Recognition

     The end of February was, in a word, awful. It was one of those times when all the little things go wrong, so there's no one thing to be mad at. Instead you're plagued with incidents like stubbing your toes, dropping papers, spilling food on yourself, inconvenient parking spaces, hitting every single red light possible, not sleeping well, being chronically late despite starting out early, all that sort of thing.

Yeah, one of THOSE times...

     The crowning point, for me, was the homework for my Russian Idioms class. On a rotating schedule, each student has to research that day's topic and give a powerpoint presentation on it. Usually, this consists of about half an hour of translating the appropriate section of the textbook, a bit of research online, and a quick construction of 5-6 slides that highlight the information and finish with a question or two. For some reason, I decided to check out my section earlier than usual, and was utterly baffled to realize that it consisted of a broad and extremely generalized overview of the European and Russian political, social, and philosophical arenas in the early 20th century, all of which culminated in three very expansive idioms. I emailed the prof, asking if he really wanted this entire overview, and he eventually replied with, "Yes, just give background for the idioms, you'll be fine."

     Needless to say, I was not fine. What should have take an hour to an hour and a half at the most instead took five hours and kept me up long past my bedtime as I tried desperately to understand the enormity of social, political, and artistic changes from 1890 - 1940. My topics- all directly related to what I was supposed to present and explain (in Russian)- included:

• Modernism, in both art and architecture.
• The Bloody Sunday massacre in 1905 in St Petersburg.
• The industrialization of Russia.
• The deterioration of worker's right and situations.
• Multitudinous labor strikes.
• The Russo-Japanese War in 1904-1905.
• The first revolution against Tsar Nicholas II in 1905.
• The second revolution against a failed democracy in 1917.
• The European situation that set the stage for WWI.
• Materialism, and it's effects on personal happiness.
• The decline of the Russian nobility.
• The growth of the middle class.
• The dehumanization of culture in a mass-production society.
• The theory of the rise and fall of empires, and how it applied to Europe in the early 1900s.

Fun, huh?

     What made it even more thrilling is that, by the time I finally finished all of this, managed to crush it down into six powerpoint slides, converted it into Russian (which is not a language that lends itself to brevity), and went to bed, my mind was so full of existential questions and senseless violence that I didn't get more than about 3 hours of sleep, all told. 

     The next morning, as I head into class, mentally cursing out everyone who even looks at me sideways, I was thoroughly prepared to give my presentation and get utterly slammed for it somehow not being what the prof was looking for. It seems like every time I have to do a monumental task that is stupidly complex, it turns out that I've misread the instructions and gone so far afield that you couldn't find me with a telescope. Much to my surprise, however, the prof- who usually spends at least as much time talking during each presentation as the presenter does- couldn't find too much to add, and I managed to anticipate what he was looking for a time or two, even.

     Slightly mollified, I sat down and let the next student take over, still grumbling under my breath about how ridiculous that assignment had been. Before class let out, however, the prof called me up to his desk and told me he was really impressed with my work, and I must have learned a lot in order to summarize it all so well. Coming from someone who usually just says "Ok, thank you. Next!" when you give a presentation, I was quite flattered that he'd picked up on all the effort I put into it, and made the day substantially better.

     In general, I do my best to make sure people know they're appreciated (when they are). They say that hard work is its own reward, but personally, I think it's much better when someone else is nice enough to notice. Cheers!