I've taken enough Arabic to pretty much cruise through this first semester. I got an 18 and a 19 on my first round of exams, which are practically unheard-of scores in the French public education system. After those exams, we had one additional week of classes, and now we are in the middle of our second round of exams.

On Monday, I took the Round 2 exam that corresponded to the exam that I got an 18 on. Keep in mind, we have only had ONE class since our last exam (stupid, disorganized system... what a surprise), so we didn't cover all that much new material between exams. Yet, oddly enough, there were things on that second exam that I had never even seen before. And there were a few other things that I recognized from previous years of Arabic study, but absolutely and without a doubt NOT from this current year.

And I'm thinking: what kind of teacher just throws new vocabularly at students during a translation exam when they aren't authorized the use of a dictionary? She even added in conjunctions and the subjonctive, and we have DEFINETLY not covered those topics yet. I was maybe third or fourth to finish the exam (out of about 100), but I am willing to bet that at least 75% of the people in that room failed. And unfairly, at that.

I just think it's wrong. I know I passed the test just fine because I knew most of the words/terms she asked for, if not all of them. But I knew them because I learned them elsewhere, not because they had been taught to me by my current professor. And not surprisingly, the only people who finished before me were all arabophones and so they clearly have an advantage over the rest of us.

This is why the success rate at my school is under 10%. But that doesn't mean it's right.

Tomorrow I have another exam - an oral - at 9:45 am. I have been having a hard time getting up in the morning, mainly because I have been so active during the days that my body is demanding at least 10 hours of sleep. As I don't usually get to bed until midnight, you can see how this is a dangerous pattern.

At any rate, I am hardly preparing for the exam tomorrow, just keeping my fingers crossed. I'm counting on this professor being more reasonable than the other, which it isn't hard to be.

It's kind of painful to go through 6.5 hours of exams only to walk out and be sure you failed.

And for those who know me, don't do that thing where you go, "Oh, no... I'm sure you did fine, you probably just didn't get a great grade, but surely you passed." Because, really? No. No, I did not.

As a matter of fact, most likely, 92% of my comrades did not pass either. My school has an 8% - yes 8% - success rate. Which means two things: 1) it's not easy and 2) I really can say with certitude that I failed.

In France, luckily, this is not a problem. The glory of the French system is that you can take the exams - again - come September. So I'll be reviewing Arabic over the summer in an attempt to NOT blank on three words necessary for my translation today. Walking out, I realized I made at least 15 stupid, stupid errors. On a test out of 20, that's just not good.

Anyway, tomorrow is the oral exam. I was going to prepare for it rather intensively, but I have decided that if I'm going to have to go through this whole process again anyway, there's not much point. I'll review some more this evening, but I'm pretty much just counting down the hours until 10.30 am tomorrow when this whole business will be over and done with.

Until September, that is.

Twenty years down the road, I might look back on today and remember it as the day the universe smiled at me. A bright, beaming, teethy smile -- so sunny and warm and unrestricted in its friendliness that I couldn't help but finally realize that yes, somebody's looking out for me.

Today, I found all of the notes for all of my classes - online.

Somebody - God bless his/her soul - scanned a year's worth of weekly grammar lectures and then uploaded them onto a web site. Another person, God bless his/her soul even more, went through all of his/her Islamology lectures and TYPED THEM up into a 125-page document.

This is the kind of thing that makes me remember why we consider technology progress.

I will admit to having skipped a few grammar lectures. Ok, I skipped all but six. I was working my way up to asking a classmate - none of whom I am particularly close to - about possibly borrowing all of his notes. No need! I've got them all!! All!! And in really good writing.

Now all I have to do is learn everything. Seriously, yo, my workload has been cut in half. I felt like, by comparison, the learning was the easy part. If these anonymous uploaders had a tip jar, I would pay them.

Lordy, Lordy. This is insane.

My thesis director loved my paper. I mean, he really, really liked it, and gave me a good grade (that I was completely not expecting). He may use part of it for some sort of publication he's working on, but I'm not exactly sure what he means by all that (I started zoning when he was talking about it because it involved some sort of dialogue-reading software...?).

Then he even went so far as to say that he really couldn't think of any criticism whatsoever, which I believe is the first and last time I will ever believe a Frenchie when they say that.

So he almost freakishly praised it, and then asked me if I would consider continuing working on the same topic at the doctorate level. I bathed in the praise so much that I almost forgot how much I hated the researching/writing of the damn thing, and I found myself thinking, "Hey, a doctorate could be good..."

But Christ, I think if there is one thing I have learned in this experience, it would be: think before you go for the doctorate, yo.

The other thing I learned is: less work + less stress = better outcome in less time. It's a curious equation, I know, but I found it to be true in this case.

Regardless, this was my favorite thing, of all things my professor said: "This is so well-written, so clear, precise, and scientific, that it's obvious whoever wrote it did not go through French schooling."

So in the end, I have a fancy diploma from a fancy school (perhaps even with some fancy honors?) that I won't do much of anything with. But still. I can actually say that I'm proud of this. I'm sort of uncomfortable with the feeling, but there you have it.

My paper is printed and sitting next to me. I hesitate to say I'm done until the damn thing is copied, bound, and plopped into my professor's box, but I'm coming closer and closer.

Considering I didn't start writing until three weeks ago, I think I've done pretty damn well. This is my first real exercise in working slowly and steadily. It's an interesting technique. I like it.

I managed to always turn away from the computer screen when my eyes started crossing or words just stopped coming to me. I would put away the book when I realized I was reading without retaining. I have even done some yoga and breathing exercises daily to keep myself calm and focused.

But I think the real key is that I have managed to rarely give in to the temptation to just pretend I didn't have a huge paper due in the near future. When I did so, it was at predefined times and for predetermined limits.

Exceptionally, two days ago, I was in Kathypath's neighborhood and gave her a ring to see if she was available for a coffee. She was, so we met up downstairs and went to a local joint.

It was still morning - not yet 11 - and the air was fresh. The sun was coming up and there was a pleasant mixture of morning air and warm sunshine. I had on a scarf and short sleeves - staying warm but letting my skin feel the sun. We both agreed we could potentially stay on that café terrace for hours. We sat and gabbed and drank our coffees until a bit past noon, and then we gave in to the call of an afternoon glass of wine. The terrace was seducing me, slowly but surely, and Kathypath was feeling it, too. But the incredible and wonderful thing was that we stopped after one glass, and I went home and put in a good six hours on my paper.

I think I've learned a lot about my ability to work. I've always cranked out things all at once, and I thought for sure I would do the same this time around. Yet, after the initial 30 pages, I worked very methodically, and I never actually stressed about finishing the thing on time. I just plugged away - some days writing five pages, others three.

I know my friends haven't seen very much of me lately, and I thank them for being understanding. I hope they would also agree that I've been surprisingly mellow about this endeavor... besides that freak-out moment over the single-space/double-space issue, I've felt pretty chill throughout this entire project.

Now just watch everything go to hell tomorrow at the copy place.

Anyway, I feel good. Satisfied and even a little proud. I swear I have some carpal tunnel syndrom issues going on - last night my right hand kept cramping up. But otherwise, there's little physical evidence of the stress a paper can bring on, and I'm content to say that that might be because I've never been freakishly stressed about this thing in the first place.

As a matter of fact, I feel a little Wonder Woman-y about the whole deal.

So there. I'm coming into the home stretch now. I'm calm and peaceful, and I hope tomorrow I can just glide into the office and right back out again, riding this quietly happy little wave of achievement. I so rarely stop to pat myself on the back, but this time I can at least give myself credit for this paper's process, if not the product. And even at that, I'm pretty much ok with the paper, too.

That said, I will never, ever put myself through this again.

The Boy and I have spent over seven hours correcting my thesis. We got in two arguments in the process. He has nonetheless agreed to help me for another three or four hours tomorrow.

That's love. Right there.

I would be shitting my pants if he hadn't just dropped everything to help me. It's incredible. What do you think I can do (when all this madness is over) to show him what that means to me? Don't forget - I currently have a negative bank account.

The paper is not going to be turned in tomorrow, as I had hoped. I am shooting for Thursday now, with Friday looking more realistic. Still, Friday is fine by me. Just get the damn thing out of my hands, really.

Oh - and one more thing: my French? Very embarrassing. Academic writing in a second language? Apparently not my forte. That's a bit of a tough pill to swallow, but there you have it. Luckily, I only have to write one (really bad) paper in French per lifetime.

The end is in sight. That's all I can say. It's the only thing giving me the strength to go forward. That, and my man.

13 pages to go, everybody. 13!!!

Here's what I am realizing: when I write this damn paper, things just go along dandily for a moment. Then, suddenly, and without warning (there was a TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE SUN!) (tell me you recognize that), I just can't write anymore.

Plus, I get a little weird and I feel like I'm all amped up on caffeine. That would be how I feel right now. I almost feel like I should go for a midnight (midnight-forty, actually) jog around the block. There is definetly an excess energy issue, a lack of being able to harnass it for any sort of good. I can't sit still and my brain goes shooting in seven different directions. I don't even have the patience to listen to a song all the way through. Poor Nina.

I don't really think I have any sort of ADD or anything (considering I work for six hours straight before the insanity hits) but it makes me able to empathize with those who do. It's just so annoying, and I would really LIKE to be able to concentrate, but um... no. Not gonna happen.

But hey! I'm so close to finishing this colossal project that has been hanging over my head for a freakin' YEAR. I can almost taste the relief.

On Sunday, I am shoving the entire thing in the face of my poor French friend who didn't know what he was getting into when he said he would correct my grammar. Bless his overly generous soul. After that, however, I will be more or less home free.

