Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Quick Academic Update

I passed my foreign language exam! I had to translate 500 words of a piece of literary criticism on modernism (of all subjects) in Spanish in 3 hours using only a dictionary. I had been done with Spanish class for about year and half, didn't study, and was sick to boot. I was worried about my test results having not seen an email, but I found it today! It got buried under the mass of emails I have in my university account. Obviously they value content and the fact I got the main idea of the piece rather than an accurate word for word, grammatically correct translation. I am required to pass the test before I can defend my culminating project (the shorter equivalent of a thesis). Now, I'm one step closer to getting my Masters degree!

I am once more locked out InterLibrary Loan for overdue books, though they did not send me an email this time. It's frustrating when my research papers won't be finished until December, and I only get maybe one month with the books and a two week renewal. If I return the books, I can't renew them right away. I have to send them back then request them again, but that's after the period for however long the books were overdue for. Personally, it think the system is bull. If I could check out the books longer, like at my university library I wouldn't have this problem. It's inconvenient to haul 20+ books to the library every two weeks to renew them, and I'm pretty sure you can't renew ILL books online. I understand that the policy is probably there so that whatever university library the books come from has it when one of the students wants the book, they can get it. But seriously, how many students are angling for books on Medieval women prophets or a facsimile of the Lamentations of Katherine Parr? I'm keeping the books until I'm done with my research paper, and use interlibrary loan through Dustin's account; I'll just have to be careful to check the dates.

I have half the books from the library contained in my apartment. Most of the books are Medieval related (Black Death, women writers, and Anne Askew), but there are a some for my Civil War lit and Queer theory courses. I need a tall, strong, muscled, burly personal assistant to reach all the books in the tall places, so I don't have to climb on shelves when there's no step stool and carry them all around the library and to my car at the stadium. Or, the library could just provide shopping carts that I can carry all the books around in; that still wouldn't solve the problem of getting them to my car at the stadium though. Creative solutions anyone?

4 comments:

  1. Yay for passing your exam! So proud of you and I bet that is a nice chunk off the master's check list.

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  2. Hey there! Found you on 20SB and wanted to give you a congratulations on passing your Foreign Language Exam! I have to say.....I could NEVER write a paper in another language! Good Job!

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  3. WHOO! I remember how stressful language tests can be...great job, Lan!

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