the kids don't stand a chance
“No worries,” I thought, clicking the ‘Repair Connection’ button. The Wireless Network Adapter was quickly disabled then enabled, the Wireless Connection was confirmed, the IP Address renewed, the DNS cache emptied, and the computer told me to go ahead. I clicked refresh…and nothing.
I flipped through one of yesterday’s newspapers while I restarted the computer, read a bit on the continuing turmoil involved with the Spanish general elections in March, entered my password, waited for everything to come on, tried again.
Nothing.
I got up from bed, threw on a t-shirt, pattered over to the living room, unplugged the router waited ten seconds, re-plugged the router, and left everything to set itself while I made a cup of tea. I went back to the room and checked once more.
Nothing.
And what’s more, now it wasn’t even telling me that it was connected, but instead showing a little ball moving back and forth and telling me that it was in the process of “connecting”.
Defeated, I decided to go about my usual business, and tho there was an annoying nagging sense every little while, reminding me that I hadn’t checked my e-mail and didn’t know what was up, I still had a fairly good breakfast and decent enough time, hanging for a bit on the terrace and listening to a podcast I already had saved onto my computer, resigned to just wait until Clemens solve the problem when he got up. Which he did, shortly afterward, and he was quick about looking into it and repeating everything I had done up to then, with identical results.
“Hmm,” he said, wandering over to the living room table and picking up the post from the day before. He retrieved an envelope. He opened it.
“Fuck.”
Past-due on the internet payment, it seemed. He was running late, so he tossed me his credit card and passport on the way to the bathroom and told me to just go ahead and call them to make the payment. I dialed the indicated number, went through the usual menu, and got through to the crediting service. Or rather, their answering machine.
“Salvo en días festivos, el horario del Departamento de Crédito de Orange es de 9 a 20 horas de lunes a viernes. Rogamos inténtenos otra vez durante ese horario.”
Which is why I’m writing from the library of the School of Communications, and which is why I’ll likely be entirely absent, communications-wise, for this weekend, on account of the unfortunate lack of connection until the crediting issue is solved. Which is a bit of a bore, but only a minor inconvenience; initially it was a slightly bigger one, as one of the two exams I have on Monday is based solely largely upon a compendium of notes posted by the professor upon the internet, and so the lack of internet implied schlepping over and shelling out at an internet café, but fortunately the campus library is featuring “extraordinary hours” this weekend on account of exams [it is normally closed] and Clemens (who was terribly apologetic despite it not really being his fault - the bank is supposed to deduct the amount from his account directly, and the letter was dated two weeks ago but arrived only yesterday) was awesome enough to give me a lift over, which meant that within half an hour of the prognosis I was already reconnected and fast at work reading my mail and the Times.
Quite a week, it has been! SO concluded the first such period of finals, I daresay things are progressing pleasantly enough in what is shaping up to be the Short Finals Season of 2008; indeed, things should be entirely concluded a week from today (the March history examination right-properly being an autonomous, entirely free-standing partials phenomenon), and up to now it’s been comfortable - tho not entirely without drama. Indeed, cut to the usual study spot on the second story of this same School of Communications from which I write, yesterday morning, near 11-ish, with the Minister and I sitting about and mostly done with the comprehensive review we’d been since 9.30 in preparation for the Judicial Sciences exam scheduled for noon. He’s throwing facts, I’m either repeating or debating them with him, and a “Hey!” suddenly distracts us; it’s one of the girls (we think) from class.
(“We think” because I’m not wearing my glasses and have a horrible memory for faces of people with whom I haven’t extensively spoken; Minister, meanwhile, is just socially awkward, but he whispers that he thinks it might be some argumentative twat from the second row as she saunters over.)
“Hey boys!” says the girl. “Do you guys want the questions for the Judicial Sciences exam?”
“Uh…” says the Minister.
I, meanwhile, am featuring a largely blank expression because I’ve just realized that it is the argumentative twat from the second row, and I’m wondering if she’s heard me loudly comment to the Minister “God, why won’t that argumentative twat shut up?” when she begins totally vapid debates with professors in class; if so, I’m also wondering why on earth she feels motivated to go out of her way to share the questions with us, and if this is all some elaborate and overly malicious trap that she’s trying to spring on us, and I’m also thinking that she probably doesn’t have the correct questions, and that sets me to wondering how she got the questions in the first place.