My best friend from high school, Fredericka (not her real name), believes in manifesting things. I'm not sure how it works exactly, like if there's an actual technique to it, but I get the general sense: think of things, believe they'll come to you or eventually happen, and they will.

So I am manifesting the glorious moment next week when I hand in my damn thesis and am FREEEEEEEEE!!! I'm envisioning my teacher's inbox meeting my thesis with its freshly-bound pages, perhaps in a paper envelope for protective purposes. I am seeing myself dropping off the thing at the correct, totally arbitrary hours that his office is open. And then I am manifesting the gurgling, bubbling, uncontrollable giddiness that will erupt from my chest as I walk out of the Sorbonne empty-handed. I am manifesting the bottle of champagne I will drink with my friends in celebration, and the quiet calm that will overcome me the next day when I realize that my life is actually MINE again, and I can live freely like everyone else.

It will happen. Oh yes, it will.

And afterwards, I will promptly organize my record collection. It's been driving me crazy for at least two weeks.

So I think I might be living in some parellel dimension. Certainly, this can't be France we're dealing with here.

School registration opened at 9.00 today. Because I was up late last night, "working" on my paper (I was more just thinking about it, really, but it still counts. I even brought my pages with me to the bathtub to correct them...), I slept way in, and ended up getting to registration around 11.00. This made me upset, as I was sure there would be desperate students, crowding around small spaces, clawing to hand in their forms and photos.

But no. Nobody was there, just a few people ready to welcome me and asking if I needed help. Help, did I hear? Are you offering me help? What a strange and novel concept. At a school? Huh.

So, I went in, sat down, answered some questions, shuffled along, paid, signed a paper, and was in. Bam, bam, bam. Registered in under 30 minutes.

Had in not been for all the beautiful woodwork and ornate molding, I would have thought I was in America, for Christ's sake. These people were organized, anxious to help, and even - dare I say it? - FRIENDLY.

That's it. I'm signed up and paid for school, with a grand total of 527 euros. That would be: one year's tuition, social security, and added medical "mutuelle" (which is what tipped me over the edge - school itself only cost 124 euros). Until next September.

Sometimes France is fucking unbelievable.

So I'm gonna learn some more Arabic, which is s-ah-weet. I choose classes in two weeks.

Afterwards, I went to a bad movie ("Broken Flowers" - what the HELL was up with that shit?) and then drank lots of wine with Kathypath at the cafe next door to the theater. We gabbed and acted like teenagers, and then I went to the grocery, made dinner, and am about to eat it. So, you know, not such a productive day, really.

But hey! I enrolled! It took me four full days of hell to get that accomplished at the Sorbonne, so maybe I'm just really three days ahead of schedule...

Aside: I've gotten back into Nina Simone. How had I let her slip away like that, all these years? Oh... so nice to get back into the habit of listening. Newest redisovered favorite: "Ne Me Quitte Pas"

Oh my God. As I slowly climbed my way towards the 60-page mark, agonizing over every page as I wrote, I learned the most upsetting thing possible:

The French don't double space.

Oh. My. God. My almost 60 pages have now been reduced to 29. Which means I have 71 more to go. S-e-v-e-n-t-y o-n-e. I was seeing the end of the tunnel... and feeling so good. I thought, "Hey! I'm almost finished. Type up another thirty pages of hard-core research and I'm GOLDEN!"

No. Not really.

I feel as if somebody has sentenced me to a lifetime of sitting in front of a constantly-open MS Word document. 71 more pages! When I thought I was almost DONE. The agony. Ohhhh... the agony.

I was worried about losing my steam around page 70 or so, wondering how I was going to yank those 30 last pages out of my ass. But over 50 more pages? Oh no, wait, remember: that would be 50 more SINGLE-SPACED pages. I believe that might just be downright impossible. I suppose I have to get to the 50-page mark and see. Oh, the 50-page mark. How lovely it will be to see you. Again.

Pray for me. This is going to get ugly.

UPDATE: My professor just wrote me and said, "Normally, it's 80 pages, single-spaced. I'm not against the idea of 80 pages double-spaced, though."

What is a girl to do with that?

First of all, she's to break out the champagne because she just had 20 pages knocked off the grand total! Second of all, she's to celebrate some more because what he said sounded kind of like an invitation to his double-spaced party, n'est-ce pas? Double-spacing and 80 pages! Bring that shit on.

Woo-hoo!!! Also: I hit the 50-page mark for the second time yesterday, so things are really moving along nicely now, aren't they?

13 pages 21 pages 39 pages down. 87 79 61 to go.

I promised myself I would do 35 pages of my thesis by Friday. So here I am... not working on them.

Dude, I'm sorry, but it's HOT out there. And plus? If I'm going to do this, I need a solid 8-hour block. I know my writing style: crunch it all up into an intense, hard-core jam session and get a shit ton of words down before my eyes start going blurry. If I do that two or three consecutive times, I'll have enough stuff to edit down to my required 100 pages. Maybe not the healthiest technique, but it works.

I'm feeling better, now that I've gotten over the readjustment period and have caught of with friends again. Yesterday, I managed to go a little overboard and stay out until six am. Very responsible behaviour when staring down that impending thesis gun barrell. Still, seeing the friends was necessary and good. I've been using the I-need-to-get-my-bearings excuse for awhile, though; I think it will officially no longer be valid as of tomorrow.

I really, really cannot wait to NOT have this thing hanging over my head though. This will all be over in a few weeks...

I come from a dorky family. When my books for my thesis arrived today, I was very excited. First amongst them? Mathematics and Humor. It's hilarious in ways only people who think logic-gone-wild has the potential to be funny. And? Oh yes, I am one of those people. I kept chuckling to myself on the café terrace today - because did you see how he set up the incongruity? WACKY! Oh, the good times I will have with this book! I'm considering buying a copy for every memeber of my nerdy family for Christmas. If every book I had to read for my paper were this amusing, I'd be done next week...

It's hot! hot! hot! and I'm finished with exams. This last one was a real doozy (everybody agreed on this during post-exam chat time) but it's over and I feel light and breezy.

Silly, really, because I still have TONS of work left to do for my degree, but at least the sitting-in-hot-classrooms part of it is over. The only regret I have at this point is that the Sorbonne still hasn't posted our scores for the exams we took two weeks ago. I don't think I will be going back to look (a nice three-month break from the building will do me good, eh?) but I have relegated the task to my classmates.

Today is the Fête de la Musique in Paris, and biking back from school this evening, I passed by several oddly-assorted bands playing mediocre music at high volumes. Everybody in town seems to adore this city-wide party, but I tend to pass on it. I don't know why I dislike it so much -- I think it is the same problem as New Year's: everybody is out but nobody really knows where to go. I also have a serious issue with hearing different bands/music styles at once. The clashing makes me dizzy and it always has. Still, it was nice taking my time coming home, and my usual walk to the grocery was accompanied by a terrible all-women brass band that was, despite a lack of skill, REALLY getting funky with it. The cutest part? Catching the eye of a little kid in a stroller who was dancing to the music without a beat.

Anyway, today has been lovely. My sister called me on a drunk-and-dial mission, and we giggled for an hour straight. I wasn't the drunk one, of course, but I still chuckled quite a bit. Then I got up, stopped by the local café with The Boy for awhile, and looked over my notes. Biked to school, took the exams, felt great. Am now sitting in the breeze in my house, thinking about how good my salad is going to taste when the sun goes down.

I work all day tomorrow but I think I am going to spend my first "real" day of summer just doing some stuff around the house... I'm more tired than I realize and I sort of just want to bask in the relief for awhile.

Ahhhh...

I had an oral exam today. The teacher told us the topic (which varied from person to person) and then we had fifteen minutes to prepare.

When he told me my topic, I asked if I could have a different one. I realize that's not kosher, but JESUS, I had no idea what to say on the topic he gave me. He politely said no, and I slunk back to my desk in confusion. I later related the question to having been as difficult for me as "Discuss American presidents from 1880-1890 and their political achievements." I didn't even know where to begin.

So um... yeah. I had the whole range of emotions: fear, discourage, indifference. When he called me to his desk, I began by saying two grammatically incorrect sentences in French. Stellar start, that quickly transformed into a randomly selected string of terminology without any logical or coherent structure to the madness. The professor is a nice man, and at least he nodded as if I were making sense.

Things got really bad when I mentioned a certain linguistic phenomenon and he asked me for an example of a language where said phenomenon occurs. I blanked, and came up with the witty, "I'm going through all the languages we discussed in class and I don't see an example of it..." leaving the door open for him to say, "Well, how about in (fill in language here)?" and then I would nod and say, "Oh yeah!"

Instead, he got a mischevious look and said, "Hah! That's because it's a trick question!! We didn't study any languages like that!"

It was a sub variety of Slavic languages, just so you know.

Really though, I think that got me on his side, because after that, he pretty much did the rest of the oral exam for me. The topic is one that he loves, and has written two books on, so it was a little embarrassing that I couldn't exactly talk about it, but now my theory is that he just wanted to talk about it himself anyway.

In the end, I spat out some more shit and tried to come up with more to say, but I mainly just garbled out a few more pieces of terminology and then finished up the exam by saying, "And I can't think of anything else to say..."

That's always a real great finishing thought. I winced as I heard myself saying it.

Oddly, he said, "Well, my. That was VERY good. You obviously know exactly what the subject is about and you were able to present a clear and rational argument on the topic. Well done. I can't even ask you any questions to clarify things because you presented it all so clearly."

At first, I thought he was kidding, but when he moved on to asking me about my other classes (just conversationally), I started feeling the welling of giddiness of having done well on something I thought I had bombed. I'm still really, really confused as to how I got a positive response out of such a botched presentation, but I'll take it. Sometimes I feel like the less prepared for things I am in France, the better they go. What a weird, weird day.

