mothwing | Entries tagged with uni

I've had my last final exam today.

It went really, really well, much better than expected, especially considering all the things that went wrong with my final exams.

And it's over!

I'm going to be a teacher!

Fireworks myspace profile - http://www.fireworkstext.com

Current Mood: indescribable

To dussem dantse rope ik al gemene
Pawes keiser unde alle creaturen
Arm ryke groet unde kleine
Tredet vort went iu en helpet nen truren
Men dencket wol in aller tyd
Dat gy gude werke myt iu bringen
Unde juwer sunden werden quyd
Went gy moten na myner pypen springen.*

Last Saturday, my Middle High German course,

niaseath, other guests, and I went on an excursion to look at the Totentanzkapelle in Lübeck as well as an exhibition of modern-day hommages to the danse macabre from Lübeck in the St. Annen-Museum. We had a really lovely day enthusing about late medieval art, modern art, the church service and the beautiful church with other course members and our Professor.

While searching for the text of the Totentanz online I found this wonderful Danish site (click that link, you know you want to! Though be warned, it means goodbye to the rest of your day), which, in its introduction, mentions that the idiom "like death warmed over" is "at ligne Døden fra Lübeck" in Danish, which means, "like death from Lübeck".

"Death from Lübeck" used to look like this before the mural was destroyed in WWII:

...although that is the 1701 version, the original is believed to have looked something like this (Tallinn-fragment):

----
*To this dance I call everybody, / pope, emperor, and all creatures / poor, rich, great and small./ Step forward, because grieiving does not help you,/ but remember, at all times,/ to bring good works and deeds with you / and all your sins will be good again / because you must all dance to my pipe.

Current Mood: content

I found a video (in German) on my uni. I love how they whine about the quality of the buildings in this video when there are things that make this uni much worse. Admittedly, the mould is quite disconcerting and the Anthropology course I once had in a smelly, damp room in an old basement with dark, wet spots on the walls where the plumbing was getting old was not much fun, but I'd have still gone with the course sizes (very large) and the course organisation (90min of bad student lectures, mostly).

According to our exam registration office, the title of my final paper is [sic!]:

"Event and Performativity in John Donne's Snaps and Sonnets and Divine Poems".

Needless to say, the title should be, "Event and Performativity in John Donne's Songs and Sonnets and Divine Poems" - at least that's what my professor said he'd hand in, and I sincerely doubt he'd make such a big typo. I have no idea what's up with the random text style of the title, nor what the fuck "snaps and sonnets" are supposed to be, but I do know one thing: officially, titles can't be changed after they are handed in at the registration office, especially not once they are sent out.

So I might end up writing 60-80 pages on snaps, which, according to Wikipedia, is:

"a small shot of a strong alcoholic beverage taken during the course of a meal. A ritual that is associated with drinking snaps is a tradition in Scandinavia, especially in Sweden and in some cases Denmark."

Or, of course, the plural of snap:

"a pair of interlocking discs commonly used in place of buttons to fasten clothing. A circular lip under one disc fits into a groove on the top of the other, holding them fast until a certain amount of force is applied. Snap fasteners are often used in children's clothing, as they are relatively easy for youngsters to use."

I think I may need some snaps now...

Current Mood: angry

The University of Hannover is hosting the German Tolkien society's annual seminar this year. It's free, it's this April and it'll be on conflict, violence and war in Tolkin's works. The organiser is the Professor whose seminar on "literary masculinities" I was allowed to attend for kicks at Hannover university in spite of not being enrolled there (he is an awesome teacher and has worked on Tolkien, too).

I am tempted - and I'm especially looking forward to "Tolkien as war poet", "violence and song" and the talks on the "just wars". My knowledge of Tolkien's works may not be sound enough to fully appreciate everything, but I'll try.

In case any of the more Tolkieny-inclined among you are interested:

Konflikt, Gewalt und Krieg bei Tolkien/ Conflict, Violence and War in Tolkien
24.-26. April 2009
Alle Vorträge/ All Lectures:
Hörsaal 1503.003, Erdgeschoss Conti-Gebäude, Königsworter Platz 1 (lecture theatre 1503.003, Ground Floor of Conti Building)
Friday 15:00-19:00
Saturday 9:00-19:00
Sunday 9:00-13:00.
Registration is not required.

Current Mood: tempted

I did sort of want to go and see the University Player's production of Into the Woods, but

fourthage's most recent music post made it a definite plan. I didn't know that the musical was that awesome, and I'm really curious to see what the UPs did with it, they are usually so very good.

A user on YouTube has uploaded what appears to be the entire thing - and after watching it I think "Agony" is probably my favourite song so far:

Pity I didn't manage to go this week already, now it'll have to be some time next week, and I have no clue when. It'll be a chaotic week as it is, as I have to go to two office hours that I intended to go to this week already - and could not, because the Professors had come down with the flu and cancelled. Seeing as I want to go to the premier of Crocky's play on Tuesday, I'll have to take a car-sharing-ride at 7am on Wednesday to be in Hamburg by 9am, when the office hour'll begin. And Tuesday, oooh, Tuesday is going to be awesome - go to Hamburg at 9:40am to make it to the office hour at 1pm, then take the train back to attend the premier, which begins at 7:30pm.

Current Mood: bouncy

I have a question for my fellow Fantasy readers out there (I'm looking especially at you,

fourthage ), do you happen to know any (recent) British (high/epic/heroic/parallel world) Fantasy books which have been fairly popular which have a female heroine?
Preferably written by a female writer?

