The 100th post...

As a special feature, we offer you this special presentation:

post number 100.

Unfortunately, I can't claim to have anything deep, meaningful, particularly witty or even necessarily particular in any form whatsoever. It's like watching the preview for a cool movie, then going to the theaters to discover...they took every single funny part out and put it in the preview, leaving nothing undiscovered (ex. Schultze gets the blues or Saving Sara). The disappointment is almost as shattering as discovering the easter bunny and santa claus are part of a cruel adult conspiracy to give you stuff. Except without the chocolate.

Right now, right this very second, there are probably about eight or ten things I should be doing instead of typing this. But seeing as I am not at my house and am unable to clean my room (pity; it is desperately in need) which is my usual method of avoiding responsibility, I am evoking my long-dormant creative impulses and hoping to come up with something sounding like English.

Incidentally, the word "Englisch" is one of those words I can never pronounce quite correctly in German; or rather, it is one of those words quite similar in both languages that I forget which one is pronounced which way. "Post" is another example. And English words stolen by the perfidious Germans "party" "muffin" "to go" and the infamous and incongruent word for Cellphone "Handy", which doesn't exist in English but should. These words are ones I, strangely enough, insist on pronouncing in a highly inappropriate German fashion (imagine what German must sound like to result in the clichéed accent in English... vas do yoo zink?), which results in "moffin", the unholy cross between baked goods and a Jim Henson character. The Germans, for some incomprehensible reason, continue to pronounce the word more or less in the American fashion. Blast.

And a summary of my evening last night:
Kinds of berries:
- Raspberry = Himbeer
- Strawberry = Erdbeer
- Currant = Johannisbeer
- Blueberry = Heidelbeer
- Blackberry = Brombeer
- Wineberry = Keine Ahnung
- = Josterbeer
- = Stachelbeer

I work lots. I like to complain about how much I work; it helps me feel justified for the fact that I am completely and thoroughly at fault for my current situation, and my obsession to take on too much stuff should not be rewarded with pity. Please, I take cash or money order. And ice cream.

But I won't be working for too much longer, which is good because I am increasingly find that the time periods in which I am supposed to be working and the time periods in which I absolutely have to be somewhere else are tending to coincide with unfortunate and increasing regularity. Sleeping is an activity for which I have little time and less patience, and increasing necessity.

In case I have given you an improper picture of my life, let me qualify by saying that I spend most evenings either out with friends or with Boyfriend, or both; my refusal to give up on my social life may eventually affect my grades (except for the part where I take everything pass/fail). My work is fun and varied, and I spent yesterday morning translating a presentation on Urban planning from German to English for a cadre of 19 Northern Irish, which was a lot of fun and makes me wonder how I can incorporate experiences like that into whatever my future career may be. If only I could speak French.... I am otherwise translating documents, working on project descriptions, going on tours, chaperoning foreign guests (the week before I spent two days with a group of Koreans, which was a lot of fun even though only one of them spoke English). There's always lots to do, and the documents that make it my way constantly impress me as to the variety and depth of the projects perused by the organization.

I feel like I am towing a metaphorical ticking clock around with me on a string (which has, strangely enough, had an inverse effect on my punctuality), like the Fall of the House of Usher except not. And except for the part where my ever-well-meaning professors compensate for the multitude of public holidays--or are living out some form of scholarly sadism--by planning numerous block seminars at inconvenient times, scheduling recitations for 8 am on Friday mornings and generally inhibiting me taking a weekend that stretches from Friday to Tuesday. Or they forget to inform me until two days prior that their class is now three hours earlier than planned, of course at exactly the same time that I am supposed to parler en francais.

My sister is coming this weekend and I am happy. I haven't seen her since last summer, I think, and it will be at least a year before I see her again. Bloody atlantic, making travel so difficult....

"Procrastination is like masturbation... at first it feels good, but then you realize you're just screwing yourself." While this would have been a much more attention-grabbing intro to the Oral Interp speech I competed with in high school (I tried to be all motivationally and such, comparing procrastion to the more socially acceptable acoholism) it does remind me that I have about 50 pages to read before tomorrow, and class in a few minutes...