Well, I have to say: if I thought it was funny having the rooms I needed for research be unaccessible on Monday, today was DOUBLY funny.

This morning, I opted to go to the library at the Centre Pompidou because I needed to be in the area anyway (to pick up contact lenses... why oh why do I have to spend money on such boring things when there are so many fun, exciting things that I would rather be spending my money on? Like Body Shop lotion, for example?). Sooo... I waited in line for an hour in the rain, got into the library, checked out where my books would be, got a little confused, figured it out, then noticed that, strangely, the entire section - Languages and Litterature, for the curious - where my books should be was PLASTIC-WRAPPED. Just like Kathy Bates in "Fried Green Tomatoes." The whole damn section of books was just wadded up in Saran Wrap. The books, of course, are not available until June 27 - at which date I assume somebody will fun with scissors and will open up that plastic party. In the meantime, I can't use that damn library for shit.

It's funny in retrospect, but at the time - over two hours after I had set out on my researching quest - I really just wanted to cut someone. Deep. But instead I laughed out loud, kind of a maniacal laugh, I admit (and a little too loudly in the quiet library) because seriously? Can I have any worse luck when it comes to Parisian libraries? First it was the psycho bitch at one library, then the unavaiable rooms at the other, and now it's plastic-wrapped sections within the library? Wha?

So ha ha ha, giggle giggle giggle. In the end, Amazon just got some more cash out of me because the effing libraries are no help.

At least this way, I'll get to read the books in English.

The good news, however, of this pitiful story, is that I found one measly little book that related to my topic (in the philosophy section, which was conveniently NOT plastic-wrapped). Oddly, although it gave me no information whatsoever on my topic, it had a kick-ass bibliography and I am soon going to be partying with all the linguists my professor taught us about in class - who also happened to have written useful pieces on my topic. Swanson, Grice, Austin, Searle. In my head, they look like the walking shadows on the cover of the Reservoir Dogs poster. Badass linguistics, yo.

(Dude, I'm just doing whatever works to get me motivated. Let me use the Tarantino technique if it means I will get this paper done.)

Not cool. Today, in two words: NOT COOL.

First and foremost, my cell phone bill - normally 57 euros - was 250. This is due to travelling and lots of international phone calls, and also not knowing that I was charged at over 1 euro/minute.

Soooo... I already was having a hard time trying to scrounge up the cash to pay for a ticket to visit my friends - as promised - in New Mexico this summer. And now I REALLY can't afford to tack on a trip to see my sister and her glorious new house. The phone bill just sealed the deal. I am very, very unhappy about this.

One positive note was that I spent the morning taking care of administrative shit. This is always a pain, but oddly cathartic. My pile of do-something-with-me papers disappeared, I finally sent out two letters I wrote over a month ago, and so on.

I also spent the morning preparing a list of books I wanted to check out at the library later this afternoon. I read some abstracts, yada, yada. With my list prepared online, I went to print it and discovered we had no ink. Motivated as I was, I wrote down the title, author, and reference number for the ten top picks, and then packed up TheBoy's laptop and my books before heading out towards the library.

I quickly realized I would not be able to take my bike (laptop does not fit in basket; is too heavy to ride around with on my back), and shortly thereafter realized I had left my bus pass upstairs. I couldn't bear to walk all the way back to my house and up the stairs with the heavy-ass bag, so I sucked it up and paid 1,40 euros for the one-way fare.

On the way, the busdriver messed up the route and missed his turn, only realizing it when the mood on the bus turned to one of confusion several blocks later. At a stoplight, he turned around and asked the passengers "Was I supposed to stop there?" to which we unanimously said "Yes!" with the bitterness of hurried Parisians in an ugly neighborhood. Several blocks from the original stop, he dumped us off sheepishly, and I carried the damn laptop much further than I would have had to otherwise. I felt bad for the driver (I think he felt pretty stupid) but I wasn't really cool with the error, either.

Of course, when I got to the library, I found out that all the rooms that my books are in are reserved for Special Researcher Types on Mondays. So I couldn't go in. I could have gone to the super deluxe research center, but as I only have the right to 12 more entries in those rooms, I wanted to save my entries for a day when I could spend six or seven solid hours there. So great. I packed up and went back home.

All in all, over an hour of transportation time, 2,80 euros gone, a missed bus stop, and an unneccessarily heavy bag made me a pretty grumpy cat.

Then I came home, ate some cashews, got a blistering headache, and fell asleep for two hours.

I spent all day yesterday reading and preparing for a ten-page paper I have to write by Friday. I am not as big of a slacker as it sounds: my parents called and offered me a mini get-away this weekend (meeting up with them in Italy - they just found out they were going to be there two weeks ago), which in turn meant I wouldn't be in Paris on the day the paper is really due (Monday). Therefore, the weekend I had been planning on slaving away on this paper suddenly turned into a weeekend in Italy, and thus the three days I had this week to study for my exam on Friday turned into the three days I have to write a paper, study, and do laundry. Guess which element is just going to have to wait?

So yesterday was reading/prepping day, and today was writing day. And MAN, did I write! I cranked out eight pages before I decided to take a coffee break.

When I came back from the café, I picked up right where I left, when suddenly...

POP!

Then I looked at my computer and the screen was blank. No, no, wait. It was BLACK. And then I kept hitting the "on" button on my computer, hoping in vain that the damn thing would start again. It's so sad and pathetic when you hear yourself thinking, "Ok, maybe it will turn on the sixth time I press the button."

But guess what? It never turned on.

So then I tried really hard to fight back tears while answering The Boy's question of "What was that?" (in response to the popping sound) by saying, "The computer just died" as calmly and rationally as possible.

Then the pain invaded: Eight pages of work. Gone. Eight pages. Out of ten.

The Boy, however, is a computer type, so he opened up the machine and tried to see where the problem was. Side note: do you know how much dust is in your computer? We actually vacuumed the inside.

As The Boy had a hunch, we headed down the street to buy a replacement part at the local computer crap store. Funny thing, though. It's closed. Forever.

So we went to another store, and they suggested third. And at the third store, they suggested a fourth, but not after The Boy and the guy at the counter had a long, drawn-out conversation about what kind of education one needs to be a grocer. I'm so not kidding.

Can you imagine? I'm freaking out because every second ticking by is seconds more I could be spending making up for the lost FIVE hours of time I just spent on my paper. And we're talking about a grocer's qualifications? Wha? It's five pm already, people! Let's get moving. At this point, I was having visions of having to pull a twelve-hour marathon to get the paper finished.

So then we took the bus to the fourth and final store, where the people who work there must have all taken some sort of drug that keeps them from smiling. One (bad) joke on the part of The Boy was actually met with a cold, unblinking stare. The stoicness, were it not so frightening, might have actually been impressive were the clerk, say, a cop. I don't know what it is about computer tech types. Aren't they normally cool? Are these particular ones so happy that they finally are in power that they have to squish our heads? Even The Boy was like, "Dude, what was their problem in there?" and he doesn't let anybody's 'tude get to him.

Finally, we bought our mysterious piece that The Boy hoped would fix everything. We rode the bus back in the sweltering heat, got very comfortable with everyone's body odor. And then we climbed up all those damn stairs to the house again, only two and a half hours after I had first noted the Death of My Machine.

Fortunately, my WonderBoy knows a thing or two. His "hunch" was actually correct, and my machine worked. The Boy gets this strange little vein that pops out of his head when he's a) physically exerting himself a lot or b) happy. The vein was going to burst, he was so proud of his technical detective work. I could actually see it from across the room.

Me? I was so happy that I recovered those eight pages that I wrote six more, and now have the resulting brain fry. I need to wrap some sort of conclusion on that bitch, but it's gonna have to wait until tomorrow because I cannot talk about declinable referents any more this evening.

On tap for the next 36 hours: physical therapy in the am, buying a book or two in the neighborhood in the late am, studying for exam in the early pm, Spanish class in the pm, finish essay in the late pm, good night's sleep (hopefully) before the exam in the following am, coffee with The Boy in the early pm, and flight out of Paris in the pm. Arriving in Venice at 22.00 on Friday. I think somewhere in there I'll be in Germany, too. Hurray!

Again, laundry? Not so much a priority.

Libraries and me? NOT FRIENDS.

Here was my conversation today with The Bitchiest Woman Ever To Work in a Library (Even Bitchier than the Woman at that Other Library Where the Woman I Talked to Was a Total Bitch). Thougths in italics, as usual.

TBWEWL(EBWOLWWTWTB): Hello.
Me: Hi. I have this list of documents I would like to see, but I don't know how I go about that.
TBWEWL: Do you live in France?
Me: Uh (why is she asking me that, how bad is my accent?)... um... yes.
TBWEWL: For how long?
Me: I've lived here five years.
TBWEWL: Oh. You know, sometimes students are just here for a few months.
Me: No. I live here.
TBWEWL: Can I see some ID?
Me: Oh. (man, she is a bit harsh, but I'll keep smiling and being polite anyway) I'm sorry, I didn't know I had to bring any ID other than my library card.
TBWEWL: These are special documents. I have to make a new, different card for you. So I need some ID.
Me: Will a student ID card work? I don't carry my passport with me.
TBWEWL: No.
Me: Well, I don't have anything else.
TBWEWL: I can't give you your card then.
Me: (Sigh) Ok.
TBWEWL: But we might as well get your file ready (she said this with so much hatred I thought she might spit in my face afterwards)
Me: Ok.
TBWEWL: What level of studies are you in?
Me: Maitrise.
TBWEWL: What is the subject of your thesis?
Me: ::pause to consider how to word it::
TBWEWL: IF YOU DON'T WANT TO COOPERATE, WE CAN JUST STOP RIGHT NOW.
Me: what the fuck? Did that bitch just yell at me? What? I was THINKING...
TBWEWL: :::looking at me as if I were six and had just decided to finger-paint throughout her living room:::
Me: I have the right to pause a moment to think about things, don't I?
TBWEWL: Well?
Me: Humor. It's about humor.
TBWEWL: Humor? THAT'S your thesis subject? (said as if I had told her my thesis topic was on why the next reality tv show should be watching pigs thrown in a pen and seeing how they live - hidden cameras! Pigs!)
Me: (said very, very firmly and pissed-offedly) Yes. That's my subject.(Jesus, is it THAT bad of a subject)
TBWEWL: That's IT? That's the whole subject? That's your title?
Me: You want a title?
TBWEWL: Yes.
Me: I don't have a title yet.
TBWEWL: I think you need to take this paper (hands me the paper) and get your research director to sign it...