“Wait, how do you have the questions?” says the Minister, vocalizing my thoughts and showing why he well-deserves his high-ranking position in the Cabinet.
“Oh, well, hello, I just got out of the exam.”
Minister and I trade blank expressions.
“What exam?” asks the Minister.
“Judicial Sciences, obviously,” says Argumentative Twat.
Confusion sets in all around.
“It was at 9,” she continues.
Long pause. Then, in unison,
“WHAT?” say the Minister and I.
“Yeah, the exam was at nine. I was actually wondering where you two were. The professor even commented on it, because she said she was surprised that the two most-dedicated students had decided to be no-shows.”
In a jumble, already scrambling to gather up our papers, the Minister says “Where is she?” while I do the same, only instead I say, “Is the exam still in session?”
“She left, I think…” says Twatty (who really has been quite nice throughout all of this, so maybe she’s just argumentative and not a total twat) “…but you guys can try in the room, I guess. 506. But I’m pretty sure she left already, the exam’s been over for like half and hour.”
I dart downstairs to watch the doors and send the Minister up to check the room, tho we know that it’s pretty unlikely that she’ll still be there. Keeping an eye out for this woman, I set to quizzing the morning concierge, if you will (they’re called Concerge’s - people who are posted in booths evey other floor and serve as go-to’s for “Have they changed the class hour or is the professor just absent?” and “Where might I find…” and “Do you have a paperclip I could borrow?” -type questions), and ask him as to the whereabouts of this woman’s office but - dismay - in turns out that she doesn’t even come up on his schedule lists. Indeed, apparently she’s a guest professor from the School of Law, so he hasn’t any information on her.
Meanwhile, the Minister is phoning - no dice on the classroom lead. I instruct him to check the Journalism Ethics (closest thing we could think of) department while I run over to look over the parking lot and check the faculty dining room. Nothing there, on both accounts. A second call determines that he’ll go check the new building while I go over to use the computers in the library (the computer rooms are closed, of course: the guy who directs them makes up a problem every exam season in order to take a vacation - my first year it was a massive virus, last year he claimed that the rooms had flooded, and this year he’s left a sign claiming that “structural issues” have obliged him to close it for architectural repairs, to be completed in the two weeks before classes resume) to find this woman on the School of Law page and hopefully locate an office number or e-mail at which she might be reached.
The computers are all occupied, of course, so frantic back-and-forth pacing ensues until someone leaves. Jumping on, I type her up and find her e-mail. I’m about to write her when I decide to check again for a phone number, and that’s when one of the links that comes up is her exam schedule, which I duly check and - WHAM - the exam is listed as being scheduled for noon.
I am confused but triumphant.
Then I check again: the exam for GROUP B is scheduled for noon. I am in Group C.
I am entirely clarified but feeling a bit sheepish.
This is, however, fine news; it means we can just show up for that exam. I dial the Minister, he agrees to the scheme, we regroup on the fifth floor and frantically try to make up for lost time, tho we’re way behind and by the time the woman shows up we’ve really only covered 60% of the class notes. She’s nice and let’s us in, we head for the exam, pleased but expecting to fail - indeed, the Minsiter has basically spent the morning trying to teach me a semester’s worth of judicial theory, and the lack of examples (generally, I need several of them to really feel confident about arguing out a manner in essay form) has made the process slow (tho a dissertation that the professor had posted about Nietzsche and postmodern law, which I had read the night before, had come somewhat in handy for the overall understanding). We take our seats, the test begins.
Can you believe that the woman asked about probably the sole two issues about which I was really confident? Or rather, can you believe that the woman asked two questions that I was kind of wavy about, but which I apparently answered correctly by referring to the sole two issues about which I was really confident?
Indeed, this is not the time for incredulity! Long story short (too late), I answered as I saw fit, mostly convinced that I was writing irrelevant rubbish and that this meant failure, and then emerged only to learn from the Minister that my answers were not only correct, but indeed apparently better than his own.
And so hur-bloody-rah for all of that.
