Whew. It's getting pretty messy here. Barely one page into my first of two ten-page papers and I'm already tired of this crap. It's tough when teachers keep giving us new short-term assingments in these last weeks of classes, so I never get a chance to work on my final projects which need the most time. My goal for today is to get through 5 pages of this paper (my history paper). The fact that we can use a picture per page almost, but not quite, makes up for the fact that it has to be 1.5 spaced instead of double. I, unfortunately, won't have this graphical advantage for my Lit paper. I guess I'll use poetry excerpts instead to fill the space. I also signed up to perform some kind of something-or-other in front of my entire program next Wednesday for extra credit. I think I decided I'll write a poem about Spain or Alicante and present/perform. I'll try to make it ridiculous and entertaining. It shouldn't be that hard but it's something else to add on to the pile. I also have my Language final on Monday and Tuesday which requires some preparation as well. So yeah. Whew.
Everybody - my friends, my madre, even my teachers- has been telling me to not stress out or work very hard at any of this, which is kind of baffling, but I'm trying to take their advice. What I can't understand is if my teachers are saying not to work too hard, then why the hell do they assign so much hard work? I'd be happy to sit back and not give a crap about any of the work I have to do, but my grades are transferring back to Northeastern so I need to do at least pretty decent to maintain my GPA.
I'm also trying to work on being employed in the UK for the summer and make post-program travel plans, on top of trying to maintain a somewhat decent social life. These are my last couple weeks in Spain, and I would like to enjoy them at least a little bit. This is turning out to be one of the busiest end of the semesters I've had in my entire college career. This is also partially because my access to the internet is limited to a small number of daylight hours, so I can't chug away at a paper in the wee hours of the morning - the time when I'm generally most productive. I borrowed someone's laptop and checked to see if there is an open wireless connection floating around in my apartment, but no dice. I have to rely solely on the computers at school and the internet salons to get my research done.
OK, I think I'm done. Got all of it out. I'm not constantly stressing about all of this, really, but it is a constant nagging that I can't get rid of. I just need to get this crap done. I wish I could write this things in English, is all.
Planning to head to Granada with Nicole after the program ends, then I'm gonna go up to Barcelona with her for a couple more days, since there are more things I definitely wanna see there. Afterwards, I'll be heading back to the Land of Assless People (aka, England), and staying with Matt in Southampton until the 31st. He has to prepare for exams that entire week, so I'll probably wander around on my own the whole time looking to see if someplace will hire my American ass (at least I have one, hope that doesn't intimidate them). It's looking less and less like I'm going to have the proper paperwork for employment, so I'm hoping some place can put me on the payroll without it being too official.
The weather has been less than stellar lately in Alicante which is making me not regret being able to get outside so much lately. I'm actually praying it'll pour the entire weekend so I have no incentive to go out at all. Laura is coming down from Madrid to see Alicante next weekend, which is gonna be tough to manage in, but by then I'll have everything done except for my Lit paper, so I should be able to have some fun.
Lately, I feel like my conversational Spanish is improving a bit, or at least I'm less inhibited about speaking. I'm getting slightly better at talking about abstract concepts as my vocabulary is improving. I know I would be able to reach fluency, or something very close to it, if I had another four or five months here, but oh well. I've learned enough at this point that if I ever need Spanish in a tight situation, I should be able to call it up without too much trouble. If I find a way to be immersed in an entirely Spanish speaking environment for more than a few weeks, I have no doubt it wouldn't be too tough getting back to the level I'm at now. And at least now I can watch Spanish soap operas on Telemundo. Hooray.
Seems like it's time to dive back in, so I'm going to go ahead and do so. I'll get those other Spring Break pics up eventually. I'll try to at least get the rest of the Holland ones up this weekend.
Besos all around
Friday, May 05, 2006
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