She then proceeded to school me on how unprepared I am for my thesis (duh) and how complicated it is going to be for me to get the documents I need. Get this:

1. I have to reserve a seat in the library to consult documents
2. I have to arrive at the hour I signed up for ("It's like a train," said the TBWEWL, "If you're late for your train, the train leaves anyway. Same deal here.")
3. I have to give over a list of documents I would like to consult beforehand, and allow at least an hour for them to get the documents down from the shelves.
4. I am not allowed to make photocopies.

HELL.

I'm about to just go to London for a week and gather all my research there, where people treat you like a human being.

I hate French librarians.

I slept for just under two hours last night, and have managed to make it through the entire day without falling asleep. Well, except once. I might have drifted out for a moment during my exam today, but that was because I finished an hour and a half early (yes!) and just sat and waited for the Frenchies to stop their writing frenzy so I could hand in my paper peacefully. I have no idea what they wrote about for so long, and to be honest, I'm a little worried that whatever I wrote was a bit barebone for my professor's taste.

The Boy and I stayed up late last night giggling like girls at a sleepover party. I kept telling him we had to stop talking and I had to go to sleep, but things just kept getting funnier and funnier. Then he fell asleep before me and started babbling in his sleep, in uproariously funny non sequiturs. In the end, I fell asleep just before 4.00 am and got up at 5.30.

Not so happy to be going to work this morning.

But you know what? I wasn't really tired all day. Work was great - I learned that two of my least favorite classes are getting cancelled, and that this week I will have half the hours I normally do. That gave me a boost when the shitty coffee from the teacher's loung machine failed to pull through for me.

Then I trucked it back into the city in time to cram with friends before our final. My exam, although frighteningly short, went semi ok, which was more than I had been expecting on so little sleep. Besides the fact that I wrote 1/4 of what my classmates did, our answers seemed to have matched up, so I feel good about that.

Now, it's almost 10.00 and I am calling today a job well done. Tomorrow? More teenagers to be dealt with, so I better get some rest. Finally.

Last night I had such twisted sleep that I hardly felt rested when I woke up this morning. My dentist told me last year that I obviously clench or grind my teeth at night. I woke up this morning with a splitting headache and what felt like a broken jaw, and I concluded, for the seven hundredth time, that she's right.

But none of that matters now. Exams are over. I finished. Not in glory, but finished nonetheless. And I feel ok now.

Of course, I walked out of the last exam and thought, Ok, now you can make a list of things you need to do. I always get mad at my dad for not being able to just relax sometimes. It's becoming more and more obvious that I am so my father's daughter.

My celebration of the end of finals will include:

- Getting my shots
- Dealing with banking issues
- Finishing paperwork I have set aside fot the last two weeks
- Spending quality time with The Boy on café terraces
- Catching up with friends before the long break
- Buying books for the flight
- Packing my bags
- TAKING A PLANE!

I can't believe at this point next week I'll be somewhere in Asia. And I don't even know what country yet. Flying by the seat of my pants. I think it will be good for my soul.

I didn't have very many teachers I liked in high school. Most were ok, some were truly terrible. In fact, I think The Gymnast might have been the only one I wouldn't mind being stuck having coffee with today.

He was small - short and tiny-wristed, almost dainty, but fairly strong. I never thought much about it until he told us he put himself through college as a gymnast. Suddenly, his compact body made perfect sense. He was sarcastic and witty; his humor would often escape my classmates. When it did, he would curl up the right side of his lip, and I was never sure if he was mocking them or genuinely amused by their confusion.

I took two classes with him: British Litterature my junior year and then film my senior year. Both classes, sadly, only lasted a semester. Still, it was enough time for me to put little post-its in my brain: notes on how to write an effective essay, notes on how to analyze lighting in a film, notes on how to be a good teacher.

In my senior year film class I repeatedly got high on learning. Yes. My pulse raced and I'm sure my eyes dilated on numerous occasions. I remember the first film we studied was "Cool Hand Luke," and I was astounded at how much there was to break down, analyze, and develop. I had never thought that film could be so complex, and I loved discovering it all for the first time. I did the homework for fun and went of to college decided on being a film major.

That didn't happen. I did journalism, instead, which can get pretty damn close. I spent lots of time with cameras, editing machines, and footage. My random visits to the TV studios were spent deciding on angles and composing logical sequences.

Senior year in college, I took a television production class. It was the greatest disappointment of my life; nothing compared to The Gymnast's revolution. I suppose I had been expecting greatness, and my professor, a real douche-bag, had us memorize the Television Production Handbook. She litterally pulled sentences directly out of the book with blanks for us to fill in on the final. It was the ultimate in busy work. Another post-it: what not to do as a college professor. That was the only B I got in four years of university.

Shortly afterwards, I tried to write The Gymnast an email. I thanked him for treating us like grown-ups, but also for making us work. I told him where I am today, how I got here, and where I'm hoping to go. And I told him that I think he had something to do with it, and that he really does make a difference in peoples' lives. I never heard back, although I don't know if he ever got it.

One of my best friends from high school is in Paris now. She's here for the summer. A few days ago, we stayed up all night trying to remember things that are slipping away from us. She was also a fan of The Gymnast; she took his film class the semester after I did. Earlier that year, she had helped me on my solo project by being one of the two main actresses.

She was telling me about her brother - who in my mind is still 12 years old - and what it was like going to his high school graduation, when we had the following converstion:

"Oh, I forgot to tell you," she said, "My brother took film with The Gymnast this year."

"Really? Did he like it?"

"Yeah, yeah, he totally did. But The Gymast showed your film."

"What?"

"Yeah, he showed your film as an example to the class. It was crazy for my brother, of course, because there he was watching his big sister from when SHE was in high school. But still. Funny, huh?"

I can't really explain how much this affects me. Right at the moment I'm thinking about going back to journalism, I find out that my favorite teacher has used my project for the past six years as a class example. I'm honored, but I'm also mystified. Somehow, I feel as if things have come back full circle. For some reason, I find this all very reassuring. It's as if now I realize that I have been complicating things for nothing, and that, at the source, I know where I stand and what I want to do. And even better, that position has just been validated by my past.

I failed an exam today. The last time that happened was in seventh grade, and I had gotten a C (which at the time was considered failing, and to my slightly OCD self still is...). Shocked, I called my mom in tears from the pay phone outside the middle school gym.

Therefore, given my academic history and my dramatic tendencies, I can't quite explain why my reaction to the entire trauma that took place this morning is so mild. Sure, I walked out of the exam completely baffled. And yes, I bitched with my cohorts about the exam immediately afterwards (how could he ask that and who the hell does he think he is?). But in the end, I'm not too upset about it. As a matter of fact, I'm disturbingly calm about this whole I've-got-finals thing going on right now.

Meanwhile, Kathypath and I went out to a Mexican joint and had a few margheritas this evening. I haven't drank those in months. At first we were just going to meet up for a drink, but we ended up deciding to extend it to dinner once we started discussing all the passersby and their choice of attire. How can you not want to do that for hours on end? We saw some truly hideous fashion. Once we decided to eat, we were sent to the basement, so no more people-watching. No worries, we extended it to the big screen by making up a list of Hollywood people we love and hate and hate to love and love to hate. The evening, overall, was the equivalent of eating popcorn and watching some mindless movie - I just let my brian relax for a few hours. It felt good after such an insane day.

And in the end, I walked home from the restaurant in a good mood despite this morning's poor performance. My thoughts: it's over, and I can't do much about it. Now it's time to look towards the future.

So here's my list for the top five things to do by 2005. We will see, come... oh... I dunno... March 2005, if I actually manage to get this stuff done. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Start playing volleyball again. I gave up because it was so traumatic in high school, but I had been pretty good before those little snobs started intimidating me. I like to think I'm past that now, and that I could be good once again. So I'm going to look for a team. First stop: the Sorbonne's intramural sports assocation.

2. Buy myself a bike and use it to get from A to B. This will hopefully be taken care of tomorrow, when the 14th arrondissement's mayor holds a huge, huge bike sale. I hope I get one with a basket. And maybe a bell.

3. Write a kick-ass thesis. Just, you know, something that really rocks.

4. Work part-time in publishing or radio. If my assistantship job really does fall through, which is a possibility, I hope I can pull this off. I miss working in the newsroom, and I figure there has to be some shit job entry-level position for an anglophone who can actually write (I realize you wouldn't know it by reading the shit I publish on the blog, but with effort, my writing doesn't suck). I'm going to contact my journalism profs manana.

5. Continue learning Arabic. This appears to be a sealed deal, but the carpet always seems to get pulled out from under me in France when I least expect it.