The other exams have gone well enough as well, tho one can rest assured that it hasn’t all been inadvertent triumphs. The one on Monday (Reporting, basically) went pretty well, tho given that it was a course upon which one can’t really be tested practically, the questions were all bizarre and theoretical and essentially asked one to bullshit, albeit concisely. One in particular talked about the Guard Dog. Neither the Minister nor I know what that was all about, but I decided it must be some sort of metaphor for the role of the journalist protecting the society from manipulation or some absurdity, and so, tja, one hopefully that was right, or I expect the professor will think I’m crazy.
(Something - my being entirely off-topic - which, indeed, would be really funny if it actually turns out to be so, on account of the professor being in a foul mood on the exam day, on account of it being a make-up exam and his not wanting to be there. In reality it was a scheduled, perfectly formal exam, but he had given the class the exam early, before I returned from the Home-Territories, and as-such I came on Monday, along with all the rejects that had failed the exam the first time around and a handful of people that had never actually been to class. Now, 60% of the final grade in this class was to be accounted for with work [articles, etc.] that we had done over the semester, so imagine this fellow’s progressive annoyance as people came in and reacted in total shock when he mentioned this, making evident that he had come in to give a test to a group of people, out of which already 90% of them were automatically failing due to having not done any of that work, due to their having not shown up to class. It was pretty brilliant, because he got red in the face and shouted, and this, after all, is the professor I mentioned who comes to class each day wearing a bow-tie and brightly-coloured pants that his wife picks out for him; indeed, spouting furious denunciations at those present, his transformation into cartoon-character form was complete.)
The Press Bureaus exam, meanwhile, was more annoying than anything else, mainly because I was so uneager about studying. Indeed, tho the professor himself was gracious enough to e-mail everyone his personal set of class notes, and even tho god knows I’m fascinated by the very concept of Press Agencies and etc., I was just in no-mood to study and basically behaved like a spoiled child all through Tuesday and Wednesday, staring at the notes, every while going near them, but never actually reading them. The bad thing about not wanting to study but needing to do so is that then I end up feeling too guilty to do anything else, and end up doing minor procrastination-type things, checking my mail up to twenty times in an hour, extensively perusing Wikipedia and reading The New York Times until I realize that I’ve read every interesting article online and find myself eagerly looking forward to the next refresh, when something new might be posted. The result is that I end up not studying, but also not doing anything of actual worth, and basically wasting a day in every possible sense of the word. Unless it’s the middle of the night it is pretty difficult for me to study at all, in that I’m easily distracted, and very likely to take a nap, and even in the middle of the night now I’m more likely to get easily distracted by something else than really burn through the night and stay focused the entire time. I used to do that well-enough in Pamplona; indeed, May of 2005 I stayed up every night and studied for four-hours straight, atleast, without distraction - but there was also little to distract me, starting with the lack of internet connection (also, huge mugs of coffee didn’t give me stomach aches back then).
I don’t think that the change lately is a matter of distractions, but the other option - that half-past my third year I may be increasingly unmotivated - is rather frustrating. It’s not that I’m not still as fascinated with the field or school as I was when I started; indeed, journalism still turns me on, and this school still gives me the spiritual equivalent of an erection. But, I dunno - I’m just tired and lackadaisical all the time. I’m annoyed that the best studying I’ve done in the past week was in a panic on the Metro en route to that Press Agencies exam, and that I’m coming almost too close to comfort in terms of being as prepared as I’d like to be for these things. I’d suggest I was burnt-out, but this year hasn’t really been that stressful so far; the Minister is quick to point this out, and he, meanwhile, suggests that the mutual laissez-faire attitude of 07-08 is actually due precisely to our not being as busy as before - we have lost our freneticism! And he may be totally right there - we are doing less. But, as he points out as well, our equivalent of less is much more than the rest of the kids are undertaking; indeed, we’re still doing the usual loads of classes plus tons of extra electives and a fourth year course, and besides that I’m doing my extra projects and teaching in the evenings, and up to the demise of the Ipod I was doing my treks to class. It’s just the spirit of the times, I suppose, but hopefully not the sign of some oncoming ideological collapse or anything of the sort. I like being active, I like being busy, I like constantly accomplishing things and having things to do, and being slightly stressed and thinking to myself, “I’ll be able to take a break just as soon as I get this done, or once this deadline is through”. And while the humour with which lately I let myself take breaks before that point is distressing, ultimately I’m keeping up more than adequately, tho there is room for improvement. Hopefully the rest of the exams and the coming semester will serve well for putting all of that practice.
