Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Oh, the horror

I just finished writing my paper for grammar, and I use the word "paper" loosely. The assignments that we get for grammar are like going back to third or fourth or fifth grade, maybe, if you were in the slow class. Case in point: for today, we were given an article of 375 words (I know that because it said so on the bottom of the page, NOT because I counted. Sheesh, I'm not that anal) about "le cinéma fantastique" (exactly what it sounds like). We had to write a short summary, and I mean short, around 120 words, and then answer the following question. Now, don't read this too fast, it's extremely complicated and your head might explode:

Aimez-vous le cinéma fantastique? Quels genres de films a votre préférence? Pourquoi?


And yes you are probably translating that correctly. Do you like fantastic cinema, and what types of movies do you prefer and why?

Am I writing a grammar paper or a personals ad?

I know the point is to get us to write grammatically correct French, not to write a brilliant and thought-provoking paper. But come on, it's hard to squeeze 2 pages out of your movie theatre preferences.

And while I'm on the subject, can I just say that I hate the way they handle the housekeeping end of writing papers here? And what I mean by that is, THEY ARE ALL HANDWRITTEN. My professors will NOT accept a typed paper. So, for all my grammar work, this is what I do: I write it on the computer, take advantage of the spellcheck, and then write it out by hand.

How is that helpful for the professors? I don't understand. There are nine people in my grammar class and I think every single one of us writes on different sizes of paper, because none of the notebooks are standardized here either. All of the handwriting is different and runs the gamut from "chickenscratch" (moi) to "grade 3 cursive instructor" (definitely not moi).

ARGH. It kills me, it really does. One of my professors, bless his archaic little heart, refuses to use a computer for anything. Everything he gives us is written by hand.

Photocopies.
Exercises.
Tests.
Homework.
Everything.

Thank god the man is a machine and his handwriting looks like a font. If it were free I would seriously scan in a handout and make a font out of his handwriting. Compared side by side with his freehand writing, I bet you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Anyway, that's your French culture lesson for the day. On a scrapping note, I bit the bullet and subscribed to digiscrapdesigner today. They have a whole area of their website reserved entirely to tutorials that you can only access if you buy a yearly subscription, which actually isn't that bad (only $35). And they have tuts for pretty much everything you could ever want to know that deals with designing your own stuff: textured paper, metal elements, lace, buttons, bottlecaps, fibers, and tons tons more. I spent pretty much all day working through the tutorials and the results are pretty cool. One of the tuts teaches you how to make your own bling, which I think is absolutely fabulous because I always wondered how they did that. This is the one I made following the tut exactly. I think it came out ok, but I'm looking forward to playing around with it and seeing what else I can do from that basic framework.



Also, I found out the other day that most of my family is on aim. Or ichat, rather. I think that is pretty much the coolest thing ever. They're online more than some of my friends, seriously. I have screennames for I think 4 or 5 of my relatives and I've talked to them all over the last couple of days. You saw the conversation with my uncle from yesterday lol. This is so cool that they're online and I can talk to them even though I'm so far away. I have such a big family and I really do miss everybody. I don't like being so far away from all my cousins and my aunts and uncles and grandparents and definitely not my immediate family. But such is life, right? And I have to admit, I am living the good life here. I have practically no work, I get handed an envelope full of money every other week, and I can see the Eiffel Tower whenever I want. And for the icing on the cake...my host family has a housekeeper that cleans my room twice a week.

Sweeeet.

Kind of weird. But still pretty cool.

I'm off to play with some more tutorials. A demain!

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh Monsieur Grammaire. What a strange little old man.

Tu es plus-que-parfaite.

~Emily

1:26 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home