I'm setting a little alarm clock for myself. Let's say March 30, 2005, I'll do a little update. If I forget, faithful readers (who are you, anyway? There's Kari and Lottie... anyone else?) - remind me. The day has already been circled in my planner, my friends (all two of you).

How realistic do these goals seem? I think they're actually do-able. The trickiest are 1 and 4. Wish me luck.

So who are the actors/actress you love and hate, or love to hate or hate to love?

Sometimes you have to have things taken away from you in order for you to realize how meaningful they are.

For example, when my brother tried to protect me from teasing by hiding my blanket, I flipped my shit. I recognize now that he was just trying to toughen me up before I turned seven, but at the time it was a true tragedy. Nothing felt better than to finally have the blankie back in my arms again.

The adult version if this story concerns next year. I'll be doing a maîtrise, which is sorta kinda moreorless like an American master's. The difference is that in France, it's pretty much split into two years: the first year is all learning and testing and more learning and more testing, whereas the second year is all researching and writing and more researching and more writing. Essentially, what I am trying to say is that I will only have four hours of classes come next fall.

And yeah, that's because the rest of the time is supposed to be spent in the library. And sure, I'll still be working at the high school several days per week. But I thought to myself, wow! Only four hours of class time? Wait! That means I can intensively study Modern Standard Arabic and do a few hours of syrian/lebanese/palestinian dialectecal Arabic on the side!

(Of course that's what I thought.)

All of this was because I found the perfect program. I got very excited about it (10 hours of language instruction per week, all for only 200 euros a year! God bless France and their love of education!). Happy imaginings of me reading Arabic newspapers in cafe began floating through my head...

And then Beccarah told me that the deadline for foreign students was January 15.

Crushed. I was crushed.

So I wrote a nasty email to the head guy in charge of admissions and told him it wasn't fair to expect us to adhere to deadlines that weren't on the web site. I realize this argument is bunk to Frenchies because they don't give two shits about updating web sites (never mind that the information online was for 2002-2003), but I thought I'd use it as a weapon nonetheless.

And lo and behold! I can enroll in September. I just have to bring my French diploma along with me and they'll treat me like one of them.

Fluent Arabic, here I come...

I'm so excited.

I'm such a dork.

In a good way.

Right?

Who doesn't love the first real day of summer?

The day was filled with little silly things that made me smile. That's the sunshine's effect, you know. Such things were:

- When Y showed me a poster written in Arabic and I could read it. It just said "Drink Coca Cola" but that was written in Arabic, you see.

- When C figured out her mistake during her English test today and she self-corrected.

- Track 8 on "Phrenology." Over and over and over again.

- The three boys at the foot of the stairs in the Sorbonne today, just bluntly checking out each girl's ass as she walked by. They caught me laughing at them and laughed back.

- Working for three hours straight - in the teachers' lounge long after my classes at the high school had ended and before my classes at the Sorbonne would start - without really minding at all.

- The moment on the bus today where I thought, "Huh. I'm way better off today than I was at this point last year."

- Beccarah taught me how to make the red beans and cocunut milk dessert. So, after two days of soaking the beans, I ate it today. Mmmm...

- When our class collectively decided that the longer we sit out in the hallway before going into the lecture hall, the later class would start. We dragged it out for 15 minutes before our professor came out and said, "Um..." We feigned surprise: "Oh! You're here!" He responded, "Last time I checked, I was here, yeah."

- Working at the computer with the window open and the sound of people eating out on the terraces of the restaurants downstairs wafting in.

I love the summer.

So can I tell you that today I had a 25 minute speech to give on the history of the illustrations in my "The Text" class today? Yes, it's a class called "The Text" and yes, we analyze things like how the text is laid out on a page, and how the illustration is related to the text. Even worse, we've managed to analyze the text - and everything surrounding it - in minute detail as of the Middle Ages. Oh yeah.

May I also remind you that my schooling is done entirely in French, mainly with French students? They all speak this language maternally, and I, the babbling idiot that I am, had to give a nervous 25-minute speech in my second language.

The highlight of the speech was the moment at which I argued with myself - out loud - over the past participle of the verbe permettre, which, for real now, I totally know. But put me in front of a bunch of Frenchies listening intently, taking NOTES for God's sake, and I just can't remember a damn thing. I was having trouble just remembering basic conjunctions and vocabulary, people! I also may have mentioned the word sodomy and the equivalent of "crazy-ass rich old Londoners" to my class at some point, although hopefully nobody took notes on that part.

The main thing I realized, though, is that, Christ Almighty, I can really be over the top sometimes. This must run in my family, although I really don't see it in my mother and only moderately in my father. Instead, all three of us kids have this interesting tendency to get (perhaps overly) theatrical at times. This can maybe be part of our charm - as is the case in my brother and sister's cases - and it also means that all of us kids are pretty good at imitating foreign accents and famous actors. But it can also mean that our theatrics slip out at inopportune moments, and that perhaps we misgauge the required theatric level of a given statement. For example, today, when I realized, just a split second after I had begun my little reenactement (aka the point of no return) that, hm... maybe I shouldn't be pretending to be Londoners reacting to Art Nouveau via interpretive gestures and exclamatory phrases. In fact, those kinds of theatrics make my classmates nervous. And when they start shifting uneasily in their seats, I start shifting uneasily in mine.

In the end, my professor came by afterwards to tell me that it was a job well done. I honestly don't know if she meant it, or if she just felt sorry for the foreign girl who doesn't know how to do a presentation according to French standards. Just why exactly was I searching for comedic effect, I'm not sure. But hey, at least I gave them all a presentation to remember. I'm just glad we're not meeting again for another three weeks so that they can let that whole 'wacko' stigma subside for a little while.

But most importantly, I will never have to do a presentation in front of a French-speaking audience for at least another year. I went out an drank some sangria in celebration of the making my way over such a fabulous hurdle. If only they knew that I was so nervous about the presentation that I almost lost my lunch minutes after consuming it, they would have understood why I kept finding myself saying the darndest things.

Really, I'd like to plop them in front of a bunch of Anglophones for half an hour and see how well they fare. Sadly, I think they'd do fine. I, however, just made a big show of it. What the hell is my problem? I don't know why I always try to overcompensate. Embarassment is so much better if dealt with in a mellow way. I've never managed to do that. I just go right over the top.

Agh... Walk it off (à la Chris Rock).

Because I'm slightly psychotic about my organizational skills, the types of protective plastic sleeves (hole-punched) I use for the key documents in my binder are of utmost importance. I have tried and tested all kinds of brands and varieties, and of course the only brand I like is the hardest to find. I have several packs of not-so-perfect plastic sleeves, which I at one point mistook for my favorites, lying around the house. I would only resort to them in a worst-case scenario.

And because I'm slightly superstitious, it would make perfect sense that, when I finished synthesizing my notes for tomorrow's final and went to put the last master outline into its plastic sleeve, I took it as a bad sign when I was just one sleeve short in the perfect plastic sleeve department. It doesn't mean anything, you silly supersticious girl! I tried to comfort myself, They're only perfect plastic sleeves.

But as I reached down for the crappy, lesser plastic sleeve - the one that would soon hold my final notes and would stand out in stark contrast to all the other, more perfect plastic sleeves in my binder - I breathed a sigh of relief. I saw the perfect plastic sleeve bag lying on the floor next to my supplies department, with just one perfect plastic sleeve still inside. Phew, I thought, It must have just fallen forward when I was getting out sleeves earlier. And oh! How lovely! Just one sheet left for my one remaining master sheet! This is God trying to tell me something! I will so ace my final tomorrow. I don't even need to study anymore!

As I pulled it up from the ground, however, reality came crashing down on me: the plastic bag and the lone plastic sleeve inside it had actually fallen partway under the heater. The entire middle section of my one remaining perfect plastic sleeve had withered up so much it was now unusable. Worse, I had already proclaimed my earlier discovery as obvious proof of how well I'll do on my exam tomorrow. The only logical conclusion I could make was that, in fact, someone was trying to really drive home the point that I'll really freakin' bomb.

One thing's for sure: I'm going to wear my lucky red pants tomorrow. I'm gonna need 'em.

I'm getting more optimistic about the exam situation now that the torture is almost halfway over. Today's exam went well: I finished early, checked over my work, was second to hand it in, and got a little giddy on my way out. I'm pretty sure I passed. That means just one more passing grade and I'm at least out of shit creek. Tomorrow's test was scaring me quite a lot, but after a psychotically thorough review, I feel I have it slightly more under control. In 24 hours, I should know for sure.

I wanted just to take the opportunity, amongst all of my political rants and exam stress, to show you something funny I read today. I dedicate this to my sister, up-and-coming math teacher extraordinaire:

Ok, less than twelve hours 'til my next final. I've decided to put the books away for the evening, because I find it's always a good idea to just shove the exam away from your mind the night before you take it.

That said, tomorrow I'll probably be cramming like mad for my Tuesday final. But I at least quasi-prepped for it this weekend.

At any rate, I'm proud of what I have accomplished this weekend, regardless of my results tomorrow. I had an eight-hour study marathon yesterday, and then put in another seven today, so whatever I don't know by now, I probably won't know by tomorrow, either.

I've been thinking a bit about my situation here. The French school system just doesn't work for me. I need to accept this and move on. I'll try to finish in high form, but it's not easy. I'm a big fan of personal attention. Of syllabi (?). Of hands-on exercises and short, written essays. Hell, I'm even a fan of outside readings, I've discovered.

How do I know this? Because I don't have ANY of these things in my classes, and I keep finding myself trying to go back to something - to the syllabus, or to the reading, or to the exercises - for clarification. Know why? Because they help me understand. Apparently that's not really the goal of the professors here.