Digression aside, tho, that exam went as well as could be expected, tho the professor was a bit of a bastard and gave unfair conditions; indeed, 1) each incorrect question would count against the final score - points would be removed rather than given, and 2) questions (i.e., “What do you actually mean by this question?”) were also prohibited. The result was that it was pretty painful to do since a couple of them were actually ambiguously worded, and I ended up leaving one of them blank because the risk wasn’t worth the consequence if I had misinterpreted what he was asking. Still, one out of six (with a three point extra bonus question) isn’t bad if the rest of them were adequately addressed. We shall see. Totally unexpected tho - that professor generally didn’t come off as a bastard.
(Side note: some kid has just sat down across from me, and he's wearing a double-studded lip ring, only the studs are white and it's taken me a good five minutes of indiscreet starting to figure that out, as initially it just looked like he was horribly diseased and somehow unaware of the balls of puss that had formed upon the lower left-hand corner of his mouth. I am pleased, for him, that it is one thing and not the other.)
On Monday I’ll have the Gabinetes de Prensa (Business Journalism, I guess) and History of Spanish Film exams; the first isn’t too much of a worry - I just need to revise my notes and some case studies plus read a chapter - but the second one, if we recall, is the one where I fell asleep during the professor’s speech about the actual exam, the same one in which he looked at me directly when I woke up and gave a general suggestion that “students who sleep through my class should opt for the book-based test”. I’m not; I’m taking the one for kids who attend the class and fuck-all, we’ll see how it goes - I’m going to study my balls of over tonight and tomorrow to go as best I can.
And so that’s how things stand on the exam front and life in general for the moment. It’s been happy time, lately; the weather is exceedingly good (one only really needs to wear a coat at night, and yesterday I spent in shorts) and I’ve taken on a new student, Alberto’s (my perfect student, lately on Erasmus in Gothenburg) elder brother, who is less entertaining than his brother but nice enough and, again, pretty much a perfect English speaker, meaning that I’ll be meeting with him for two hours a week to basically have a chat on the way back from class for a bit of cash, which is comfortable enough. Movie-wise, a couple of days ago I watched Fresa y Chocolate, a film about gays and censorship in Cuba that I wasn’t really crazy about, and The Remains of the Day (how dreary, right?). The first my parents had recommended I don’t know how many times, and upon watching it I was left kind of unsurprised by their less evolved concepts of “the gays” in that the gays in this film appear as ridiculously effeminate, obnoxious, sex-crazed harpies, basically living to lust after one thing and preying upon innocent young men. Tho it ultimately had a message of “we can all learn from each other”, the fairly lame “gays are people, too” subtext and the lack of courage in really addressing the issue of homosexuality in Cuba (up to fairly recently they were subject to being shipped off to concentration camps for “re-education” on account of homosexuality being counter-revolutionary and a product of depraved capitalist empires) made it disappointing, especially coupled with the shitty sound and camera work plus the painful overacting that made it seem like an amateur picture made in the 60s. The Remains of the Day is a typical Merchant & Ivory film: beautifully shot, extremely British, slow-moving and completely repressed. It’s about a repressed butler and his repressed love-affair-that-never-actually-blossoms-into-one with the repressed house keeper at the home of a repressed English Lord. Fortunately its saved from being terribly dramatic with a major part of plot dealing with the master of the house and his participation in the efforts to pacify Hitler before World War II, and so a lot of entertaining references to the interwar period and a lot of “Well, we all know it’ll never come to that,” and “Come now my good lad, Mr. Hitler may shout a lot but he’d certainly never do anything truly awful to the Jews”-type comments are made. The acting is phenomenal and it’s all quite visually breathtaking, but not the most terrifically entertaining thing in the world, tho it’s good-enough for a quiet afternoon.
And other than that - not much else to report. The last of the Civil War interviews should be held after the exams on Monday, and so that’s all coming well tho it’ll be a bitch to transcribe next week (also, I’m fairly positive now that one of the hours has been lost, which is upsetting although fortunately it wasn’t a terribly important hour), and Iñaki, methinks, is coming up for a few hours tomorrow to bring by my coat and attend a soccer game, apparently. If either even turns out to be especially fascinating, I’ll duly update, I’m sure.