Ohje...

I've had, at the maximum, about an hour a day this week to sit, drink my coffee, answer emails, etc. Otherwise, I've been on the go; I leave my house at 9 AM and come back at 1 AM the next morning. And I love it. Except I've got no food and don't know when I'm going to be able to go shopping.

I started my internship on Monday. The organisation is an NGO working on climate protection and sustainable development. They work on various projects supporting green procurement and the implementation of the Local Agenda 21 and Aalborg commitments. They also have a department which plans conferences, including one in Spain in March, www.sevilla2007.org . This is my new department. I am the new go-to person for anything involving English, the working language, and will probably receive other tasks as time goes on.

Of course, right off the bat I was introduced to the thirty-odd people who work there, and I am trying my hardest to remember who each of them is and what he or she does. It's not easy. As a whole, the group may be summarized and generalized by saying that they are exceedingly international and on average quite young. I would judge most of them to be around 30, with the few slightly elder balanced out by the multple mid-20s-employees and interns. My new office is shared with two italians, a german, a german/spainiard, and me. There are canadians, mexicans, dutch, belgians, people from all over Europe, one british guy, and me. Everyone seems to speak four or five languaes. I wish I could.

I've been sitting in on meetings, trying to follow what is going on and how it all works. It's quite a dynamic group, and my impression is that they help one another out. Communication is clear and frequent; goup tasks and projects are openly discussed and shared. I proofread the website and learned how to work their web editor, so I can apply my changes.

Mainly I am fascinated by what it takes to put such a conference together. It's the same sort of thing we did back at CU for our Darfur events, except on a much larger scale. 1,000 expected attendees, 40 panels, roundtables, four plenaries, four days, six or eight partner organisations and the whole thing takes place in Spain. I can learn a lot.

And after 'work' each day I go to class, which is the same as it has always been, except my evening class has finished. We ended with a four hour session followed by a small party. I'll be sad to see it go. I hope we can keep some portion of the group together, but you never know.

In the meantime I will be eating canned peas and dumplings until I can go shopping again, and save my sleeping for the weekend... :)

Note to self

Note to self:

Self, show up early.

I didn't, today. I wasn't exactly late; in fact, I was two minutes on the other side of on time. It's just that all the seats at the tables were taken, so I was left balancing my notebook on my knees, tucking myself under the eaves and trying to find a delicate balance between being able to see and not being in everyone's way.

The gallery seats, as it were, aren't usually completely full until after the course has begun, and today was no exception. To my left and right sat two latecomers, two friends. Their biggest concern was about making sure they signed the attendance list, which the guy to my right, who had it first, took about forever and a half to read (there's nothing to read! It's just a list of names and people's initials!) which for some reason irritated the bloody bijeezus out of me.

Just because you get older doesn't mean you still don't need medication. Yes, I know meds are underperscribed, but these two could've used some. They would not sit still! The remaining 45 minutes or so they were there (typical--didn't stay till the end) they twitched, shifted around, got stuff out of their backpacks, put it back again, got something else, found their water bottle, chatted, drank, ate food, begged food off of other people to eat, read newspapers, talked some more, and basically distracted the hell out of me. And the dude on my left has the audacity to ask me if this stuff is even interesting to me (even though I spent a huge amount of effort just trying to ignore them and follow the discussion I still found it interesting) and the guy on the right kept grinning at me like a maniac.

So, self, learn your lesson and get a spot at the table. Preferably away from the back.

Pädigogik

Our word for the day today is Pädigogik, which I believe translates to pedagogy, a word which actually exists but I'd never come across until I looked up the translation.

Main Entry: ped·a·go·gy
Pronunciation: 'pe-d&-"gO-jE also -"gä-, especially British -"gä-gE
Function: noun
: the art, science, or profession of teaching; especially : EDUCATION 2

I find the variation in teaching styles to be quite astounding.