The end result is that I've never been so afraid of all-out failing in my life. I truly feel that these exams are a bit of a shot in the dark for me. It's so overwhelming that I'm not even hysterical about it, because I feel it's sort of all in the hands of fate, at this point. I realize that's not the most appropriate way to look at final exams, but it's what I'm doing. Coping mechanism, folks. Let me have one.

I know that were I in the US, I'd be mega-prepared. I've never really studied much because I usually just suck up everything throughout the semester. Usually a few hours of revision is enough, just to fill in some gaps. But, this time around, I really feel like those gaps were actually enormous gorges, splitting me and the knowledge I am supposed to have far, far apart. The only connection between us is this tiny, rickety ole bridge - à la Indiana Jones - which I am hesitatingly walking across.

I've done all the usual stuff I do: organized my notes, made a crib-sheet of sorts, highlighted and taken notes on my notes, gone over problem areas...

But I still just feel like anything can happen tomorrow. And that's scary.

So here's what I told The Boy, and I'm sticking to it. Given that one can retake all of one's exams in September in case one fails the first time around, this is how it breaks down:

- If I pass none of my four exams, I'll be up shit creek.
- If I pass one of four exams, I'll still be up shit creek.
- If I pass two of four exams, I'll be satisfied with my performance, knowing that I'll have to bust ass come September.
- If I pass three of four exams, I'll shit my pants with elation.
- If I pass four of four exams, drinks are on me all night.

Cross yer fingers for me.

Meanwhile, can we just talk about a few things quickly? Something political?

Could we talk about how John Kerry has skipped out on 64% of his Senate votes? That's his JOB. To vote. In the Senate. Could we just think about that for a second? Or could we also think about how he plays up his veteran-ness but then supported cutting veterans' pay? Or how he makes a big bruhaha about how he protested against what he considered a useless war (although he claims he slept on the mall in Washington, other sources say he slept comfortably at home) but then voted for another one thirty years later? Or what about how he wants this Iraq situation to turn out for the better, but then voted against the funding to make this possible? And, how although he voted FOR the Iraq war, FOR No Child Left Behind, and FOR the Patriot Act, he is running on a platform that is against all of them? What are you people thinking?*

Could I also point out that he didn't even make all the requirements to even be on the NY Ballot (not enough signatures and didn't file in all countries. Actually, the only people to have correctly done so were Dean and Edwards)?

From the NY Times (requires registration/login to see):

I'm also a bit perplexed by the way the media is handling all of this. I read somewhere that Kerry pretended to smoke a joint on stage with Peter, Paul and Mary. Surely, this is something that the media would trounce on Dean for, but thus far I've only seen it mentioned in a small, itty-bitty paper. It just seems off-kilter. Is there some sort of bias? A lot of people in the Dean campaign believe it is in the (mainly Republican) media's own interest to promote Kerry, as he will so obviously lose to Bush were he to be the nominee. Why will he lose to Bush? Well, because he voted WITH HIM in almost every major issue the country is facing today. What do you all think?

I understand not liking Dean, but Christ almighty, don't opt for Kerry instead. The more I read about him (and I've read a lot), the more he comes off as straight up slimeball.

**Update: Turns out I'm right. Dean people have been complaining of phone calls being sent on behalf of the Dean campaign, while actually being from Kerry's team, ringing people up at 2 or 3 in the morning. There have also been rumors of push polls. While many may chalk this up to crazy Deaniacs freaking out over the NH primary, ABC has just confirmed it. Hopefully, there's more to come on this matter soon. Kerry should be in deep trouble, were the media ever to do their job correctly.

*Could I also add here that this will make debating against Bush very, very difficult. Bush will bring up something that he's (oddly) proud of, and then Kerry will try to say, "But it's wrong because...," while still prefacing it with something like, "Well, I voted for it at the time, but it's wrong because..." Seriously, the guy obviously has no political foresight whatsoever, and is just going with whatever's popular so as to win the nomination.

It's Friday night here in Paris. I managed to pass out just before 16.00 and I woke up, rather dazed, at 20.30. I really didn't mean to do that. Now it's midnight and my brain is just now starting to function. I'm fine with it: I think I'll do some work and then head back to bed. Wild, wild weekend for me, can you tell?

The reason I was so exhausted is because this morning was my first exam at the Sorbonne. I think the stress of it was weighing on me more than I had realized, because I am significantly more relaxed and laid-back today than I was yesterday.

As for the exam itself, there's both good and bad news: the good news is that everything that was required of me to know I knew. I mastered the graphs, charts, and essays with little trouble. I knew how to approach every linguistic problem asked of me using the techniques learned in class. There was only one problem: in certain examples (three of them, to be exact), I didn't know the actual word in the questions (all of our exercises were semantic analyses of words). That's what happens when you take linguistics exams in foreign languages.

The questions asked us to find a phrase where you could use two words at the same point in the sentence without changing the meaning, and then another sentence where you couldn't do the substitution. An example could be:

empasize/stress

A sentence in which the two are equal:
The candidate must emphasize/stress his position on the Iraq war.

A sentence in which they are not:
Cardiovascular stress can lead to heart attacks. (Because, well, cardiovascular emphasize can't lead to much of anything)

So, obviously, that's an easy example. But we had some difficult ones in there, and we then had to follow them up with an analysis of the words in question. Not so easy, when you don't know one of the words in the pair, now, is it?

So I walked out of there a little torn. If I were in the US, my estimated grade would have been a B, in the worst case scenario a B-. That, to me, is a shitty grade, but at least it's squeeking by. The problem is that I don't know exactly how harshly they grade in this country, and from the experience I've had thus far, it's pretty tough. So I'm a little afraid I didn't pass the exam - not because I didn't study enough or didn't pay enough attention in class, but because I didn't know the freakin' words they used in the problems. That would really, really suck. I find out on February 13.

At any rate, I'm glad it's over. I studied the perfect amount - I could have probably have studied even less than I did, in retrospect. I knew everything I had to know from a theoretical and analytical standpoint, which I hope will come shining through when they correct my exam. It's not fair for me to complain that the words they asked us to analyze were too tough on non-francophones, so I won't. But, I will sit her nervously waiting for the exam results to come out.

By the way, can you believe the Frenchies post exam results on the wall for all to see? How humiliating, really. It's also very torturous - it means that everyone goes crowding around the results all at once, and thus your reaction, be it good or bad, is seen by everyone around you. I'm not a fan of this system.

The good news is that even if I don't pass, I can re-take the exam in September. That's the way it works here. Everyone gets a second chance. Handy.

That makes one down and four to go. Next up: Signification et théories linguistiques. I still don't understand why they call it that, because to me the class is really just about applying the language of logic to linguistics. I feel pretty prepared for that exam already, so a little revision over the weekend is probably all I'll need. That was the only class where I felt on top of everything from day one. Instead, I'll focus on Tuesday's exam in Comparative Linguistics, which I think is going to be a doozie. Everyone's pretty much freaking out about that one, which I find oddly reassuring. It's good to know that I'm not the only one trying to make sense of the madness.

Meanwhile, things are pretty much chugging in a pleasant, calm way. I've gained confidence in the classroom so that new classes no longer make me so nervous (I had three new ones on Tuesday). My schedule for next week is rather light, out of consideration by the other teachers for my exams (by light I mean I only have 10 hrs of teaching instead of 12, which I suppose is not all that different). Another good thing this week is that I've also managed to catch up with a few friends I haven't spoken to in awhile, which is always a wonderful thing.

An interesting twist, after my setback with Andre from just after the vacation, is that we managed to have a nice, pleasant conversation at the beginning of the week. I was smooth as ice, so I hope I'm back on the cool list, if only to continue this ridiculously entertaining sideline in my life. Meanwhile, however, I've noticed a new element to the story: there's another girl lurking who appears to have the hots for him. I'm pretty much just observing silently from afar, because if anybody should pursue him, it's her, not me. And, conversely, if he should pursue anybody, he should go after her, not me. I mean, unless she has a loving, caring boyfriend at home as well, of course. In that case, that bitch better get ready for some competition.

And lastly, and this is very strange, but I've noticed an unexpected but welcome weight loss since December. Nothing serious, maybe five or eight pounds, but enough so that everything fits just slightly differently. These are the pounds that always come and go, but it's rare that I notice them on the "going" side of things. I think the loss is due to the fact that I've been running around so much and have had little time to eat, usually opting for a healthy muesli-and-yoghurt breakfast around 6.30 am, followed by just some fruit or a sandwich at lunchtime. I don't usually get home until 19.30, and when I'm not home very much, I simply don't snack. Since I haven't been going to the grocery except to pick up the absolute essentials once a week, we don't have much of anything to eat in the house. Dinners have been quick-fixes: pasta, omelettes, etc. They're relatively healthy little meals (I try to get some greens in there somehow), but nothing so tasty as to inspire me to pig out. None of this is really intentional, it's just that my lifestyle has altered and thus my eating. Which I'm fine with. I don't think the weight loss is significant enough that anybody else would notice it, but there are slight differences in how my zip-up boots fit and how my pants sit on my hips. I think I'm pretty much at the weight I'm supposed to be at, so I don't expect this trend to continue much longer, but I'm certainly not complaining for the time being.

Anyhow, that's the update. I doubt this weekend will provide much material for a post, as it will basically be me, my notes, and my linguistics dictionnary chilling 24/7. But I'll let you know if something more exciting comes along. As if that's not excitement in its purest form!

