Colin Brodd wrote: "For the past month or so it has felt very much like we are
writing this course for an audience of two or three people. No-one, safe for our
two proof-readers (one of which has now quit her unthankful job;) has actually
submitted a single solution to anything for a very long time." - Quoted from our
moderator - to which Colin replied: "Hail! I apologize for not introducing
myself earlier. I am a language teacher myself (of Latin, as it happens). This
is my first year in a new school and I am doing major restructuring to the Latin
program here, hence I spend most of my time writing lesson planning myself. I
have always wanted to really learn Old Norse (I've dabbled before, but this is
the first workable course I have ever encountered), but I'm too busy to devote
much energy to it right now - I log in every so often to see what's happening,
and I like what I see, but I can't spend the necessary time on the course right
now ..." <snipped for brevity> - and used as a point of departure by me:

Greetings,

I am likewise a lurker (that's a great name for a contemporary novel of manners
about the [often barely] interlocking lives of participants on emailing-list
communities like ours ... "Likewise A Lurker: A Saga Of Cyberalienation And
Distance Education") for almost exactly the same reasons Colin is (and I suspect
many others are, also). What can I say by way of exculpation except that I have
too much to deal with as it is, but heard of this list via the good offices of
Mr. Martel (I believe) at IcelandicGrammar2 and wanted to test out the often
made but never substantiated claim that Norse is virtually the same as Icelandic
in many crucial respects (and I won't deliver my polemic contra that claim here
for everybody's sake), but having grown up in a home where my Danish-born
grandmother (from Falsterbo) spent as much time speaking to us in "Danskish" (or
"Danglish", as my brothers and I naughtily called it), and attended a
traditionally Norse-American college (St. Olaf in Northfield, Minn.), I have
wanted to retain a conection to my roots to the extent my lurking on this list
allows. I really want to implore you to keep the faith even for such poor
students as I by circumstance am forced to be, but even more so for the several
others who are more actively engaged than many of us will continue to be, but
who all will gain some insight to the degree we continue our intermittent
application in the stolen time from "real world" work and family concerns that
your self-study program provides. I hope you will continue your efforts in spite
of your perception that no one is paying attention, which is quite simply
mistaken (understandable, but nevertheless in error), so let me toss my 2 kroner
into the pot, and please play on! Fram, Fram, Kristmen Krossmen! - With best
regards, Joseph Carson