Until then however, I’m putting this mammoth to bed. Happy week’s end, kids.
I flipped through one of yesterday’s newspapers while I restarted the computer, read a bit on the continuing turmoil involved with the Spanish general elections in March, entered my password, waited for everything to come on, tried again.
Nothing.
I got up from bed, threw on a t-shirt, pattered over to the living room, unplugged the router waited ten seconds, re-plugged the router, and left everything to set itself while I made a cup of tea. I went back to the room and checked once more.
Nothing.
And what’s more, now it wasn’t even telling me that it was connected, but instead showing a little ball moving back and forth and telling me that it was in the process of “connecting”.
Defeated, I decided to go about my usual business, and tho there was an annoying nagging sense every little while, reminding me that I hadn’t checked my e-mail and didn’t know what was up, I still had a fairly good breakfast and decent enough time, hanging for a bit on the terrace and listening to a podcast I already had saved onto my computer, resigned to just wait until Clemens solve the problem when he got up. Which he did, shortly afterward, and he was quick about looking into it and repeating everything I had done up to then, with identical results.
“Hmm,” he said, wandering over to the living room table and picking up the post from the day before. He retrieved an envelope. He opened it.
“Fuck.”
Past-due on the internet payment, it seemed. He was running late, so he tossed me his credit card and passport on the way to the bathroom and told me to just go ahead and call them to make the payment. I dialed the indicated number, went through the usual menu, and got through to the crediting service. Or rather, their answering machine.
“Salvo en días festivos, el horario del Departamento de Crédito de Orange es de 9 a 20 horas de lunes a viernes. Rogamos inténtenos otra vez durante ese horario.”
Which is why I’m writing from the library of the School of Communications, and which is why I’ll likely be entirely absent, communications-wise, for this weekend, on account of the unfortunate lack of connection until the crediting issue is solved. Which is a bit of a bore, but only a minor inconvenience; initially it was a slightly bigger one, as one of the two exams I have on Monday is based solely largely upon a compendium of notes posted by the professor upon the internet, and so the lack of internet implied schlepping over and shelling out at an internet café, but fortunately the campus library is featuring “extraordinary hours” this weekend on account of exams [it is normally closed] and Clemens (who was terribly apologetic despite it not really being his fault - the bank is supposed to deduct the amount from his account directly, and the letter was dated two weeks ago but arrived only yesterday) was awesome enough to give me a lift over, which meant that within half an hour of the prognosis I was already reconnected and fast at work reading my mail and the Times.
Quite a week, it has been! SO concluded the first such period of finals, I daresay things are progressing pleasantly enough in what is shaping up to be the Short Finals Season of 2008; indeed, things should be entirely concluded a week from today (the March history examination right-properly being an autonomous, entirely free-standing partials phenomenon), and up to now it’s been comfortable - tho not entirely without drama. Indeed, cut to the usual study spot on the second story of this same School of Communications from which I write, yesterday morning, near 11-ish, with the Minister and I sitting about and mostly done with the comprehensive review we’d been since 9.30 in preparation for the Judicial Sciences exam scheduled for noon. He’s throwing facts, I’m either repeating or debating them with him, and a “Hey!” suddenly distracts us; it’s one of the girls (we think) from class.
(“We think” because I’m not wearing my glasses and have a horrible memory for faces of people with whom I haven’t extensively spoken; Minister, meanwhile, is just socially awkward, but he whispers that he thinks it might be some argumentative twat from the second row as she saunters over.)
“Hey boys!” says the girl. “Do you guys want the questions for the Judicial Sciences exam?”
“Uh…” says the Minister.
I, meanwhile, am featuring a largely blank expression because I’ve just realized that it is the argumentative twat from the second row, and I’m wondering if she’s heard me loudly comment to the Minister “God, why won’t that argumentative twat shut up?” when she begins totally vapid debates with professors in class; if so, I’m also wondering why on earth she feels motivated to go out of her way to share the questions with us, and if this is all some elaborate and overly malicious trap that she’s trying to spring on us, and I’m also thinking that she probably doesn’t have the correct questions, and that sets me to wondering how she got the questions in the first place.