Before lecture today, our teacher was a good ten minutes late. Maybe fifteen. I was exhausted and spaced out because I hadn't fallen asleep until 5.30 am due to an unfortunate bout of nausea, and frankly, I was glad nobody had tried to talk to me. From somewhere far away, I heard a little voice say something. I looked towards the little voice, and there was a woman looking straight at me, clearly hoping to engage in conversation. She was older, for a Sorbonne student. Maybe somewhere around 45. Damnit, I thought, I never should have made eye contact. Our conversation went as follows (my thoughts are in parentheses):

Me: I'm sorry?
Her: I said, "This class is totally pointless."
Me: Yeah.
Her: We're not learning anything in it.
Me: (That's funny, I feel like we are) Yeah, well, we've been going over some things a little bit too much. Just circling around the same points from time to time.
Her: I only come in case I might miss something, but frankly, I don't feel there's been anything to miss. This class is worthless.
Me: (Did she even hear what I said?) Yeah, I dunno.
Her: Absolute crap, I tell you! It's just such a stupid, stupid class.
Me: (She's actually kinda scary) Well, the section is pretty good.
Her: Yeah, you're right. But the lectures are dreadful. Have we learned anything? I mean, really, have we? It's just amazing how bad this class can be for such a reputable program. I'm totally shocked.
Me: I just hope they're prepping us for the exam.
Her: But that's what I mean!! They haven't gone over bblaq qod sgoin qlksndg qoinblckn (I've stopped listening at this point, just nodding and making approving grunting noises) qljgqkdg...
Me: Yeah.
Her: And they're not doing anything on qlnkgqoi lqknboqin lqnksdgoqigd. And absolute nothing having to do with lkqnq oinqdsglkn.
Me: Yeah.
Her: I mean, how are we ever going to pass the CAPES?*
Me: Oh, you're doing the CAPES?
Her: Yeah. Of course. That's why I'm here.
Me: Really?
Her: Yeah... (confused).
pause
Her: This is the CAPES class, no?
Me: No.
Her: It isn't?
Me: No. It's French linguistics.
Her: Oh my.

She gathered up all of her shit and left. But she must have really wondered why I was nodding my head and saying "Yeah" so much, when obviously I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. Actually, I had started getting a little worried that I hadn't been understanding my class this whole semester, because she had been rattling on and on about something having to do with the etymological breakdown of the word habiter. Glad to know I'm on the ball after all.

*The CAPES is an exam that Frenchies take to become teachers. I think.

Last year, when doing a French program that I probably didn't care enough about (but, in retrospect, needed all the same) we were forced to take a class on the history of the French language.

I was excited about the class, thinking that it would be fun to see the moments when French had taken a right turn or suddenly pulled a U-ie. But, alas, our teacher was of the droning type - the Americans in the class consistently referred to him as Ben Stein's character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off ("Anyone? Anyone?") - and lectures were consequently extremely boring and a huge waste of time.

At the end of the term, we all got together to compare notes before the final exam. Most people's notes looked something like this:

Latin - split.
1624.
Strasbourg. Languages evolve.
1377 - VERY IMPORTANT DATE in the history of French language. ??

This is because our teacher was incapable of completing a thought. He would start with one topic, say, the regional accents of France, and suddenly we would be talking about Latin declinaisons. It was impossible to follow him and our notes displayed our desperate attempts to do so. In fact, I ended up buying a little History of the French Language Made Easy-type books and we combined notes, looked up dates/places using info from the book, and filled in the missing holes. That's how we studied for our final.

At some point during that semester, I had stumbled across a few used linguistics books in the local bookstore. I'm always up for grabbing deals like that, as most linguistics books are heavy fuckers and are thus in the 20-30 euro range.

There is a series of books at the introductory level, each of which features the writer on the cover in front of a white background. Each book in the series features a different topic: pragmatics, syntax, semantics, whatever. I picked up the general book, entitled, creatively, Linguistique. I read a bit, but mainly set it to the side for later, aka this year.

So, this year, of course, I have officially started my linguistics classes. As an optional course, I took French linguistics, because I think it's interesting. The class is divided in two: one day of the week is dedicated to morphology and the other lecture day is dedicated to lexicology. Imagine my surprise when I walked into the lexicology lecture and there he was, six months after I last saw him: Mr. Droning Professor Man.

Actually, it's ok. I started laughing out loud because I couldn't believe my bad luck. But I was pleasantly surprised that not only did I manage to follow his hour-long lecture, but that I was actually interested in it.

I'm chalking up the difference in his lecture styles to - and I am not kidding about this - the fact that my class this year is from 11-12 whereas last year it was from 14-16. The French eat lunch from 12-14, and a lot of them tend to drink wine with their meal. On multiple occasions last year, I found myself wondering if the professor hadn't tipped back a few too many. After seeing the difference in his lecture style before the afternoon beverage and his lecture style after, I can say that one is remarkably more clear and coherent than the other.

So now that I am two weeks into my classes, I'm trying to fill in a few holes where I may see them. Hence why I went to look something up in my used book called Linguistique which I had bought last year.

Lo and behold, it was Mr. Droning Professor Man on the cover! Erm... well, sort of. Granted, he was younger (by about 20 years) and thinner (by about 40 lbs), but it was definetly him. He looked jovial and fun on the back cover. As if he was just a real jokster of a linguistics prof and he just happened to be throwing a frisbee in the backyard with the dog or something.

Trust me. He's nothing like that.

But still, I've had this book sitting in my house for at least the last six months. I've moved it around, taken it out, looked at it. It was on my dresser for awhile, and I eventually moved it to the pile near the stereo. When I bought the new bookshelf, its placement got careful consideration amongst other books on the new shelves.

Never, once, when I saw the picture, did I make the connection. It was only this year, a few days ago now, that I realized he wrote the book. And I only figured it out because I now know his name, and I saw the author's name on the binding. But yeah, it's him on the cover alright. Or a better, more fun-loving version of him, at any rate.

Odd. Truly.

I am beat. But I am feeling better and in good spirits, which is more than I could say yesterday.

An interesting thing is that, in recent years, I have come to accept and even embrace the fact that I am a huge nerd. Dork. Whatever. There's some debate on the distinction between the two (my sister and I, for example, have slightly different opinions on the matter) but really, folks, it all boils down to the same thing in the end: talk to me about some grammar or mention Chomsky, and I'll sit up straight and start taking notes. It won't matter that I have been hacking my face off all day or that I only slept for 4.5 hours last night and spent the better part of the morning in an overheated bus on windy country roads. As a matter of fact, talk about Chomsky and grammar together - in the same lecture - and I might just throw a little party in my head, complete with streamers and those annoying kazoo things. Today, I got not one but TWO golden lectures mentioning the winning combo. And we even touched on phonetics. Phonetics, guys. This is more exciting than betting it all on Final Jeopardy and winning.

I had a moment today where it actually occured to me how happy I am about choosing to study linguistics. Despite all the hoopla and excitement mentioned in the paragraph above, my realization didn't come to me in the form of a big, earth-shattering moment. It was more as if I had just sat down in a comfortable, slightly-worn chair, with a just-hot-enough cup of tea and a nice, cozy blanket, and looked around for a second and thought, "Yes, indeed. This is nice."

And that's really, really cool. I actually prefer the mellow realization that I'm doing something I enjoy to the big explosion of excitement I almost always have whenever I start anything new. This somehow feels more permanent. More real.

I'm lucky because I have enough background knowledge to follow the courses without too much difficulty, but mainly, I think I'm finding it easy because I'm actually interested. After our class today, a bunch of kids walked out of the classroom saying things along the lines of, "Man, what the hell was he talking about?" and "Wow... that was so boring."

I just kept the fact that I took three pages of notes, am planning on doing most of the outside (read: not required) reading, and have already read one of the required textbooks (for fun) to myself. No need for them to be getting to know the real me too quickly.

Of course, now that school has officially decided to start back up again, I'm sick as a dog. I just got up from taking a 2-hr nap (after 12 hours of sleep). I was feverish and insane during the sleep, and my dreams reflected the strange, missed connections being made in my body. My throat is swollen and my neck hurts. Swallowing is very painful. Pity me.

Last night The Boy and I went out to celebrate my birthday. It turned out to be a right disaster. We ended up fighting... I still don't understand what the problem was. He was being an absolute asshole, and I was embarrased to be with him for much of the evening. And I am still angry, but too tired and sick feeling to care enough to try and "work it out." Sometimes it's just easier to let dead dogs lie. Lay. What is it that we say?

The main thing I need right now is lots of sleep. I can feel that I am slightly delusional, and that thought connections are a bit slow. I know sleep is the best medicine. But tomorrow I must be out in the suburbs by 10.00, which means I have to leave the house by 8.00. By 12.30, I'll have to be back in Paris, in order to have enough time to grab a quick something to eat and make it to class on time. Then I have straight classes until 20.00, with only one 15-minute break. Something tells me that sleeping is not really an option.

Blah. I wish that bitching about it made some of the badness go away, but bitching about physical pain doesn't really help get rid of it. Blah!

Ok, my first day at my new school was super uncool. So, so uncool. So uncool it's funny.

Oddly enough, after all my anxiousness and failed attempts at keeping cool yesterday, I was amazingly calm before heading into my first class at the Sorbonne this morning. I felt very chill and mellow, very... yes, very good and on top of things, as a matter of fact.

But that was just the calm before the storm...

Classes didn't start this week! Can you fucking believe that?

Of course, it's ONLY the classes in the linguistics department that have been delayed. And the notice that the start date had changed was ONLY marked on one small, teeny, itty bitty piece of paper where they had scratched out the 6 in "Classes begin Monday, October 6" with a pathetic little pen and instead written in a 13. We're talking 10pt font here folks. Scratched out and written over with a pen.

