Amazing how long the 'end' of a semester can last....
It's time for a proper rant concerning finals week!
Tomorrow will be my last day of business with Spanish Theater class. Since I'm in the process of translating one of the books we're discussing, I'm not too worried about finding something to contribute for that discussion. That should leave me plenty of time to prepare for the hellish idiocy of my communications class in which I will be performing final #1 (as in, one of two final assignments I need to do for that class). Again, I'll be dealing with a Spanish play I'm in the process of translating and it won't be so bad. As for the weekend, I basically have to finish translating the plays I'm working on and submit them along with a bunch of other revised works for my playwriting class and hand all that in on Monday. All things considered, so far so good. Tuesday of finals week, I have an oral Portuguese exam at 11 a.m. You would think after all the Spanish I've been dealing with prior to that, I'll be well prepard for speaking another language. This is likely not true. If anything, it'll just confuse me and I'll try to speak Spanish during the exam and yes, they will penalize me for that.
Now... the demon king of drudgery, the sultan of senseless assignments, etc. comes on Tuesday night. I'll be working on an 8 page paper analyzing a commitment ceremony as the second final assignment for my communications class. Of all the things I've had to do for classes in my entire experience in school, I can't think of any work I've wanted to do less with the exception of pretty much everything in Phys. Ed. The worst part is, this paper is completely pointless. We really should have been given a choice in this class to do either a final performance or a final paper, NOT BOTH. At the very least I would have liked to see a little more play room in what kind of paper we could do. Instead, our overly optimistic and oblivious professor insists that everyone find either an inter-ethnic, inter-cultural or otherwise diverse couple and interview them about their ceremony. What Professor Oblivious doesn't realize is that this is MAINE, and there's not a lot of diversity to be found. It's as if she went out of her way to find the most inconvenient and least relevant final paper that she could justify and assigned it. I should have trusted my original disgust about the CMJ department and avoided this class altogether but obviously it's too late now... hopefully I'll get the paper done without too much negativity.
Other news... I've already started organizing stress-to-be for next semester. I'll be DMing a four person D&D group likely consisting of three girls (a bard, a monk and a ranger) and one guy (a cleric). I have a pretty expansive plot in my head and hopefully I'll be able to lay it out in a slow enough manner and in an interesting way so all involved will enjoy the experience. Hopefully I'll get something out of it, too. I also get to play el queso grande once I start work on directing the aformentioned plays that I'm translating now. I mean, if you're going to bother reading and rewriting that many pages, you might as well milk it for all it's worth, right? If I can fill out the cast and get enough rehearsal time, I think it'll be good... I'll make sure to get it recorded too, so I can use it to show interested parties what my capstone looked like (maybe a grad school in case my current exploits don't work out). All in all though, I'm already looking forward to getting out of this country in March... and maybe again after graduation....
Tomorrow will be my last day of business with Spanish Theater class. Since I'm in the process of translating one of the books we're discussing, I'm not too worried about finding something to contribute for that discussion. That should leave me plenty of time to prepare for the hellish idiocy of my communications class in which I will be performing final #1 (as in, one of two final assignments I need to do for that class). Again, I'll be dealing with a Spanish play I'm in the process of translating and it won't be so bad. As for the weekend, I basically have to finish translating the plays I'm working on and submit them along with a bunch of other revised works for my playwriting class and hand all that in on Monday. All things considered, so far so good. Tuesday of finals week, I have an oral Portuguese exam at 11 a.m. You would think after all the Spanish I've been dealing with prior to that, I'll be well prepard for speaking another language. This is likely not true. If anything, it'll just confuse me and I'll try to speak Spanish during the exam and yes, they will penalize me for that.
Now... the demon king of drudgery, the sultan of senseless assignments, etc. comes on Tuesday night. I'll be working on an 8 page paper analyzing a commitment ceremony as the second final assignment for my communications class. Of all the things I've had to do for classes in my entire experience in school, I can't think of any work I've wanted to do less with the exception of pretty much everything in Phys. Ed. The worst part is, this paper is completely pointless. We really should have been given a choice in this class to do either a final performance or a final paper, NOT BOTH. At the very least I would have liked to see a little more play room in what kind of paper we could do. Instead, our overly optimistic and oblivious professor insists that everyone find either an inter-ethnic, inter-cultural or otherwise diverse couple and interview them about their ceremony. What Professor Oblivious doesn't realize is that this is MAINE, and there's not a lot of diversity to be found. It's as if she went out of her way to find the most inconvenient and least relevant final paper that she could justify and assigned it. I should have trusted my original disgust about the CMJ department and avoided this class altogether but obviously it's too late now... hopefully I'll get the paper done without too much negativity.
Other news... I've already started organizing stress-to-be for next semester. I'll be DMing a four person D&D group likely consisting of three girls (a bard, a monk and a ranger) and one guy (a cleric). I have a pretty expansive plot in my head and hopefully I'll be able to lay it out in a slow enough manner and in an interesting way so all involved will enjoy the experience. Hopefully I'll get something out of it, too. I also get to play el queso grande once I start work on directing the aformentioned plays that I'm translating now. I mean, if you're going to bother reading and rewriting that many pages, you might as well milk it for all it's worth, right? If I can fill out the cast and get enough rehearsal time, I think it'll be good... I'll make sure to get it recorded too, so I can use it to show interested parties what my capstone looked like (maybe a grad school in case my current exploits don't work out). All in all though, I'm already looking forward to getting out of this country in March... and maybe again after graduation....