Crocky asked me for suggestions, but all I could come up with were mumbled suggestions along the lines of Marion Zimmer Bradley and Tamora Pierce, neither of who are British, and Susan Cooper, whom I love to pieces, but whose Jane Drew does not make her a good example because the other characters are all male.

The only real example I could think of was Jill Murphy, whose books were fairly popular but whose target audience is a good deal younger than the ones Crocky'd need (the books she's going to examine are Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, The Bartimaeus Trilogy).

Some help?

Current Mood: geeky

Oh, when I returned to my sick

crocky_wock last Friday, I knew exactly that I was not going to get ill. I had been ill a few weeks before I had decided that it was not likely. My immune system had been victorious against the last flu only a few weeks ago, clearly it could take on this one, too!

Yeah.

Now my head is swollen, my sinuses hurt, my ears are merrily beeping away, and my tonsils hurt so much that it took two bowls of ice cream and plenty of cold water to make them stop. On top of that, my eyes tire easily and I can't focus on any text longer than five minutes before my lazy eye acts up and starts hurting. Even though this is obviously just the flu, I am considering going to a doctor to have a look at tonsils, eyes and sinuses.

School this week?

Somehow, I don't think so.

Current Mood: sick

Yesterday was pretty much the perfect day. Perfect. I had asked Crocky whether she'd like to see What the Butler Saw with me, and so she came along and spent the day with me in Hamburg, which is always a good foundation of a perfect day.

At first, I went to see one of my examiners, the didactics one, who is just generally wonderful and awesome and who chatted to me about my final paper and was very interested in my topic. I love her. Then, I picked up two Scheine, which I was very pleased with, as well.

Since by then it was only around 3pm, there was a lot of time to kill until 7.30pm. Thus, we went to see Hancock, which I had unwisely not read any reviews of and which I was exited about because it features a Will Smith as a superhero.

Why I Did Not Like Hancock In Spite of Will

After three quarters of an hour, feeling vaguely self-conscious and nerdy for doing so, I leant across to Crocky and told her I was wondering whether this movie is actually worse from a gender perspective or a race perspective only to find out that she'd been trying to make up her mind about that, too.

Of course now some people will roll their eyes and marvel how she and I can even be bothered to care enough about such things to let them interfere with watching a good movie, and rest assured that I really wouldn't have, had there been a decent enough movie to watch. Now, it's not as bad as The Happening, which had me wondering and thankful for watching it, because it may actually be the absolutely worst movie I have ever had the privilege of seeing, but just generally... sort of... wrong on several levels.

The only good things were probably the special-effects and the mere fact that it has a black superhero! As a main character! As the title role! Which was awesome.

Not so awesome was pretty much everything else.

The blatant, really unnecessary nationalism, which was probably only to be expected of a movie that opened on the fourth of July - and still I think that the film could have afforded to lose a few eagles, especially the random real eagle that made a WTF-inspiring appearance in the closing scenes.

The way the hero had to be told to adjust to the role of the tradintional, white superhero to be accepted by society, guided by a wise, well-adjusted white mentor figure and with the vulnerable white, blonde woman as the ultimate prize at the end. How- in spite of her freaking super powers- said white, blond woman's purpose was to be saved by the male hero, for heaven's sake. How this is also a movie about a poverty-stricken, aggressive alcoholic being polished up for society by the nice upper-class, white family.
How the backstory stayed lame and vague and was only introduced in the last part of the film, making a rushed appearance.

How, in spite of Hancock, there was just one other black character, who was of course a male news presenter, and a few criminals without lines, and no black women at all. This especially made Hancock not only "the only of his kind" as a superhero, but also the only of his kind as a black character, which is sad, as the film was promising.

So, I did not really like it. I still love watching Will Smith, but the first black superhero could really have deserved a different context in my eyes.

We then went and watched the University Player's performance of Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw, which was very, very enjoyable.
Even though I know that some people had had their doubts about the effectiveness of having the characters played by cross-dressing characters of the opposite sex, that made the play all the more enjoyable to watch for me.
The skill of the actors and the professionalism of the production once again made me marvel at the skill of the people involved.

As always.

Current Mood: tired

The holidays have basically been a paper-writing-and-panicking marathon for me. I did manage to get a lot of the reading done I wanted to do, though. Still, I wish I'd have time for myself again that actually felt good instead of having my brain shut down at the internal list of all the things that need to be done.

( Tetris - The Movie. My brother showed me this, and it is completely awesome. )

Ok. Back to an oral presentation on Georg Forster's Frische teutsche Liedlein.

Current Mood: rushed
Current Location: Uelzen

And in more than one sense, but most of all emotionally. I know that Hamburg is a city in which a lot of children live in broken homes or come from incredibly poor and difficult backgrounds.

( My students - a really good lesson, and two really worrying absences )

( Horror stories form members of the seminar I attended about children from difficult backgrounds in Hamburg - things I ought to have been able to anticipate )

I feel so silly. I knew these things were going on, but hearing people talk about them who had witnessed them made them more real, and more horrible.

Somehow, I am at the same time both sad and glad that I did not take part in such a more "difficult" trip instead of the six comparatively easy weeks at the kindergarten. I would have wanted to do something to make them - all of them - feel better - but I would have never been able to, and that, and the terrible burden of knowing that there are children who are raised in such horrible conditions, would have just about killed me. This seminar really makes me want to find a way to reach out to children living in such difficult conditions and help them, one at a time, so that I can help without breaking.

