Update on stuff
So. This week is finally over, thank God.
In case you didn't catch my frantic flailing and panicking over Twitter, I had 6 of my 7 exas this week, with the worst of them as far as the required amount of knowledge went, being today. I'd like to thank the girls who told me to trust myself a little more and who threatened to kick my ass if I didn't study last night.
Monday, Specialized Texts Writing and Analysis. First I'd like to state we've never written anything in that class. Like all of Mrs. D.'s classes, the exam was ridiculously easy, we had to identify a press release and find some pretty basic info in it, then re-write Newspaper titles in a generic language (eg: "the old continent" -> "Europe"). I know I messed up one because I had no idea "the man in white" is used to talk about the Pope, but the rest was easy. At last we had to identify the specilization of a text (it was a touristic text), say what were the elements (except the subject matter) that were characteristic of these types of texts, and rewrite it in a generic language (ie: without all the superlative adjectifs and crazy metaphores). Easy peasy.
Tuesday, French to Italian Translation. My Italian is by far not as good as my English, just so you know. I feel I've done so-so, I should pass it but not by much, there's a risk I might fail, but gain not by much. The teacher is kind and more likely to try and find things to get me more points if I'm just under the passing grade.
Wednesday morning, Texts Analysis and Writing (yes, all our courses have similar names). That...didn't go very well. Like, at all. One third of the exam points were on something I wasn't there when the teacher explained, and no one bothered to tell me "oh, yes, he took five minutes to explain things that will end up being one third of the exam". Thanks guys. So, huge risk of my having to retake that one this Summer.
Wednesday afternoon, Writing Workshop (English). That went well. :D We had to choose one out of three essay subjects, and one of them ("your personnal experience of the relationship between reading and writing") was screaming my name. Oh, awesome!teacher, I <3 you so much! ^^ The other part of the exam ws editing an application letter letter riddle with mistakes (grammar, lexica choices, punctuation...). It was pretty straight-forward. :)
Thursday, Translation Technologies. That went really well. I'm not gonna go into details because unless you're familiar with linguistic softwares (editing, translating, vocal recognition, etc.) it'll be Greek to you. :P
Friday, US Culture (that was really more US History). Or The Big Scary One. Were we had to know all of US history from the 1500 to present day, and be able to recognize texts from the 25 texts of the corpus and say their title, author, historical context, author's purpose, use of language and themes. That's when I should state that I didn't read any of the texts in their entirety, because I just didn't have the time for that. Part one went okay, I managed to scribble about the Anglo-French wars, the Coercive (or Intolerable) Acts, the Northwest Ordinance and the Vietnam War. (We had to write 3-4 sentences about 4 historical references amongst 7. I still have no idea what NAACP is.) Second part (worth 2/3 of the points...), we had to talk about 4 of the 6 texts. I identified correctly Roosevelt's Inaugural Address, Yekl by Abraham Cahan and the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and I think I managed not to write anything entirely wrong about these. I mistook Crèvecoeur's What s an American for Thomas Paine's Common Sense though, so... :/ Anyways, I just might actually pass that one, which I find incredible, you have no idea!
I still have an English Language Analysis exam next Tuesday for which I have quite a bit of studying to do, but I'm quite confident about it, it should be fine. And I have the time.
Also, on Wednesday and Thursday I have a trial/training at the coffee shop I will soon be working for on Saturdays, since now I'll only be able to work for the school two days a week due to my new class schedule. I'm not crazy about working Saturdays, but if I want to be able to afford al the things I wanna do...
See, I'll have to pay the next Uni semester (500 CHF), then I promised to go see sarah_umi in St Andrews at some point, and I'll be spending a few days in London this Summer (more about that in a few days). Also, I'm supposed to be saving mone to go to India in Summer 2012, and the girls I met in New Zealand are talking about spending a week-end all together, maybe in Paris or Rome, something like that. Hum. I'm also steadily paying my parents back (still owe them 700 CHF), and I was hoping to complete my silverware at some point. Yeah, right.
On other news, I'm still looking for a kind beta for my monster!chasing story, it's only 1000 words, if anyone's up for it. It's my fic for picfor1000.
And I found out about SPN being pushed back to next week earlier this afternoon. Yet another exemple of how networks have no respect for viewers. I'm pissed, of course, 'cause I'd been looking forward to it very much. It's not the end of the world, obviously, but it's just annoying.