But even worse, they couldn't have put this pathetic attempt at notification in a place where linguistics students might find it. No... they had to put it on the board that no linguistics student checks because it's NOT THE LINGUISTICS BOARD.

So yes, all of us students went to our French linguistics class this morning (which has students from other departments who had apparently been notified), and we wondered why there were so few of us for such a huge-ass lecture hall. Finally, we gave up and decided to come back to class tomorrow.

Then I went to Arabic (not a linguistics class), which was a nightmare! The professor is scary and mean in the way only elderly French women can be. Her mouth is in a permanent frown and when she laughs it looks more like she has just eaten a lemon than that she has actually found something funny. She also has those old lady things hanging off her glasses, in case she wants to take them off and hang them around her neck. Scary bunny, for sure, that old hag.

After Arabic, I literally had to run to my Linguistics class - down three flights, over two hallways, and up three more flights. Worried I had the wrong room, I stopped the young man on his way in and whispered, "Sorry, what class are you going to?" and he answered "Semantics" and I said, "Oh, great, just wanted to be sure."

He tiptoed into the room (we were late... or at least late by my standards, which meant that we were only ten minutes early) and he said, "Oh, huh. Apparently we're the only ones here." We sat down and started chatting a bit (he's a nice guy and despite the fact that my day sucked donkey balls, I can console myself with the fact that I made at least one friend today). Gradually, more students arrived, but after twenty minutes there were still only seven of us and no professor. It was then that one of the girls said, "Well... I thought I saw a note about linguistics classes starting late. Maybe they really do start late."

And sure, the note she had seen wasn't even for the Sorbonne (two universities are housed in the same building), but at least it convinced us to go looking back at the boards outside our department. But after scanning all 423 papers posted, we still couldn't find any sort of notice and we so we instead stood around in the hallway awkwardly saying, "So, wait... what should we do?" and "Do you think we'll have class tomorrow?"

While everyone else was discussing other possibilities - should we go back up and double check? Should we ask at the office (it was closed)? - I climbed up the stairs that lead to the French department's doors and checked the postings there. For some reason, that's where the note to linguistics students was posted. In ten point font. And then the number 6 was replaced with a 13. On the FRENCH board.

The funny thing was that I had looked at that same sheet last week and it wasn't scratched out. And even last week, I had wondered why the hell that paper had been on the French board instead of the linguistics board. But still, the changed date on the paper means that sometime between last Thursday and today, they decided to push back the starting date of our classes. Which would be fine with me, if they would have made SOME attempt at letting us know that. Maybe posting a note on a board we would actually check. Maybe posting a note in big, highlighted letters on the department door. Maybe even going so far as to (gasp!) tell us when we came in to ask questions about classes last Friday or this morning.

So anyway, I'm a little bitter. Oh, and I lost my student ID card. I had it one minute, and then I looked for it ten minutes later and it wasn't there. I think it fell out of my pocket in the bathroom. That's the only place I could have lost it. I went back to the bathroom but of course someone had picked it up. Sigh.

But, on the upside, in the end I have yet another week of vacation on my hands. This means I can concentrate a bit more on a new project that is starting up, and maybe I can get all my classes figured out.

The good news is that the little episode today gave me the occasion to meet several people I'll be taking classes with, and we all had a good laugh together when we realized how absolutely absurd the situation was/is. Afterwards we went out for coffee, and at least now I feel like I'll have a few people to say hello to in the hallway. Oh, and I feel a lot better about the fact that my enrollment is all ass-backwards because two of the people I met today haven't even gotten their student ID card. And sure, I had one and lost it, but at least I had one. At some point. That must count for something, no?

Tomorrow's the big day. I can't afford to get the new, spiffy outfit this year, but otherwise, this first day at a new school should be like any other: hesitation as to where I should sit, checking and double-checking room numbers, psychotic reviewing of where I should be and when, general fear of talking to people or of showing that I'm not entirely sure of what the hell I'm doing.

I suppose the most marked difference this year involves that whole every-class-is-in-French thing, coupled by the I'm-not-actually-enrolled-in-over-half-my-classes bit. But, you know, that's all part of the adventure. I'm just going to sit in on the lectures anyway. And maybe talk to the professors about changing classes, even though I'm not even in their class yet. Thankfully, none of my classes are yet of the sort where you have to say hello and how are you to everybody in one of those annoying let's-go-around-the-room-and-get-to-know-one-another bonding sessions. I get all flustered and nervous when I have to do that in English, and it's close to nightmarish in French. My heart literally starts beating in my ears at three times its usual speed, and I choke on my words and usually end up turning bright red. Further proof that I am not as laid-back as I like to think I am.

At any rate, I had originally set up a course schedule that, upon reflection, was really stupid. I've now worked out a better deal, or so I hope. I have to go to the various offices concerned with my switch tomorrow morning, followed by an entire afternoon of classes (13.00-19.30, baby!) and I think by the time I leave the Sorbonne tomorrow evening, I will have spent ten consecutive hours in the building. Cool!

Honestly, I feel a bit silly for having the jitters. When I was a kid and I went from a small, private middle school to the bigger, scarier public high school in ninth grade, all I remember thinking was, "Well, let's see how this goes." I wasn't really nervous at all. Actually, I'm pretty sure that I was so cool with my painted converse and new button-fly jeans that I more or less considered myself invincible.

Going to college was rather easy as well. Everyone was doing their best to make the transition to college life easier, and they were successful. The school had set up numerous orientation gigs, potlucks, counseling sessions, parties, tours, you name it. Plus, the professors at UCSC are so friggin' nice that their scariness factor was practically reduced to nil. I felt like I could invite any member of the UCSC staff to my apartment for dinner, and we'd all have a dandy time discussing tevas and buddhism and patchouli.

But those Sorbonne people? Very scary. Very bitchy. Very not wanting to set up counsellings sessions, guided tours, or a help desk. I can only bet that the professors are worse. I would never invite them to my house for dinner, and if I did, they would never want to come.

One of the girls in my Arabic class went to the informational meeting two weeks ago about the program we're doing. She told me that the teachers said they'll call on students in question/answer rounds in an auditorium full of 50 or 60 students, and that the students will be expected to shout out the answer. Now, really, is this really the ideal foreign-language learning environment? Talk about embarrassment. Talk about putting people out of their comfort zone. Talk about freaking the shit out of me. I pray those people never call on me. But I know that, just because I'm the most freaked out, they're bound to call on me twice as much as my confident and totally chill neighbor.

Ach, well... I've surprised myself recently. Hopefully I'll be able to get through this year in one piece. I had this moment today where I said, "Hey, outside of Arabic, I'll only have four classes this semester! I'm so on top of this! That's nothing!" And then I remembered that all the work for them will be in French. As will all the readings, all the papers, and all the tests. Which, let's just be honest here, is gonna really slow me down.

I've always been the type to do my homework. I rarely, if ever, go to class unprepared. I hate the feeling unpreparedness gives me, and I figure the effort it takes to do the homework is less painful than the nervousness and fear that sits in my stomach on days when I haven't done the work. That's really the only reason I do it. But I also do it because it usually doesn't really take as much effort or time as one would think. I usually understand things pretty quickly in class, and then go through the homework methodically enough so that it doesn't take hours and hours (granted, Arabic is a definite exception. There's just no way around that one, but I enjoy the homework in my own little sick, masochistic way).

I used to live with a girl who literally spent seven hours one day writing a one-page paper. Some reaction to a book or something. I just couldn't fathom it. Although we were following pretty much the same courseload, the time she spent on homework on average was probably triple what I did. But oddly, she got far lower grades than me and never quite seemed to understand anything. That was probably because she was rather stupid, but still... I felt like her diligent homework should have made up for her lack of intellect. But I guess if you're not bright, your homework will reflect that, and teachers aren't going to give you brownie points for handing in something crappy just because you spent hours and hours slaving over it.

And I guess I've always sort of felt lucky that I can get through things reasonably quickly and still get pretty good grades. But I'm sort of thinking that my ability to fly through homework is going to be greatly reduced this year. And that's sort of unsettling. No, actually, that's really freakin unsettling. It's going to throw my whole system for coping with school stress way outta whack.

I looked at the books I have to read for my classes and it occured to me that they are all (except two) textbooks in French. Sure, I can read stories and newspapers and all that in French, but I have a hard enough time keeping my concentration on English textbooks, I'm a bit concerned about doing the same when French is involved. I want to get good grades, but I also want to laugh and see movies and go out to dinner. I pray I can make the two happen.

But why worry before classes even start? Righto. I just have to keep asking myself that. And chill. I have to chill.

Well, you'll find out how it all goes tomorrow. Hopefully I'll only have blushed my average of 214 times per day, and my usual idiotic comments will be kept to the normal 88 or so. If I can stay within those limits, I'll consider the day a success.

PS I'm not really as psycho and paranoid as I am making myself sound. I'm just being dramatic. Even though I honestly am a bit nervous. Just a lil bit, though. Ok, fine, I'm freaking my shit out.

Yesterday was School Registration, Part II: Class Selection. I may be off by 100 years or so, but I'd be willing to bet that the Sorbonne hasn't changed its registration methods since 1822. Their technique is so archaic and disorganized that I actually began laughing halfway through because I couldn't believe the chaos. Here's how it works:

A week before registration, class schedules are made available to students. These schedules are not available:

1. online
2. in a photocopied form

but are instead posted outside of each department's main office. There is only ONE (1) copy of course listings with their days, times, and room numbers, and it can only be found in ONE (1) specific place (outside the department's office).

This means that if a student is majoring in philosophy, for example, but he would like to take some German on the side, he's obligated to go to the German office to find out when the German classes are available.

In other words, there's no course guidebook, complete with all courses in all departments. Everything