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: Hamburg
Current Music: Subway to Sally - 2000 Meilen unterm Meer

Some good things do come of reading texts for education courses. I proudly present: the education buzzword bingo!

Create your own buzzword bingo cards here.

Also, feel free to add education buzzwords. I realise some of these are not really that inventive, but I found it hard to come up with 25 buzzwords, after all.

Current Mood: cynical
Current Location: Hamburg

Stine. Has eaten. Two of my applications.

Not more.

Just the two.

All others are fine.

Two seminars I know I have applied for, because they were the first seminars I applied for.

Also, I was turned down for the two education courses I really need, which means I'll probably have to graduate a semester later just because of those two seminars.

High five?

Current Mood: enraged
Current Location: Hamburg
Current Music: Wicked - No one mourns the wicked

English, "manhoods", or even "virilities", the title of our seminar on manliness, various constructs of manliness, and manliness, men and boys in schools, extra-curricular activities, leisure time, family, job, etc.. The last session was on Thursday, nut I can't help thinking about something I overheard during that last session.

It was another one of those courses which hammer home the view that all gender is a Construct and prone to change with the society around it. Another of those courses in which you learn that "gender" and gender roles are made up of stereotypes and norms, mostly, that nothing is inherent. After half a year of all the relativity you are completely brainwashed, I can tell you. Terms like "man" and "women" lose their communicative value completely and you find yourself avoiding them whenever possible.
It is not possible to escape this, resistance is useless.

Unless you are one of the two sports student I had the good fortune of overhearing.

They had a conversation about a fellow-student of theirs which left me in open-mouthed awe.

"I don't like her at all," one of them said. "She is like this total militant bull dyke. She has super-short hair, and she even wears those strange skater trousers only men wear. I mean, like, seriously, how can you, as a woman?"

Her friend nodded vigorously and agreed.

That fellow student of hers should really double check with this expert of femininity whether her clothing is appropriate for the only construct of feminitniy in existence.

There quite apparently is no helping some people, especially not those who after half a year of gender seminars still manage to think inside the box to such a baffling degree. I mean, sure, admittedly, it was a seminar that only acknowledged the sex/gender binary, but even so, where have they been when we talked about constructs and stereotypes, that is, all the time?

Some people's minds can only be broadened with a large crowbar.

Current Mood: curious
Current Location: Hanover

Imagine you want to be an EFL teacher.

What kind of language, do you think, should you be able to speak really well?

And in the requirements for the final exam, which language should be the ultimate, absolute requirement?

Yes, exactly.

Latin.

Some completely reactionary, antediluvian brainless dickhead decided once upon a time that what prospective EFL teachers really need is a sound knowledge of Latin.

Oh, and they "should", "if possible" "have spent three month in an English speaking country".

The level of proficiency required for EFL is higher than the one required for the friggin' Latin teachers. Of course their knowledge should be and is a lot sounder than ours, but it is NOT on the books, they do NOT have to take costly courses to reach the required level of proficiency. Our language requirements are, and we have to pay.

I had been relatively ok with that situation, even the fact that we have to take expensive courses and sit an expensive examination on top of the fees introduced by our darling alma mater to gain that requirement, but what really made me angry was the fact that another completely incompetent dickhead with a pen decided to make some of the language courses free of charge, modern languages a lot of people learn for fun like Spanish, Italian, Russian, Portuguese because there are some people who need them for their courses - but they did not include the fucking Latin courses.

So if you want to spend your holidays on the beach and be able to order your drinks in Spanish the university will happily pay for your course, but if you are forced to reach a medium level of proficiency (the Latinum, in other words, Hamburg still has the small Latinum, the Latinum, and the Big L), you have to pay for that yourself, €100 per course (either three intensive courses or six courses during the semester) plus the fucking fee for the examination at the end.

I want to get hold of the intellectually depleted fossile who decided we need a Latinum instead of a small Latinum - as EFL teachers do pretty much everywhere else in Germany, and of the unthinking idiot who decided to make other courses free of charge and not Latin.
I like Latin, and I would not mind taking the courses and not even the ridiculous amount of extra work if there was sense in that and I would not have to pay for it, if there was some kind of remote sense to it.

Alright. Enough anger, off to see Crocky. ♥

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: Uni Hamburg, unfortunately.

Pictures on my mood.

( Red (11) )

And yumminess:

Ahhh, coffee... I love you, too.

( Coffee (3) )

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Hamburg, Germany

Seen Films Meme

SUPPOSEDLY if you've seen over 85 films, you have no life. Mark the ones you've seen. There are 239 films on this list. Copy this list, go to your own facebook/myspace/ell-jay account, paste this as a note. Then, put x's next to the films you've seen, add them up, change the header adding your number, and click post at the bottom. Have fun...

( 81. I have a life. Close call. Thank god they didn't include Star Trek, or The Planet of the Apes series. )
I am back from a weekend at Crocky's, which was wonderful.

And back from an excruciating meet-up with a group I am doing an oral report with. These guys SUCK. They don't know what they want, they don't know how to do what they want, and, most of all, they don't know anything about the subject of the course. All of the suggestions they've made so far have nothing to do whatsoever with what we are supposed to do. I wish I could do that project on my own.

Also, it seems as though I will lose a semester and finish a semester later than I planned because I can only hand in the Scheine I receive for the successful participation in courses until a before the end of the semester, and that would mean, once more, submitting papers early. FIVE papers, in that case, and that can't be done. Sucky, sucky.