I have one Dozent (instructor) who routinely comes in late for an early morning class, to which everyone else was early. If he wants to start 15 minutes late, he can, it's his class. He then proceeds to spend the next fifteen minutes summarizing the previous lecture (these are lectures, not discussions), including walking us through whatever theoretical steps we convered the last time, making the previous session completely superfluous. If only he published the cliff notes. The bell rings. He keeps going. Five minutes past. Someone from the next class opens the door, realizes we're not finished, closes it. Ten minutes past. If I had a class after this I'd never make it. By now several people have opened and closed the door, eventually sent on their way with an impatient "we're not finished!". Quarter past............. time stretches out........... I try not to check the time every five seconds because it won't help, he'll let us go when he's good and ready....... I'm sure I'm visibly aging by this point......... and then he summarizes his points, carefully, calmly, as if he had all the time in the world.....

The German collegiate system generally works in a way that all upper division classes are seminars, so you get readings, you read them, you come to class, you discuss them, and for one class period per semester, it's your turn to run the session. And you write a research paper, to be handed in sometimes several months after the semester has ended. These presentations, Referate, they're called, sometimes are about summarizing the assigned texts, intrepreting a piece of literature, or sometimes the students plan the entire session and assign the texts as well. And when it's not your turn, you can more or less check out. Till it comes time for the paper.

Literature: you'd expect the presenters to have intrepeted the piece, have questions for the other students, and would attempt to evoke a discussion. Of course, this is university, where most of the kids just read it right before class, and don't even mention having prepared responses. I admit, I'm one of them. I read the story before class started, and came to the conclusion that the story was about mortality of man (when in doubt, guess one of the following: love, death, or if Kafka, failure). Anyways, instead of following the published set of intrepetation questions prepared by the students, the Dozent just jumps in and redirects the conversation.....then goes off on a tangent.....then insists on arguing whether 'communication' or 'interaction' is a more fitting descriptor. Some people have a deepset need to be right. I admit I can be one of them, but I generally know when to let go. Some people have such a death grip on their opinion that the poor thing will be bruised for weeks. We had a story about a guy who found a spool of thread with legs that could talk, with a lurid visual description (no, hallucinogenics are not issued for this class. They must be obtained independently). Someone tried to draw it. It didn't work out. Several more people, eventually including the Dozent, tried as well. The poor kid trying to run the discussion was looking increasingly disgruntled, eventually just letting the Dozent have his tangent. After 1:15 of tangents and rather useless discussion, we came to the conclusion that the story is about the mortality of man. I could have spared myself the hour and a quarter. I was expecting deep and penetrating discussion, a fierce debate about this or the other thing, and instead we went through it paragraph for paragraph and asked, "what happens here? and here? and here?". And in the last 15 minutes, which turned out to be 25 minutes, we tried to cram in an entire other story....hahaha. hehe. he. no.

Another Dozent sits at the head of the classroom, a long, thin, room, and explains theory. Excellently articulate, this particular Dozent has a penchant for the passive past perfect tense (ex. it had been made), a particuarly complicated form involving three verb particles. This Dozent also talks in such..........a way as to leave long breaks towards the end of.........a sentence, which I believe is just an excuse to try and remember which foms of which verbs are necessary (German has a lot of separable verbs with bits that go at the end, and every time you have a subordinate clause, the verbs all go at the end, in varying order depending on if there are two or three of them. Ex. the dog 'that I saw yesterday' would, in directly translated German in past perfect tense, be: the dog, that yesterday been seen had)

The Dozents do participate in the discussions as well. Some of them stimulate thought and comment, and others kill it like an impaired armadillo on the interstate.

Some Dozents are informal. We're all buds, we address one another by first name, and everything is relaxed and laid back. Others are exquisitely formal, even to the point of rediculousness, and I live in permanent fear of addressing them improperly or forgetting a title. And at the end of every seminar session, you knock on the desk in lieu of clapping.

And I got hit on the head by a frisbee. But that's another story. Want to hear it? You just did.