Thoughts About School

Since I can’t seem to write a proper blog entry, I’ll try doing a quick list of thoughts:

1. Going to school at night is very difficult. By the time 7pm rolls around after a full day of work (which has been very stressful lately), I’m pretty much brain-dead. Our teacher, Abeer, expects a lot of class participation. Normally, I’m the quietest one in the room, so add that pinch of lethargy and you’ve got me hiding under the desk!

2. Next semester, I’m going to try to get a Saturday morning class and see if that works better. Even though it would be 4 hours instead of two 2 hour classes at night, I think that might be easier.

3. I can’t hear French. OK, I can’t comprehend (comprends) French that well when I’m listening to it spoken. I’m such a visual person that I seem to need to visualize the words but I can’t understand it well enough to do that yet. I don’t think we’re expected to be able to do a complete, understandable conversation with French 1 (Thank God!) but we do have oral portions of our tests that Abeer has had to slow down to 78rpm for me to understand… Last night, I took the final part of our latest test with Abeer asking questions and me answering--not too bad but she still had to repeat and mime some things.  LOL!  She really wants me to succeed.

4. I can’t hear French and I’m trying not to stress about it. It’s my weakest thing and that’s ok. I’m not taking this course for anyone but me and I’m good with this. I’m trying to listen more to the video’s on our Supersite (our homework site) from now til the end of the semester because I want to do my best to understand it but I don’t want to get to that point where I’m giving myself anxiety attacks. Also, Tutor Joel suggests listening to spoken French while reading the script of what’s being said, so I can associate the words with the sound.

5. Now that I have a beginning knowledge of French, I’ll continue to read a lot and use the second half of the expensive textbooks to continue educating myself. I subscribed to some Etsy newsletters in French and in planning a trip to Paris and Normandy in 2 years, I log onto French websites and attempt to read those. There are plenty of places to ready French, so I’m not worried about running out of interesting things to translate.

6. I bought a Memorize Words app for French. It starts with flash cards of new words, then tests you on those. Then you can move on to concentration, word match, word find, Invaders (match the article to the noun before the noun dropping from the sky blows up the city!) and even Hangman games in French. It will keep me interested after class is over.  
7. I don’t enjoy doing homework but neither do I loathe it. While doing the sometimes endless homework on the website and in the workbooks, it amazes me when I’m on a roll, making an effort to finish just one more assignment. Ok, now maybe another one, I mean as long as I have the books out and I have the French mindset goin’ on. It’s my personal mental challenge.  

8. Love my Kindle! I think I’ve mentioned before that the French-English dictionary wouldn’t let me search on the Kindle app on my phone but it does on the device itself. It’s come in very handy!

9.  Not sure how I wound up with an 82 out of 80 score on my last test but I’m happy with it.  Unless I totally mess up the next one or two quizzes and the last big test of the semester, I should come out with a good grade for my first college class.  Not bad for an old girl!

10. The Spring Semester catalog came out today.  Yes, there’s a Saturday morning College Writing class I was thinking of taking.  But there’s also a History of Art: Impressionism to Present online class that I want to take.  And there’s philosophy…  And geography…  And Literature… Why can’t The Husband and I find a Sugar Grand-daddy who’d take us under his wing and grant us the gift of unlimited leisure time???

11. I feel like I’ve been in a cocoon in this class.  The teacher really does want us to succeed and the majority of the kids are funny and nice to each other.  When someone’s stuck for an answer, they start whispering to help them.  We all laugh at our wrong answers.  I never feel judged or stupid, even though I do feel “senior” sometimes, just by virtue of my advanced years.  I don’t know if I’ll feel this safe in future classes.

12. Less than a month left of school.  With all the craziness at work (the company I’ve worked for for 25 years was bought out in late September, worked a lot of over time and double time) and a few other stressors, it’s been a wild ride.  Two nights a week at school, most Saturdays (and some Sundays) devoted to homework, Wednesday nights out doing wash (washer broke down weeks ago…), then throw in some quality time with The Husband and The Cats.  Whew!  Just gotta get through these last few weeks and I get 6 weeks off.  I’m planning to celebrate with a new tattoo!

It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves.  The domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.

Alain de Botton

Time Flies!

Don’tcha hate it when things have been going along smoothly and then, bam!  Everything happens at once!