Oh, and an oral report no one is interested in tomorrow morning. Which also sucks.

I am SO tired and worn out, I don't know why. Will catch up on everyone tomorrow.
Night!

Current Mood: tired

Mundtodt.

That is a nice pun on the name of the German scientists who has been recently sacked after making a critical comment on the state of the University of Hamburg in an interview she gave in March. The interview in question can be found here, a PDF here. Todt, Sabine Todt, is the name of the person sacked, and "mundtot" is the German word for muzzling someone.

She is the case who led to the decision the head of our university made that any academic who wants to make a statement on anything concerning the university in the presence of a journalist has to get the press office's OK first.
Or else.
Or else, they can be sacked like Sabine Todt, because the head doesn't hold with people who are too critical and whose view on our university is not the same as that the press office presents. Apparently, the press office does not want people to know that some of the university's scientists are working for one Euro per hour, or, like Sabine Todt, for €1,200 per semester. They don't want senior members of staff to comment on the new internet based system coordination enrolment into courses, either - which is not working and has caused severe difficulties for some students in the past semesters.

I knew that the Head had ruled that no one was allowed to say anything not coordinated with the press office, but I heard of this case only today. Our dearest Head denies that the interview has anything to do with the fact that Ms Todt has been sacked, of course. I wonder what her explanation would be, because she was supposed to have a seminar next semester, which has apparently been cancelled.

Amazing coincidences.

Current Mood: pissed off

My weekend was outside of space and time, because Crocky was here. Something about her just makes time stop and moves everything to another plane of reality that is not exactly unreal, but isn't coherent with my everyday reality of university and family, either.
It is scary how much my week depends on the knowledge that on the weekend, we will be seeing each other. If we do not, I don't feel well, I grow very dependent on our daily phone calls, and I miss her terribly every day. Sometimes I doubt it's entirely healthy. On the weekends, I feel that they belong to us and us alone, and I meet disturbances only very, very grudgingly.
I have become absolutely addicted to this relationship, and time with Crocky. So far it hasn't had any dramatically negative side-effects, but I doubt that addictions are positive, even when they're to people.

She went home again this morning and I am waiting for my courses to begin at four, in the Mac pool. There is so little oxygen in the buildings that I feel completely light-headed and unable to concentrate on any work. It's too cold to open the window, too. Great.

I hate the fact that my university is obsessed with Macs. There is one PC pool, and two Mac pools. Blegh. Are there Word-like programmes on Macs? Do they exist? If they do, why doesn't my university bother with having them installed on these computers? I am about to write my homework in an e-mail programme. Although seeing as the two girl working on their presentation on Scots (which makes my skin crawl - do they know anything at all about Scots??) are using a PowerPoint-like programme, they do seem to exist.

Why do we even bother with presentations? I think in all the years at this university I have been to about two presentations that were really worth attending. No one ever takes them seriously and the value they have for the courses are close to zero, especially with people doing the presentation who so obviously don't know what they're talking about. Sadly, I can't find the great site with sound samples Crocky showed me the other day, but here's an example for synthetic Scots.

I've been looking everywhere for material on "The Widower" by Hugh McDiarmid, but there's just nothing on the little poem that contains two very pretty words, "pitmerk" and "snell". "Pitmerk" means pitch dark, "snell", which means piercing, icy, cold, severe.

It doesn't help that there are so many other pretty poems on the poetry pages that distract me, like ( The Twa Corbies - anonymous, Scottish ), or the unforgettable ( Tay Bridge Disaster - William Topaz McGonagall ). Or this poem, ( Lovesong - Ted Hughes ). I loved his "Examination at the Womb Door".

Off to try and get some work done instead of slowly dozing off.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: University of Hamburg, Germany

I managed to get a sunstroke.

Or my glasses are not strong enough anymore and don't manage to correct my vision anymore - which results in a lot of queasiness and light-headedness. Not really that bad, but I was glad when I was able to go home, which was a lot earlier than anticipated.

Sometimes, I feel there is something wrong with my Uni courses. Take today, for example - and what today's courses consisted of.

Time	angie_21_237	Me
8-10am	Listening to an oral report on the history of the modern male, discussing the content of the text.	Listening to a report on the history of the modern male, then a half-hour group work session consisting of cutting pictures from magazines and sticking them on a poster.
10-12am	Doing an oral presentation on an economic theory (for credit), followed by a group work session, the groups discussing and applying the abstract principles just learned.	Listening to an oral report on The Brothers Lionheart and the use of colours and elements in the book. This consisted of listening to people read out bits of the novel with their best fairy tale voices and then discussing our associations with the colours used.
2-4pm	Course on the poverty in Hamburg - theory and practical solutions to a growing problem (20% of the under-six-year-olds are living on social welfare money today)	Trying for three quarters of an hour to upload the texts we were supposed to read into StudyLog, then trying to talk to people on Skype for ten minutes. Then giving up.
4-8pm	Another theory-heavy course with discussions and rather abstract texts.	Sitting in a room for ten minutes past the beginning of the course, then finding out that the course does not take place, and going home.

Somehow, I think I have the right to feel vaguely ...unchallenged.

Especially "Media Theory" is a complete disappointment.
For some reason, the poor people we are supposed to be working with are Postgrad students and even lecturers from Unis all over Europe - which is a great thing - but all we have been doing so far is trying to install programs and going, "Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? I can hear you, but can you hear me?" into our mics - and discussing how we were not able to access the homework nor read the assignment because the file was corrupted. It's pretty pathetic.