“Wait, how do you have the questions?” says the Minister, vocalizing my thoughts and showing why he well-deserves his high-ranking position in the Cabinet.
“Oh, well, hello, I just got out of the exam.”
Minister and I trade blank expressions.
“What exam?” asks the Minister.
“Judicial Sciences, obviously,” says Argumentative Twat.
Confusion sets in all around.
“It was at 9,” she continues.
Long pause. Then, in unison,
“WHAT?” say the Minister and I.
“Yeah, the exam was at nine. I was actually wondering where you two were. The professor even commented on it, because she said she was surprised that the two most-dedicated students had decided to be no-shows.”
In a jumble, already scrambling to gather up our papers, the Minister says “Where is she?” while I do the same, only instead I say, “Is the exam still in session?”
“She left, I think…” says Twatty (who really has been quite nice throughout all of this, so maybe she’s just argumentative and not a total twat) “…but you guys can try in the room, I guess. 506. But I’m pretty sure she left already, the exam’s been over for like half and hour.”
I dart downstairs to watch the doors and send the Minister up to check the room, tho we know that it’s pretty unlikely that she’ll still be there. Keeping an eye out for this woman, I set to quizzing the morning concierge, if you will (they’re called Concerge’s - people who are posted in booths evey other floor and serve as go-to’s for “Have they changed the class hour or is the professor just absent?” and “Where might I find…” and “Do you have a paperclip I could borrow?” -type questions), and ask him as to the whereabouts of this woman’s office but - dismay - in turns out that she doesn’t even come up on his schedule lists. Indeed, apparently she’s a guest professor from the School of Law, so he hasn’t any information on her.
Meanwhile, the Minister is phoning - no dice on the classroom lead. I instruct him to check the Journalism Ethics (closest thing we could think of) department while I run over to look over the parking lot and check the faculty dining room. Nothing there, on both accounts. A second call determines that he’ll go check the new building while I go over to use the computers in the library (the computer rooms are closed, of course: the guy who directs them makes up a problem every exam season in order to take a vacation - my first year it was a massive virus, last year he claimed that the rooms had flooded, and this year he’s left a sign claiming that “structural issues” have obliged him to close it for architectural repairs, to be completed in the two weeks before classes resume) to find this woman on the School of Law page and hopefully locate an office number or e-mail at which she might be reached.
The computers are all occupied, of course, so frantic back-and-forth pacing ensues until someone leaves. Jumping on, I type her up and find her e-mail. I’m about to write her when I decide to check again for a phone number, and that’s when one of the links that comes up is her exam schedule, which I duly check and - WHAM - the exam is listed as being scheduled for noon.
I am confused but triumphant.
Then I check again: the exam for GROUP B is scheduled for noon. I am in Group C.
I am entirely clarified but feeling a bit sheepish.
This is, however, fine news; it means we can just show up for that exam. I dial the Minister, he agrees to the scheme, we regroup on the fifth floor and frantically try to make up for lost time, tho we’re way behind and by the time the woman shows up we’ve really only covered 60% of the class notes. She’s nice and let’s us in, we head for the exam, pleased but expecting to fail - indeed, the Minsiter has basically spent the morning trying to teach me a semester’s worth of judicial theory, and the lack of examples (generally, I need several of them to really feel confident about arguing out a manner in essay form) has made the process slow (tho a dissertation that the professor had posted about Nietzsche and postmodern law, which I had read the night before, had come somewhat in handy for the overall understanding). We take our seats, the test begins.
Can you believe that the woman asked about probably the sole two issues about which I was really confident? Or rather, can you believe that the woman asked two questions that I was kind of wavy about, but which I apparently answered correctly by referring to the sole two issues about which I was really confident?
Indeed, this is not the time for incredulity! Long story short (too late), I answered as I saw fit, mostly convinced that I was writing irrelevant rubbish and that this meant failure, and then emerged only to learn from the Minister that my answers were not only correct, but indeed apparently better than his own.
And so hur-bloody-rah for all of that.
The other exams have gone well enough as well, tho one can rest assured that it hasn’t all been inadvertent triumphs. The one on Monday (Reporting, basically) went pretty well, tho given that it was a course upon which one can’t really be tested practically, the questions were all bizarre and theoretical and essentially asked one to bullshit, albeit concisely. One in particular talked about the Guard Dog. Neither the Minister nor I know what that was all about, but I decided it must be some sort of metaphor for the role of the journalist protecting the society from manipulation or some absurdity, and so, tja, one hopefully that was right, or I expect the professor will think I’m crazy.
