The Frank Funny Farm

i'm taking my french midterm on friday, after much searching for the proper hoops to jump through, then jumping through said hoops. it's an online class, so they mail the exam to a suitable proctor, who then babysits me for three hours (hopefully less) and makes sure i don't cheat or something, then mails it back to them. sound simple, right? apparently the people in charge thought so too, so they added in some absurd difficulties for fun. the first is that i should be taking it at some sort of 'testing center' which belmont of course lacks. so that means i should find someone else who proctors, but it shouldn't be a professor - because they're busy and also might help me (WHAT?), but it must be someone wearing official pants or something. anyway, there's a language learning center that offers tutoring and help with, well, language learning, and the head of the dept., who's also an english professor, told me to contact the director of the center. i did, and after a few emailings and stuff he said he could do it, even though it wasn't exactly something they do there (don't tell the people at the university of kansas). so once all this is ironed out, i must go online and request the exam, giving them all the info about where, when and whom. i'm supposed to pick a date at least 10 DAYS after submitting the request so that the snails bringing it here will have plenty of time to get here. because simply emailing the bloody thing would put it on the internets where all those wily thieves hiding in the dark corners of the tubes can snatch it. ARGH. so anyway, they will send it faster as long as i pay for the extra shipping, which i did, partly because i want to take the thing and finish the course already and partly because dr. babysitter-man has graciously agreed to do it on friday. i, thinking i was being thoughtful and considerate in an effort to repay his kindness, told him any time on friday was fine with me. i get an email that says, well, just plan on showing up at 8:15 then. IN THE MORNING! i'm fairly certain i won't even be able to read english at 8:15 in the morning. this, my friends, cannot be good. ug. and on that note, i should probably move on to some other form of procrastination study some more. or go to kroger to get the things i lack to make the chili i want to eat when i get home from class. that's productive, and therefore not procrastination! ha!

Tags: 8:15 is too early for anything, french, procrastination, ridiculous red tape

many of you are familiar with my excellent skills of indecision. i must admit, i'm quite impressive with my ability to reason myself completely into one way, then saying, but... and reasoning totally into the other way. then that 'but' reoccurs and well, it can go on for days. i mean, seriously, i have trouble figuring out what to eat most of the time. that however, is usually resolved pretty quickly as hunger and other people factor heavily. and i suppose on the big things - the really really big things - i'm pretty quick (some people might say alarmingly quick) to decide what's right for me and i say 'that's it' and that is it. those, however, i attribute more to God saying, this way, dummy and me being smart enough to say ok instead of really? but why? i thought...  it's the smaller stuff i have trouble with.

at this moment, my most troublesome batch of waffles are french. part of the requirement for my degree is to have an intermediate level knowledge of a foreign language - french for me because that's what i took in high school. there are basically two ways to do this: study yourself and then go sit in dr. paine's office for two hours and translate some passages from french to english. i did this last week just to gage how far i have to go. i didn't expect it to be easy, dr. paine doesn't play around, which is awesome. so i wasn't expecting the little prince or anything, but man. simone de beauvoir. and like three sentence snippets, so context clues are basically impossible. anyway, back to the waffling. the other way of fulfilling the requirement is to take a class:  either an undergrad 202 class or there are some classes focused exactly on french for graduate english humanities majors. there was an online class that several people used, that the head of the dept. had told me about last year. it's an at-your-own pace sort of thing, you have a year to complete it and it was around $300-400. when i went hunting for this class this summer to check it out, i couldn't find it. fine, i had my little book and was planning to resurrect what i knew and add to it over the summer and theoretically knock the translation out before the fall semester started or at least by fall break (last week). except i worked all summer and i took a class that was sometimes a good bit of work and then there was the great gallbladder revolt of '08 and then i just needed a break for a minute man. and then fall classes started and i have an internship and i'm still working two days a week and i freak out about my parents with some frequency. so as we all know, i cannot read french yet.

so here's the thing: dr. paine located another online reading french class that will work. the class would be a little less stressful i think, because of the structure. do this lesson, send it in. continue till all lessons are done. then there's a final translation which has to be done while someone babysits me. i looked at the overview thing, the first half is grammar and all that, then it goes to "writing lessons." i'm not sure what those are, but for almost all of what's listed for the first half, i'm at least familiar with if not confident in it. that might not be so bad, let me coast a bit and refresh and perhaps better synthesize some things. but (you've been waiting for that, i know) this class costs $1000. yeah. and while they send me way more in student loans than i actually need, so this money would get paid back off our credit card, it's still more debt. and that's a lot of money.

so do i just keep plugging with my book and probably another one i'll buy to augment it and get a different take on things? hope i find enough time when i remember / have the mental energy and capacity and hope i can produce a reasonable translation? but then there's the what if i can't by the end of this semester and then it's hanging over my head next semester which should be my last semester but won't be if i haven't fulfilled that blasted language requirement? ack, i say. ack.

yes, i know i'm ridiculous, but i can't hear you because i'm trying to decide if i should shower before i go to the chiropractor or just throw a hat on because it the outside remains inviting then i'll be reading out there this afternoon which will render me all stinky again.

Tags: french, i'm an idiot, school