Something completely different - did you get my e-mail,

count_tygath?

Current Mood: hot
Current Location: Hamburg

I didn't think things like these would ever happen in real life. Huh.

Ok, off to give a talk to people about my internship who are not interested.

Seriously, weekend seminars are the most stupid thing ever invented. We'll be meeting today, from 14:00-19:00, and then again tomorrow, from 9:30 - 18:00. I have to say, I am interested in how the internships of the others went, but I don' t need big, long TALKS on that, we could just talk about that over a coffee. I really don't need a two-day seminar on that. *sigh*

Especially since all of us basically do the same thing. We introduce the school, then we show a clip from our classes, then we discuss the clip and what went wrong/what worked well, then we look at the next clip - it's horrid. And that's what's going to be happening for two days straight, too. I don't know how I am going to survive Saturday at all.

But this way, it is supposed to be much more scientific, and we can all tell each other how horrid we've been and what we've done wrong. Which we are able to see, anyway, because we're all able to say what's wrong about something when looking at it ON TAPE, thanks very much. Complete waste of time.

Current Mood: blah

Behealdaþ!

This is a part of the transcript I had to do for one of my courses in German. The sequence I transcribed was from a science class students between the age of ten and eleven are attending.

They're learning how electricity works, the lesson before this one they'd built their own switch. Here, the task of the day is introduced to them, and they are supposed to explain how the (rather crude) electric device they're facing works.

( The transcript )

The browser slightly messes up the table, though.

I feel like Professor Higgins, only that phonetic transcriptions are far more interesting than transcribing what class 4b has to say on the subject of electricity, really.

You should see the discussions sparked by those transcripts, too. Last week, we had a ninety minute discussion about a dialogue of four lines, about one word ("Blank" = shiny, clean, not isulated). There were huge arguments about how the inflections and intonations one child used reflects upon her personality, grasp of more abstract concepts, and her nature in general. It was a bit ridiculous and didn't have a lot to do with linguistics. At all. The class is supposed to be an advanced seminar in linguistics, though.

That is mainly because most people in that class think that linguistic is a spreading disease and have no clue about grammar. When a girl gave an explanation of what was really happening in the passage we were discussing, she was looked at like an alien.

I like her.

So they introduced tuition fees this semester: €500.

So there is the additional fee for the ticket, etc. That used to be around €156, in the good old days, does anyone remember those?
A few years ago, those were raised (and we had to pay an additional €50. This was of course greeted with an outcry and a threat that anyone not able to pay would not be readmitted for the next semester.).The reason they gave for the introduction of the raise was that it was an added administrative fee. (To be fair, they could really do with the money. Most of the people working there are complete idiots, maybe more money would attract people who can actually read).

In addition to that, those additional fee has been raised gradually, always for a few euros, and next semester we'll have to pay another ten Euroes, which gives us €242 additional fees PLUS €500 tuition fees = €742.

So, when I started my course it used to be €156, and now it's €742.

Slight difference, no?

That they raised the bloody additional fees the semester we've got to pay tuition fees is absolutely LUDICROUS.

It's obvious that they're going to raise them until we've got to pay €1000 per semester, but even with the €500 there are so many students who have to end their course of studies, and there are no ways of really funding your course of studies. The credits they planned to introduce don't really work for everybody, and our state student support system which never really work that well in the first place doesn't even take the fees into account as far as I know.

In Glasgow, I wouldn't even have MINDED paying the fees because everything was just ... better, and I didn't even have to.
It is also an open secret that close to NOTHING will change after these fees have been paid because they don't go to the department but are used God only knows were.

This place just SUCKS.

Current Mood: enraged
Current Location: Capital of Fools

The first week of semester, featuring:

my ticket still not having arrived
someone deciding that 48 students is a good size for a frggin' advanced seminar (you know, the one with all the really focused work on the more difficult theoretical texts and all)
a particularly bright Professor not even limiting the number of people she'd admit to her course, which resulted in 186 friggin' people showing up ("Joa. OK. Dann werde ich mal die, äh, Anwesenheitsmatrix rumgeben.")
the particularly bright Professor deciding to just admit EVERYONE.
an idiot deciding that a room cut out for about 20 people (at least twenty people if you think that students need desks) is a good size for a seminar of 55.
me learning that the deadline for finding an internship for the summer and doing that bloody integrated seminar is not in May, as I was SURE it was, but NEXT FRIDAY. Yaaay.

On the UP side: we have new computers. Not MORE computers, but they replaced the old, working ones with new ones.

Yeah. Progress.

I really, really don't want to pay this university ANYTHING for a situation like this.

And it's not really going to get better, because it's anyone's guess where the money we pay them goes. Certainly not to the departments.

Current Mood: cynical
Current Location: Hamburg

We are happy to inform you...

Shite.

Current Mood: exhausted

... has accepted me!

... one one condition: they want me to re-send certified copies of EVERYTHING I've already sent them (the certificate of qualification for university matriculation, the intermediate degrees of both my courses of study, a kind of official document stating that my English is good enough, and a certificate of my health insurance) and an application for enrollment (which is basically another application) until the 19th of March.
Madness! Whatever FOR?

With the exception of the certificate from the health insurance they already HAVE all those things, I had to submit all those things for my application, the only thing I can think of they might not have a certified copy of are the copies of my intermediate degree in German. And now I have to re-submit everything for my enrollment? CERTIFIED copies (€1 per page)?