(Something - my being entirely off-topic - which, indeed, would be really funny if it actually turns out to be so, on account of the professor being in a foul mood on the exam day, on account of it being a make-up exam and his not wanting to be there. In reality it was a scheduled, perfectly formal exam, but he had given the class the exam early, before I returned from the Home-Territories, and as-such I came on Monday, along with all the rejects that had failed the exam the first time around and a handful of people that had never actually been to class. Now, 60% of the final grade in this class was to be accounted for with work [articles, etc.] that we had done over the semester, so imagine this fellow’s progressive annoyance as people came in and reacted in total shock when he mentioned this, making evident that he had come in to give a test to a group of people, out of which already 90% of them were automatically failing due to having not done any of that work, due to their having not shown up to class. It was pretty brilliant, because he got red in the face and shouted, and this, after all, is the professor I mentioned who comes to class each day wearing a bow-tie and brightly-coloured pants that his wife picks out for him; indeed, spouting furious denunciations at those present, his transformation into cartoon-character form was complete.)
The Press Bureaus exam, meanwhile, was more annoying than anything else, mainly because I was so uneager about studying. Indeed, tho the professor himself was gracious enough to e-mail everyone his personal set of class notes, and even tho god knows I’m fascinated by the very concept of Press Agencies and etc., I was just in no-mood to study and basically behaved like a spoiled child all through Tuesday and Wednesday, staring at the notes, every while going near them, but never actually reading them. The bad thing about not wanting to study but needing to do so is that then I end up feeling too guilty to do anything else, and end up doing minor procrastination-type things, checking my mail up to twenty times in an hour, extensively perusing Wikipedia and reading The New York Times until I realize that I’ve read every interesting article online and find myself eagerly looking forward to the next refresh, when something new might be posted. The result is that I end up not studying, but also not doing anything of actual worth, and basically wasting a day in every possible sense of the word. Unless it’s the middle of the night it is pretty difficult for me to study at all, in that I’m easily distracted, and very likely to take a nap, and even in the middle of the night now I’m more likely to get easily distracted by something else than really burn through the night and stay focused the entire time. I used to do that well-enough in Pamplona; indeed, May of 2005 I stayed up every night and studied for four-hours straight, atleast, without distraction - but there was also little to distract me, starting with the lack of internet connection (also, huge mugs of coffee didn’t give me stomach aches back then).
I don’t think that the change lately is a matter of distractions, but the other option - that half-past my third year I may be increasingly unmotivated - is rather frustrating. It’s not that I’m not still as fascinated with the field or school as I was when I started; indeed, journalism still turns me on, and this school still gives me the spiritual equivalent of an erection. But, I dunno - I’m just tired and lackadaisical all the time. I’m annoyed that the best studying I’ve done in the past week was in a panic on the Metro en route to that Press Agencies exam, and that I’m coming almost too close to comfort in terms of being as prepared as I’d like to be for these things. I’d suggest I was burnt-out, but this year hasn’t really been that stressful so far; the Minister is quick to point this out, and he, meanwhile, suggests that the mutual laissez-faire attitude of 07-08 is actually due precisely to our not being as busy as before - we have lost our freneticism! And he may be totally right there - we are doing less. But, as he points out as well, our equivalent of less is much more than the rest of the kids are undertaking; indeed, we’re still doing the usual loads of classes plus tons of extra electives and a fourth year course, and besides that I’m doing my extra projects and teaching in the evenings, and up to the demise of the Ipod I was doing my treks to class. It’s just the spirit of the times, I suppose, but hopefully not the sign of some oncoming ideological collapse or anything of the sort. I like being active, I like being busy, I like constantly accomplishing things and having things to do, and being slightly stressed and thinking to myself, “I’ll be able to take a break just as soon as I get this done, or once this deadline is through”. And while the humour with which lately I let myself take breaks before that point is distressing, ultimately I’m keeping up more than adequately, tho there is room for improvement. Hopefully the rest of the exams and the coming semester will serve well for putting all of that practice.
