Winter break

     Huzzah! Finals are done, grades are coming in (all As so far), and I'm about to set off on winter break with family and friends on the east coast. In light of the next few weeks being a vacation, I've decided to put updates on hold until I get back, so that I can focus on relaxing and relationships instead of making sure updates get posted in time. So here's a quick post for the holidays, and I'll see you all when I get back, on January 14th!

     One of the things I've been working on this semester is self-acceptance. I have never been one to follow the crowd, but lately I've been doubting whether what I'm doing is the "right" thing to do. I'm in my thirties, in college, broke as heck, and facing the absolute unknown of graduation and entry into an extremely sluggish job market and economy. If you'd asked me 10 years ago- heck, even 5 years ago- where I'd be at this time in life, this would not be it.

FTP 36 - Ego vs learning

     Earlier this week, I finally finished my Russian paper. I was pretty proud of the fact hat I managed to get 5 pages of coherent Russian written, considering I've only been studying it for three years. Despite that sense of accomplishment, though, I knew that I should probably have a native speaker (or at least someone with more experience in the language) take a look at it before I turned it in. It's possible to make stupid mistakes in English when writing that much, and Word doesn't really have a good spellcheck for Russian, and zero grammar check.

     Feeling somewhat confident, I printed my paper out and took it in to dance class for Rita to look over. After class, she took out her glasses, sat down, and immediately said, "Hmmm, this first sentence isn't really how a Russian speaker would say it." Wow, ouch. Can't even get a first sentence right, and it didn't get any better after that. Over the course of the next hour and a half, during which we got thrown out so the teacher could shut the studio down, she proceeded to rip my poor little paper to shreds, most based on "that's not how a Russian speaker would say it."

Adages again

     Since I'm still working through the tail end of the French play that's eaten my entire week, and starting to focus on finals, this is going to be another short post. I'd wanted to draw these out, but they've been sitting around forever, and I haven't felt inspired, so you'll have to make do with non-hand-drawn pictures.

     Here's the next batch of modernized adages!

1) Don't count your checks before they're cashed.

FTP 35 - Word problems

     In an effort to retain some shreds of coherency, I'm taking today off of work and the one class that's right in the middle of the day. Instead of the usual chaos of this week, I instead finished a couple minor projects for French class, got caught up on homework for Russian, proofread the paper that's due tomorrow in lit/ culture class, cleaned the house, had a real meal, rescheduled everything for the next two weeks to make a little more sense, and generally got my affairs in order. Life is still chaotic, but at least it's controlled chaos at this point.

     In the midst of everything, however, life still goes on. Remember way back when, struggling with word problems in middle or high school? The most common question asked was "When will we ever use this in real life??" A little while ago, I got this from a friend:

So thank you, grade school math teachers. Believe it or not, you are appreciated, even if it's just by knitters and crocheters who don't want to throw away useful bits of yarn. Cheers!

The beginning of the end

     What? No, not the Mayan end of days thing. I'm still waiting patiently for my opportunity to be able to say I told you so on that one. The end I'm talking about is the semester. It's that time where that nice comfy schedule you've gotten used to blows up in your face. Teachers start asking for papers and projects, expecting you to remember stuff they told you 15 long weeks ago, and warning you about this massively weighted, three-hour test that's looming ahead in your schedule. Nights get longr, days get more hectic, you strt forgetting whats next in your dayy and your ealize that you're running on nothing but caffeinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

   
     Just kidding. I haven't yet pulled an all-nighter, and I refuse to. Procrastinator I may be, but I procrastinate to my 11th hour- that is, the last minute that I can do something and still get a good night's sleep afterwards. That said, this is a short post, because I've been working on memorizing lines for the musical this weekend, studying for a test on Tuesday, and trying desperately to keep some amount of fluency going in three different languages. Here's hoping the beginning of the end of the year is a good one for you. Only 27 days to go til 2013, and heavens knows I'm ready for 2012 to be over already. Cheers!