It was a standardised page they sent me, so maybe they were just missing the one thing, but that makes me worry they won't accept the confirmation of my language proficiency they've got. When I started at this university I had to do a language test hosted by our institute, now they've abolished those and people have to do the expensive TOEFL test instead. They said what I've given them was fine, and even if I did the TOEFL test now I would never have the results on time, as it takes three weeks for them to correct the essays you have to write.

Grrrrr. I really hope that THAT's not it. If my language skills are good enough for the University of Glasgow, they bloody well should be good enough for the University I have been studying at for years now, without any notable break.

Ok. Back to see Miss Heise on Monday, and to make all those copies.
I don't want to be rejected anyway in the end because I handed in the wrong kind of copy.

Current Mood: worried
Current Location: Hamburg, Germany
Current Music: Gnashing of teeth

Post it: "Please dial this number (Tel. no. of an office at Uni). The person who called and left a message said I shouldn't worry, it was nothing bad. " - my mother.

Well? Nothing bad? They turned me down, how much worse can it get? That meant, of course, that it would be a good thing.

And it was!

Mrs Heise (the nicest person on the entire face of the earth), said that she couldn't stop thinking about my case and had everyone go through all the applications they received to see if it had been put somewhere else.

And it had been!! They found my letter!!

Due to a mix-up in numbers it had been put into another file. And now my application WILL be considered.

WHEE!!

Current Mood: jubilant

My university LOST. The copies of the certificates (Zwischenprüfungszeugnis for German) I handed in for my application.

The 15th was the final deadline for handing them in.

And they LOST. the huge, A4 envelope in which the copies where, and now my application won't even be considered.

I can enter an objection, but since the only thing I can object to is them not having my certificates, which they in fact do not have, it won't do any good. Which the person who's handling my application already told me. If I enter an objection which is not successful, I also have to pay fees. And it will not be successful unless the envelope is found.

I've been there today and talked to two of the most unhelpful, unfriendly employees of our university, and all they could tell me is that if I handed it in, it must be there, and if it is not, they don't know where it could be, that there is no way of finding out what could have happened to the envelope, that there is nothing they can do and that is not their responsibility, either, could I leave now, please, and good day.

The last person I talked to effectively threw us out (Crocky had come along for moral support) of the building.

The friendly porter I talked to before also said that it had never happened before that they had lost an envelope, so it must have been misdirected or accidentally thrown away. Which apparently HAS happened before.

Lovely.

And now all I can do is wait for the uni to find my envelope, which is unlikely, as they get such a lot of mail every day and it's been weeks since I handed it in, so they won't have it lying around somewhere. If it was not misdirected. Which is my last hope. It is probably in the bin already and all the work I put into being able to get hold of this certificates, the nights I spent working on the two term papers I had to hand in early for that, all the effort that went into convincing my professors to allow me to hand them in and to correct them early, all the effort that went into getting professors to sign the certificate so I could hand it in on time and become a teacher was for nothing.

Still, since no one is willing to tell me exactly what could have happened to this letter, and since everyone keeps telling me that had I handed it in, it should be there, and that they don't know nor care what could have gone wrong, there is no chance for me. I am a nuisance to them.

Current Mood: cynical

Hm. I don't think I like Gregory Maguire's endings. On the whole.

To be honest, I always have trouble with endings. And it's not entirely true, either, because I loved the ending of Wicked, but I was ready to love anything because I love Elphaba so much. But the ending of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister... he seemed to rush the fairy-tale bits in too quickly, which makes the contrast between the historic novel-setting and the fairy-tale background to sharp. The Epilogue seeemed pasted on and strange, and there were all sorts of things that came in far too quickly after he had taken his time to build up his story so carefully - but I really, really liked the book, apart from that weird ending.
Maybe it's just me, it's the same thing I (massively) dislike about Wolfang Holbein and Marion Zimmer Bradley. There is a loooong story, compared to which the ending just whooshes past you, and you can't believe you're suddenly looking at the back cover of the book that's been with you for so long. Hm.

The good thing about today: when it's over, it'll be another six days until the next Wednesday.
It's the worst day of the week, only brightened up by nice people. But other than that - first lesson at eight, early-morning pointlessness, then next lesson til twelve, which is interesting, but the Professor is rather strict, then two hours of free time (thankfully), then a session from two to four, then a session from four to half past six. Blegh. Especially the last one - the content could be summed up in about forty minutes, usually, but since we are an education seminar, there (of course!) HAS to be some group work, and what would group work be without the use of lots of coloured paper - so there's usually a full HOUR. of covering coloured paper with notes and putting it up on the wall to introduce the content to people who already know everything about it because they read the same texts as we did.
Oh, there isn't always coloured paper. Today, they had us draw pictures - although we could also have introduced the psalm we were dealing with with a mime. I didn't spend three years happily working my ass off at school so I could attend university to get into a course in which I'd be allowed to paint pretty pictures and do a mime.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: My Room

The lesson on Tuesday was called "very good", but by a teacher who is really used to really bad internees, so I am not sure if it really was all that good or if it was only good in contrast. Hm. I felt I did not really reach the students, but she said otherwise. Hmm. More on Tuesday.