In case you didn't catch my frantic flailing and panicking over Twitter, I had 6 of my 7 exas this week, with the worst of them as far as the required amount of knowledge went, being today. I'd like to thank the girls who told me to trust myself a little more and who threatened to kick my ass if I didn't study last night.
Monday, Specialized Texts Writing and Analysis. First I'd like to state we've never written anything in that class. Like all of Mrs. D.'s classes, the exam was ridiculously easy, we had to identify a press release and find some pretty basic info in it, then re-write Newspaper titles in a generic language (eg: "the old continent" -> "Europe"). I know I messed up one because I had no idea "the man in white" is used to talk about the Pope, but the rest was easy. At last we had to identify the specilization of a text (it was a touristic text), say what were the elements (except the subject matter) that were characteristic of these types of texts, and rewrite it in a generic language (ie: without all the superlative adjectifs and crazy metaphores). Easy peasy.
Tuesday, French to Italian Translation. My Italian is by far not as good as my English, just so you know. I feel I've done so-so, I should pass it but not by much, there's a risk I might fail, but gain not by much. The teacher is kind and more likely to try and find things to get me more points if I'm just under the passing grade.
Wednesday morning, Texts Analysis and Writing (yes, all our courses have similar names). That...didn't go very well. Like, at all. One third of the exam points were on something I wasn't there when the teacher explained, and no one bothered to tell me "oh, yes, he took five minutes to explain things that will end up being one third of the exam". Thanks guys. So, huge risk of my having to retake that one this Summer.
Wednesday afternoon, Writing Workshop (English). That went well. :D We had to choose one out of three essay subjects, and one of them ("your personnal experience of the relationship between reading and writing") was screaming my name. Oh, awesome!teacher, I <3 you so much! ^^ The other part of the exam ws editing an application letter letter riddle with mistakes (grammar, lexica choices, punctuation...). It was pretty straight-forward. :)
Thursday, Translation Technologies. That went really well. I'm not gonna go into details because unless you're familiar with linguistic softwares (editing, translating, vocal recognition, etc.) it'll be Greek to you. :P
Friday, US Culture (that was really more US History). Or The Big Scary One. Were we had to know all of US history from the 1500 to present day, and be able to recognize texts from the 25 texts of the corpus and say their title, author, historical context, author's purpose, use of language and themes. That's when I should state that I didn't read any of the texts in their entirety, because I just didn't have the time for that. Part one went okay, I managed to scribble about the Anglo-French wars, the Coercive (or Intolerable) Acts, the Northwest Ordinance and the Vietnam War. (We had to write 3-4 sentences about 4 historical references amongst 7. I still have no idea what NAACP is.) Second part (worth 2/3 of the points...), we had to talk about 4 of the 6 texts. I identified correctly Roosevelt's Inaugural Address, Yekl by Abraham Cahan and the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and I think I managed not to write anything entirely wrong about these. I mistook Crèvecoeur's What s an American for Thomas Paine's Common Sense though, so... :/ Anyways, I just might actually pass that one, which I find incredible, you have no idea!
I still have an English Language Analysis exam next Tuesday for which I have quite a bit of studying to do, but I'm quite confident about it, it should be fine. And I have the time.
Also, on Wednesday and Thursday I have a trial/training at the coffee shop I will soon be working for on Saturdays, since now I'll only be able to work for the school two days a week due to my new class schedule. I'm not crazy about working Saturdays, but if I want to be able to afford al the things I wanna do...
See, I'll have to pay the next Uni semester (500 CHF), then I promised to go see sarah_umi in St Andrews at some point, and I'll be spending a few days in London this Summer (more about that in a few days). Also, I'm supposed to be saving mone to go to India in Summer 2012, and the girls I met in New Zealand are talking about spending a week-end all together, maybe in Paris or Rome, something like that. Hum. I'm also steadily paying my parents back (still owe them 700 CHF), and I was hoping to complete my silverware at some point. Yeah, right.
On other news, I'm still looking for a kind beta for my monster!chasing story, it's only 1000 words, if anyone's up for it. It's my fic for picfor1000.
And I found out about SPN being pushed back to next week earlier this afternoon. Yet another exemple of how networks have no respect for viewers. I'm pissed, of course, 'cause I'd been looking forward to it very much. It's not the end of the world, obviously, but it's just annoying.