So barring any more last-minute changes, here's what my next 2 weeks look like:
Tuesday 9th December: Comparative literature exam
Saturday 13th December: Francophone literature exam
Monday 15th December: History of Religion exam
Tuesday 16th December: History of Alsace exam
Wednesday 17th December: Childhood literature 10-page paper due (I finished it yesterday! Woohoo!)
Thursday 18th December: History and religion in France and Germany exam
And I just turned in my exposé for my Aurélien class, which I think I did pretty well on, based on her feedback to the girl who did a presentation in class on the same topic. So let's just say it's going to be a VERY interesting two weeks...
Unfortunately, over the past week or so, I have not been getting much sleep. Believe me, it's not from a lack of trying, but 4 or 5 nights in the past week have consisted of me lying in bed for an hour or so after turning out the lights, eyes closed and physically exhausted but unable to fall asleep. This has been particularly unfortunate when I've had to get up early for class (and actually, most mornings this week I've actually been getting up before my alarm, which is weird because I don't get up at the same time every day). The bags under my eyes keep getting larger and larger, and the last few times I've gone to the gym, I've felt as though I would pass out (or fall asleep!) on the elliptical. In fact, I made the executive decision not to go to the gym today because I feel so crummy, and you all know that I REALLY have to not feel well to skip the gym. I know that i need the sleep in order to survive these next 2 1/2 weeks, but I can't seem to talk my body into letting me sleep. This is a problem. And I really don't know what's going on. I also have had a really terrible stomach ache for the past 48 hours, and mysterious stomach pains always freak me out, so I sort of hope they're tied in to the lack of sleep and it's not something more serious. Yes, I know that I'm particularly stressed right now, but I think I would know if I was so stressed that I couldn't sleep. It's not like I'm completely behind in everything; I cross things off my to-do list daily, so I don't know what's going on. Ugh...
I decided that it just wasn't worth it to go to my second class yesterday, both because I didn't feel well and because it's the class that I just finished the paper for. So instead, I came back to the apartment and worked on translating poems for my exam on Tuesday. When I stuck my head into my host mom's room to say goodbye, she asked me if I was feeling better, and when I said that I wasn't, she told me that I looked pale. I was not really in a joking mood, but what I was thinking was, 'No, I just get pale and pasty-looking in the winter, especially since there is not too much natural sunlight in Strasbourg.'
I wanted to talk a little bit about my host mom, because I realize that I've only really mentioned her in passing. On Tuesday night for dinner she made what she has apparently started to call "tarte Kristen," because it's my favorite dinner that she makes me. I guess Rita, my "host sister," called her from Portugal to ask for the recipe for "tarte Kristen," and apparently the name stuck. I asked her if the student who will be with her next semester is a vegetarian, joking that maybe she'll be able to have meat again, and she said that Susan told her that the new student is a carnivore. but she said that she's learned how to make a lot of new things in order to cook for me. Apparently, tarte Kristen was completely experimental, but it is completely delicious (by the way, it's a pastry crust with a few kinds of cheese and lots of veggies inside). She asked if she could take my picture with it. So cute.
Apparently, she was in a really good mood last night, even though she had been coming down with a cold for the past few days. She told me how much she had loved the dress I wore to Thanksgiving dinner, telling me how beautiful I had looked. Not that she's ever been anything other than nice to me, but she's not exactly the type to throw out compliments left and right either, so I was a little shocked, but was still very grateful. In case you were wondering, the dress I wore was one that I got at Forever 21 last year (that a lot of you have seen), a gray silk trapeze dress with a bejeweled neckline. It was a great purchase. Anyway, another thing about my host mom is that she's pretty much a therapist to all of her friends. She's one of those people who gives really good advice and is far too nice to say no to people, so all of her friends come to her with their sob stories, which I have become privy to both because she tells me about them and because our walls are really thin so I can hear her phone conversations. With one of her friends, it has kind of become a problem, because she completely takes advantage of Angelita's kindness, so I feel really bad. One more thing I found out is that Angelita and her son, David, are going to Istanbul for Christmas, and she's totally freaked out. Apparently, she has a friend who lives there, and one time, when she was on the phone with him, she heard what sounded like gunshots in the background. When she asked what it was about, he said, "Oh, those are just police killing drug dealers." Great. I honestly don't know why she's going to Istanbul- it doesn't seem like it will be a very relaxing vacation if she's constantly paranoid.
Yesterday after class, the Georgetown group got together and went out to dinner with Susan at this really great vegetarian restaurant. We were all bemoaning our finals situations, and Susan was being very sympathetic, but then she told us that French students have a really difficult time too when they go to the States. Apparently, at least one student a year from the IEP (who goes to the US) gets accused of plagiarism, and they're pretty much always guilty. It's not because they're mean-spirited or are blatantly out to cheat, but in the French education system, original thought is not at all valued, so they literally just copy everyone else's thoughts word for word. It's really ridiculous. So we were saying that they would be majorly screwed if they ever had to use something like turnitin.com, which, for those of you who don't know, is a site where you turn in your paper to have it checked against the internet for any possible plagiarism. It's scary even if you know you haven't plagiarized! Susan said she had to give a presentation about plagiarism to the second year students who are planning to go abroad next year, and they were FREAKED OUT! It just does not even occur to them to cite anything. One of the girls said that she had been proofreading an English paper written by a French student, and she found that an entire section of his paper had been copied and pasted from Wikipedia- with no citation!!!! There was a hyperlink, so that's how she found out. It's really ridiculous.
Besides not having original thoughts and not citing anything, French students are ridiculously incompetent when it comes to bibliographies. I remember having had MLA format drilled into my head from about second grade on, so it is horrifying to me that French university students STILL cannot write a bibliography for their life. Do they not know that there are websites that will pretty much do it for you? So in every class where students have to give a presentation, the professor ALWAYS- and I mean ALWAYS- critiques their bibliography. No joke, one of my professors said to one girl, "The author's name comes before the title," and she said, "No it doesn't." The other Georgetown girls and I looked at each other as if to say, "Is she SERIOUS???". The entire concept of putting the bibliography in order by the author's last name also seems to be a difficult task for them. You just have to chuckle. Susan put it this way: French students don't actually learn how to do anything practical. Amen to that.
Sorry for the random post, but some interesting things happened yesterday. As always, I'm sending you my love,
Kristen
No comments:
Post a Comment