Probably due to lack of sleep I've been ill or on the verge of being ill all the time last week, I hope that trend doesn't continue, I feel out of touch with reality and wrapped in cotton wool enough as it is, and I really, really do not have the time to be ill. Most of the time, I am tired and worn, anyway, and I really do not need a cold on top of that. I have already started becoming snappy. I hope that will change once I have finished some of the work piles ahead of me.

I finished Wicked a few days ago and it became one of my favourite novels ever instantly. As predicted, the end turned me into a depressive wretch for the entire evening, but it was well worth it, it is such a beautiful tragedy.
Somehow I wish I could see the musical, but at the same time, I am not sure what to expect, and the parts of it which I've heard do not strike me as particularly must-see-ish, but maybe it was just the quality of the recording or something. Still, it's probably fun watching it.

I'm also not sure about reading the sequel, because... I don't know. The only thing that made the world interesting was Elphaba, and I can't really imagine Liir being all that interesting all by himself, let alone the world itself. For now, I'm reading Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister although I shouldn't because of the two term-papers, and I like it a lot so far. Not much going on here. My family's still tidying things away into the redecorated rooms, but there's a lot standing about, still.

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire. Maguire has such wonderful characters, and he describes them in such a wonderful way.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: My Room

Hm, as long as my fellow course-participants do not actually need me to stay awake during my own hypothetic talk tomorrow but content themselves with reading my PPP slides, everything's fine. I have included lots of graphics.

Graphics are always good, surely?

And they are so pretty, what with all the beautiful WoW ones. Even the Counter Strike ones add a splash of colour (usually red, usually on a wall behind a body, but hey - colour).
It's really a shame I couldn't include some of the screenshots my brother has made for me...

The texts we were supposed to deal with all kept repeating what they had already said for chat and forums before, so there was not a lot of content. For pages and pages they just rambled on about how it was not really a realm that a lot of research went into. Well, I know, it does not look like serious science, so why would anyone bother?

Right. *cracks knuckles*
I know that I am technically too old for this, but right now I really fancy pulling an all-nighter, yes, yes, I know, inner Crocky, don't even start. That will turn me into a gibbering wreck by tomorrow night, when I'll have to plant the second talk I'm going to give next Wednesday, the RE one. Hmmm. So it's basically reading the last source text or being capable of making sense tomo- in a few hours at all. Hmmm.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Virtual worlds
Current Music: Roulette - SoD

What is better than good ole mise en abyme and Emma Thomson?

Good ol' mise en abyme, Emma Thomson and Maggie Gyllenhaal!

Oh, and some guy, the main character or something. And Dustin Hoffman! As a literary professor, no less. Goodness.

Usually I don't like it when they muck about with diegesis and hypodiegesis, especially not when both writer's block AND hints at romantic involvement between writers and their characters are involved, but anything's fine as long as Emma's in it.
I am valiantly going to stand all the mucking about for her sake, the woman is a goddess.

Apart from that - I hate the middle of the week.
As always, today has been a typical not Orange, but Sleep Deprivation Wednesday, a mix of "I-want-to-leave-this-vale-of-tears"- crappiness mixed with all the small, good stuff like unexpected meetings, muffins, warm cups of tea, friendly professors and easier-than-imagined assignments, taking out books from the library, nice weather, and all that.

Oooh, especially bus rides with teenagers.

Girl 1: "... and then I met her. It's really a shame that she's not in touch with anyone, and it's really getting on my tits."
Girl 2. "Yeah. Talked to her lately? I had the same conversation with (Girl 4) a few weeks ago, you know."
Girl 1: "Seriously?"
Girl 2: "Yeah. Oh, did Girl 3 also tell you about all the problems she had and how her family was going to go back to her country? And Girl 4 has seen her last week. I really don't get that woman. She's off to live under a bridge, doesn't even let us know which one..."

Apparently it's not as serious as I thought it was going to be. I hate to be impolite, but that last line nearly cracked me up, the way she said it.

I'm still living from day to day, and from weekend to weekend, though... I wonder if that's ever going to change in the near future and with a usual lack of self-preservation part of me hopes it does not, because part of me likes being miserable and mopy, hoping that Crocky might call, thinking about her every other minute. Paaathetic.
I also wish they had invented little mini-cams that could project a video image of whatever your loved one is doing straight into your glasses if you want to, with a small mic in the frame so that we could talk to each other and see each other wherever we are.

Hm, no. Sounds as though it would be very straining for the eye-sight, so how about a little monitor set into the back of your hand that can also be used as your mobile phone, your ID, your student ID, your bus ticket and your library card? Could be your ipod and your credit card as well, and various other membership thingies. It would have to be fixed permanently on the skin (and waterproof). Oh, and it'd have to run on solar energy, although there definitely ought to be an "off" or "invisible" option for those who do not want to be visible to the entire population all the time.
Freedom? Pshaw. Inhabitants of the vale of tears do not want freedom. They only want to feel free.

Current Mood: strange
Current Location: My Room
Current Music: I think it's "Have A Little Faith In Me" by Joe Cocker

( Musings on the Latin III course - to take or not to take? )

EDIT: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!

Prospective English teachers need do an ORAL EXAM??? I only learned that today. I thought, since it's LATIN and no a widely spoken language, a written exam would be it. Well, apparently, I've been wrong... Half and hour of doom... I completely suck at oral exams. ( The reason why I fear them )

Latin was fun, though. The teacher seems really competent and good at what he's doing. Some of the students who already know him asked if he could reintroduce the "Latin quote of the day" (note to self: good idea. Steal.), which sounds like a brilliant way to get students interested. Some of the people from my course were there as well, although my old quadrumfeminate is now only a triumfeminate, sadly. We also received the texts for next week and the teacher uploads his course materials on his home page. He's really good, although he also made us abandon hopes - he treated us to his opinion on the State Examination Office,

"Seriously, normal people just do not work there. It's just sadists who have taken up the job to have an outlet for their tendencies, and natural laws of human interaction are not valid there, as everybody who has ever had to contact them will know."

