  - Update: It wasn't
• I acquired a copy of Judith (Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature) at the recommendation of our professor, and skimmed a bit of some sections of Judith that had previously interested me.

Updates

2025-09-16:

2025-09-22: I decided to enroll for 2026 in UNC Greensboro's BA program for Classical Studies (Ancient Mediterranean Civilizations).

2025-09-30: I was accepted.