Digression aside, tho, that exam went as well as could be expected, tho the professor was a bit of a bastard and gave unfair conditions; indeed, 1) each incorrect question would count against the final score - points would be removed rather than given, and 2) questions (i.e., “What do you actually mean by this question?”) were also prohibited. The result was that it was pretty painful to do since a couple of them were actually ambiguously worded, and I ended up leaving one of them blank because the risk wasn’t worth the consequence if I had misinterpreted what he was asking. Still, one out of six (with a three point extra bonus question) isn’t bad if the rest of them were adequately addressed. We shall see. Totally unexpected tho - that professor generally didn’t come off as a bastard.
(Side note: some kid has just sat down across from me, and he's wearing a double-studded lip ring, only the studs are white and it's taken me a good five minutes of indiscreet starting to figure that out, as initially it just looked like he was horribly diseased and somehow unaware of the balls of puss that had formed upon the lower left-hand corner of his mouth. I am pleased, for him, that it is one thing and not the other.)
On Monday I’ll have the Gabinetes de Prensa (Business Journalism, I guess) and History of Spanish Film exams; the first isn’t too much of a worry - I just need to revise my notes and some case studies plus read a chapter - but the second one, if we recall, is the one where I fell asleep during the professor’s speech about the actual exam, the same one in which he looked at me directly when I woke up and gave a general suggestion that “students who sleep through my class should opt for the book-based test”. I’m not; I’m taking the one for kids who attend the class and fuck-all, we’ll see how it goes - I’m going to study my balls of over tonight and tomorrow to go as best I can.
And so that’s how things stand on the exam front and life in general for the moment. It’s been happy time, lately; the weather is exceedingly good (one only really needs to wear a coat at night, and yesterday I spent in shorts) and I’ve taken on a new student, Alberto’s (my perfect student, lately on Erasmus in Gothenburg) elder brother, who is less entertaining than his brother but nice enough and, again, pretty much a perfect English speaker, meaning that I’ll be meeting with him for two hours a week to basically have a chat on the way back from class for a bit of cash, which is comfortable enough. Movie-wise, a couple of days ago I watched Fresa y Chocolate, a film about gays and censorship in Cuba that I wasn’t really crazy about, and The Remains of the Day (how dreary, right?). The first my parents had recommended I don’t know how many times, and upon watching it I was left kind of unsurprised by their less evolved concepts of “the gays” in that the gays in this film appear as ridiculously effeminate, obnoxious, sex-crazed harpies, basically living to lust after one thing and preying upon innocent young men. Tho it ultimately had a message of “we can all learn from each other”, the fairly lame “gays are people, too” subtext and the lack of courage in really addressing the issue of homosexuality in Cuba (up to fairly recently they were subject to being shipped off to concentration camps for “re-education” on account of homosexuality being counter-revolutionary and a product of depraved capitalist empires) made it disappointing, especially coupled with the shitty sound and camera work plus the painful overacting that made it seem like an amateur picture made in the 60s. The Remains of the Day is a typical Merchant & Ivory film: beautifully shot, extremely British, slow-moving and completely repressed. It’s about a repressed butler and his repressed love-affair-that-never-actually-blossoms-into-one with the repressed house keeper at the home of a repressed English Lord. Fortunately its saved from being terribly dramatic with a major part of plot dealing with the master of the house and his participation in the efforts to pacify Hitler before World War II, and so a lot of entertaining references to the interwar period and a lot of “Well, we all know it’ll never come to that,” and “Come now my good lad, Mr. Hitler may shout a lot but he’d certainly never do anything truly awful to the Jews”-type comments are made. The acting is phenomenal and it’s all quite visually breathtaking, but not the most terrifically entertaining thing in the world, tho it’s good-enough for a quiet afternoon.
And other than that - not much else to report. The last of the Civil War interviews should be held after the exams on Monday, and so that’s all coming well tho it’ll be a bitch to transcribe next week (also, I’m fairly positive now that one of the hours has been lost, which is upsetting although fortunately it wasn’t a terribly important hour), and Iñaki, methinks, is coming up for a few hours tomorrow to bring by my coat and attend a soccer game, apparently. If either even turns out to be especially fascinating, I’ll duly update, I’m sure.
Until then however, I’m putting this mammoth to bed. Happy week’s end, kids.