Just posted: Hansen and Quinn notes and answers, Unit VI — and a proposition

For those of you anxiously awaiting these installment, I’ve just posted my notes and answers for Unit VI of Hansen and Quinn. My goal is to try to get through Unit X by the end of the summer, so that theoretically somebody taking first year Greek this fall can have a whole semester’s worth of support materials (assuming the book is split in half per semester). We’ll see how my good intentions jibe with the other things I need to get done this summer.

On that note — I am doing this largely for my own benefit. It’s a fantastic grammar and vocabulary review exercise, at least; not only that, an express goal of my graduate program is that its alumni will be able to at least teach introductory Greek and Latin, and already having a set of teaching notes for first year Greek will be an asset. However, it’s a side project, it’s a side project that’s time-consuming because I want to do it right and thoroughly, and it’s a side project that tends to be low priority because of the other things on my plate as somebody trying to complete a PhD program.

That said, I get more hits on my blog on account of these notes than anything else, so I am more than aware that some of you are actually using these things, and would like me to give a higher priority to getting these done.

Let me offer the following deal, then, with the idea being that those who find these notes useful might have a mechanism that would enable me to more align my priorities with theirs.

There’s a PayPal button on the “Tip Jar” page of this blog. Starting Monday, for every $150 that gets tipped to me, I promise to complete a unit’s notes within a week of that $150 milestone being hit. In other words, if $150 gets tipped to me by the end of the day Monday, 20 June, then Unit VII’s notes will be posted by the end of the day Monday, 27 June. If not, I send you back your money. Without hitting the $150 milestone, I continue to work on these at my own pace, and I will still aim for getting Unit X done by the end of the summer, but I am unable to make guarantees.

Does that seem fair? Going by the stats I see, if everybody who ever downloaded these notes gave a dollar, I could get through Unit X in a month, so these numbers aren’t striking me as unreasonable.