Yup, I decide to go to school and the business gods decide that and working full time just aren’t enough to fill my days… and nights… and weekends.  Two and a half weeks ago, I got to work to find an email saying the company I work for was sold.  It’s been controlled chaos ever since.  Through the transition, I’ve been working overtime and a smidge of double time, some of that on weekends.  It’s been challenging, to say the least.  But there’s light at the end of the tunnel.  One more payroll with special handling next week and things should settle back to normal.  I’m lucky that we’re all being retained, with our benefits and seniority, so I can’t complain.  Yawn and whine a bit, well, yeah…

Then, I realized that I should have been doing homework in the workbook and lab book (listening to MP3s online and answering questions) all along, in addition to the online work…  *sigh*  So, I spent what I’d hoped would be a restful weekend catching up on all that…  I will say, though, it was a good  review for the big test we took last week!

Watson “helping” me with homework:  

So far I’ve been doing ok on the quizzes we’ve had:  

I hope I did almost as well on the test last week.  I didn’t start off well--part of the test was done on a scantron, you know those papers that you fill in the bubbles for your answers.  Several of us (thank goodness it wasn’t just me!) used pen and the machines won’t read the answers unless it’s in #2 pencil…  So Abeer has to grade those individually, plus the written parts of the test, so we should get our grades next Tuesday.  Fingers and toes crossed that I did ok.

In class, we’re moving along: greetings, university/classroom, verbs, adjectives, conjugation, time…  But speaking is slow and putting sentences together is still tricky.  But the class is pretty fun.  We do a lot of verbal activities in class and everyone tries to help everyone else and there’s a lot of good natured ribbing and laughing.  Most of the students are in their early 20’s and I haven’t figured out yet whether they like me or just consider me a strange being in their midst.  They do encourage me and I’ve exchanged phone numbers with a couple of the kids who I sit with at the back of the class, Nancy and Rudy. 

I’ve also attended a few tutoring sessions.  Very helpful!  Abeer, our teacher, is really fun and patient but she has to move fast to keep up with the curriculum.  Joel, our tutor, has the luxury of taking a little more time with explanations and getting us to talk and pronounce better.  And we have the opportunity to ask specific questions that we need help with.  Last week, I had him all to myself since no one else had signed up for that block of time.  We’ll see if that happens again this week.

So, student life is going well but I wish I had more time to do the actual studying…  Soon, life will quiet down and I’ll have more time to go back to a more organized study pattern.  At the beginning of school, I was establishing habits that seemed to be working and I’d certainly like to get back to that.  I feel like I’m flying by the seat of my pants and that seat is going to rip and I’ll be in a free fall of French garble!

One thing I really want to do when I finally get some time is to plan a trip to France in 2015.  I always love the planning phase as much as I love the travel itself.  I’ve been thinking of what I want to do there and now I’d like to make a proper wish list of places to go.  It’s occurred to me lately that I don’t want to stay exclusively in Paris.  I’d like to visit more of France, maybe take a cruise on the Seine (I know The Husband would like that, too).  The more I think about what I’ll use the French for, the more I’ll keep it up.

Speaking of keeping up, I’ll try to write more often here.  It’s what I started the blog for, after all!

Here’s the parking structure that welcomes me every day I go to school.  Just thought another picture in the post was needed :-)  

 
Tomorrow is a new day: begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

What Time Is It?

It’s Back to School time!

  

I used to love the idea of going back to school (school itself? not so much, especially as I got older…).  The new clothes and shoes, the new notebooks.  Making book covers from brown paper bags and stickers.  Even now, a million years out of high school, I wait impatiently for the stores to stock aisle after aisle with paper and pens, markers and highlighters.  I love to fill my cart with pens (used to be stick pens but my taste has gotten a bit more sophisticated--now I insist on clicky pens only).  And The Husband and I share a love of notebooks that borders on hoarding.  The ones that clearance out at 27 cents a piece at the end of the season give us goosebump inducing thrills!  I’m also a journal lover--a fresh set of blank pages set between pretty and /or inspirational covers makes my heart go pit a pat.

Here’s the notebook I just couldn’t resist for school.  It’s probably a bit impractical--I didn’t need 3 separate sections and it’s smaller than a “regular” notebook but I never fill a full notebook in a class anyway…  *grin*

Back in the day, you carried your books in your arms with pencils, erasers, six inch ruler and milk money tucked in a Monkees pencil case. So, one thing I won’t be buying is a backpack.  Call me paranoid, but I don’t like something on my back where I can’t see it and have little control over what’s happening to it.  I’d much rather carry 10 pounds of books, pens and homework in a tote bag plus my purse on my left shoulder.  Doesn’t make sense?  Doesn’t have to :-)

What’s your fave school supply?


Go around asking a lot of damn fool questions and taking chances.  Only through curiosity can we discover opportunities and only by gambling can we take advantage of them.

Clarence Birdseye