La Escuela Es In Sessione
Made it all the way to 500 words yesterday. We won't talk about how long I was 'writing' to get to that point.
Finished Vic and Modern Lit survey on Thursday. It'll be a few days before I can reasonably email my professor begging a final grade, but I think I did pretty dang well. I rocked the final exam. Rocked it. Two parts, Passage ID and Essay. Instructions said to do six out of eight IDs. He made a big deal out of saying that even if we weren't sure about title and author that we ought to (at least) guess at that part and answer the other five parts* of the question. I knew, KNEW all but the exact placement of one quote. And still managed to contextualize it enough that he might not take off for that. I answered six IDs, wrote the essay, then still had time to go back and answer the other two IDs with a smilifaced note asking for extra credit. I doubt he'll give me the extra credit, but it felt good to know it all.
I'd essentially finished the paper, which was a revision of the paper we'd handed in two weeks before, over the weekend preceding. It was a B+ paper when I'd handed it in the first time (knowing it was not up to snuff and why). I made all the changes he'd recommended and then some and he'd seen it between whiles. He'd given us until the morning after class was technically over to hand it in. So Thursday evening I found and corrected two passive sentences which sounded better active and added a phrase to my conclusion. I feel pretty confident that I made 3 half-grade's worth of improvements to what was basically sound stuff to begin with.
*context/intratext position; speaker; thematic content; type of writing/language; author's other achievements/relevance to period
Monday I start "Applied Literary Criticism." Long story about not taking "Literature and the Environment" and taking "Modern Poets" with Bob Pack (author of multiple volumes of his own poetry and 20ish year big-wig of The Bread Loaf) in the spring instead, of which the details are surely not interesting but the result is marvelous. For Lit Crit, in addition to a reassuringly slim volume of theory, we're reading Frankenstein, which, to my shame, I've not read before. So I'm pretty psyched.
Sister made it to LA. Mom and I talked about the journey and the settling for over an hour last night. The school she's attending will work her hard. And if she doesn't put in the work, she won't be invited back for another year. According to my mom, Sister had recurring instances of 'oh, wow, LA is really big,' and 'oh, wow, freeways down here are way more complicated than the interstates back home,' and 'oh, wow, Hollywood is really kind of scary.' Yeah-huh. That's what we've been telling you!! But I'm glad that she started to realize all of that while my mom was there ... before she did anything REALLY stupid.
I pick mom up here just after 11p tonight. I feel really bad that she has to sit around in LAX from sometime after 11a when the last shuttle leaves her hotel until 5p when her plane boards. But she's got work-paperwork to do and Memoirs of a Geisha to read, so she ought to survive. She'll be brain-fried and stir-crazy when I pick her up, but she'll survive.
Finished Vic and Modern Lit survey on Thursday. It'll be a few days before I can reasonably email my professor begging a final grade, but I think I did pretty dang well. I rocked the final exam. Rocked it. Two parts, Passage ID and Essay. Instructions said to do six out of eight IDs. He made a big deal out of saying that even if we weren't sure about title and author that we ought to (at least) guess at that part and answer the other five parts* of the question. I knew, KNEW all but the exact placement of one quote. And still managed to contextualize it enough that he might not take off for that. I answered six IDs, wrote the essay, then still had time to go back and answer the other two IDs with a smilifaced note asking for extra credit. I doubt he'll give me the extra credit, but it felt good to know it all.
I'd essentially finished the paper, which was a revision of the paper we'd handed in two weeks before, over the weekend preceding. It was a B+ paper when I'd handed it in the first time (knowing it was not up to snuff and why). I made all the changes he'd recommended and then some and he'd seen it between whiles. He'd given us until the morning after class was technically over to hand it in. So Thursday evening I found and corrected two passive sentences which sounded better active and added a phrase to my conclusion. I feel pretty confident that I made 3 half-grade's worth of improvements to what was basically sound stuff to begin with.
*context/intratext position; speaker; thematic content; type of writing/language; author's other achievements/relevance to period
Monday I start "Applied Literary Criticism." Long story about not taking "Literature and the Environment" and taking "Modern Poets" with Bob Pack (author of multiple volumes of his own poetry and 20ish year big-wig of The Bread Loaf) in the spring instead, of which the details are surely not interesting but the result is marvelous. For Lit Crit, in addition to a reassuringly slim volume of theory, we're reading Frankenstein, which, to my shame, I've not read before. So I'm pretty psyched.
Sister made it to LA. Mom and I talked about the journey and the settling for over an hour last night. The school she's attending will work her hard. And if she doesn't put in the work, she won't be invited back for another year. According to my mom, Sister had recurring instances of 'oh, wow, LA is really big,' and 'oh, wow, freeways down here are way more complicated than the interstates back home,' and 'oh, wow, Hollywood is really kind of scary.' Yeah-huh. That's what we've been telling you!! But I'm glad that she started to realize all of that while my mom was there ... before she did anything REALLY stupid.
I pick mom up here just after 11p tonight. I feel really bad that she has to sit around in LAX from sometime after 11a when the last shuttle leaves her hotel until 5p when her plane boards. But she's got work-paperwork to do and Memoirs of a Geisha to read, so she ought to survive. She'll be brain-fried and stir-crazy when I pick her up, but she'll survive.