Thanks for that. We also learnt to the immense horror of non-natives that everybody needs to take this monster of an external exam in the state they come from. Well, that or get a signed "Declaration of Unobjectionability" from their home states that permits them to take the exam in Hamburg. Here's hoping that it's just a formality...
...et ibant omnes ut profiterentur singuli in suam civitatem ...

Current Mood: determined
Current Location: Philoturm, University of Hamburg

... is unacademic. And not really challenging. And it is scary how many people who can't speak English properly are aspiring teachers. If you can't pronounce the words and can't form correct sentences, don't even think about teaching it. I am not talking about occasional lapses linguae here, I am talking strong accents and ungrammatical sentences. Forsooth! Out with them! I LOVE the teacher, though. He's very big on frontal classes and a very authoritarian teacher. Since StiNe refused to work in so many cases he decided to introduce a "first come, first serve" policy and even threw out the 26th person to come in late, even though she was on the list. And even though it would have been only one more. Whoa. Still, his classes, or this class, have been fun and very instructive. Well, as instructive as it gets in Translation classes.

Now, the only thing left to do is find a valid translation for something that literally translates as "love spark". Do "love sparks" exist in English? Sparks of love? Hm. Can't say I've ever come across them, but then, maybe I read the wrong sort of papers. Why do we have to translate articles that are about relationships that took their origin in the many flourishing (Let Glasgow Flourish!) coffee houses in Hamburg? Well, could have been worse. It does seem pretty pointless, but here we are. Translating is always fun.

Thank god it's Friday, seriously... next week I'll have even more courses than this week, and it won't be fun. This weekend, I am Crocky-less, sadly, because she's off to visit her sister. I can only hope that we'll manage to meet next week, because missing her is getting unbearable... Ah, well. Time for myself and cleaning the house on Saturday. Wheee.

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Universität Hamburg - Philturm

I would have never expected that the Novell-servers on this campus actually WORK, once in a while! Wow!

The first seminar I had today was utterly great - "Internet communication" - wow. We're going to analyse communicative structures in online communication. Whee! It was really strange to read David Crystal use the word "flame" when I read my text for next week, and we are to find examples for the things he mentioned (flaming, spamming, trolling, etc.). I love this course.

The lecture on medieval literature after that was also really good, and I had almost regained faith in this university when the students protesting against the introduction of study fees pissed me off with one of their stupid attempts to get students to support their cause by treating the entire campus to a rendition of - horrible noise. It had structure and there were human voices in it, I assume it was music. Supposed to be music.
I can't really say I am intolerant when it comes to things that can be considered music in the broadest of senses, but I was close to running amok and hitting them over the head with the text I was trying to read when it became apparent that their psychological warfare would last all morning. The noise reminded me vaguely of some of the stranger the works of Tom Waits (actually of something in between the stranger works of Tom Waits and Varése), and I suppose that that kind of music is what the cool intellectuals hear these days.

I am not a cool intellectual, I am a person who is actually trying to get something DONE and do not have the time to lay auditory siege to the campus. Poems in medieval German are hard enough to read without someone perpetrating modern music in the background. ARGH! I daresay most of their campaigns to gain followers must backfire, and backfire with a great number of human casualties.
I am a very mellow campus-dwelling creature, and if their behaviour nearly manages to make me want to drink hot chocolate from their empty skulls, then I don't know what kind of effect it has on our aggressive, reptile-brained economy students. Sigh. After today I'd want to introduce fees so high that they can't continue their course of studies at this university, I don't see how it is supposed to achieve anything in others who do not even share their views. I do. Stop being on my side, you make my side look stupid...

Current Mood: chipper
Current Location: Universität Hamburg - Philoturm

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

-- John Keats, of course, 1819.

It's autumn!
The last days have been warm and everything outside was painfully beautiful, mushrooms and fallen acorns everywhere and the pretty, colourful, dying leaves. It's lovely outside, the air is cool, but not too cold, and fresh and smells of decaying nature. Whenever I go to uni I feel like collecting chestnuts, although nowadays I would not know what to do with them. Not too long ago, though, I would have collected as many as possible just to touch them, to keep them in my hand and admire the pretty colours, half intending to do something with them, to turn them into stick-figure tooth-pick-legged horses or people, and never doing, putting them into a bowl at home instead where they would quietly decompose until they were rediscovered and thrown away a few days before Christmas.
I wish this would go on for ever and that the cold, mistly mornings that never seem to light up at all, the light caught outside the white sky, would never come at all. I can never get my moods up in that weather and become unnecessarily broody and whiny. Right now, the sky is white outside my window, and its only too clear that soon enough, it will stay that way all day. The first minor chord of my winter blues...

What makes me broody at the moment, however, is not the weather. Today, I called our dearest advisors again and they told me a number of very unpleasant things about my plans to become a teacher. I can only apply this semester - well, I knew that - or else. The number of places is very, very limited, I think they have ten places per subject. To apply, I need to complete two courses I am doing this semester, and the application has to be handed in before the courses actually end. Of course, complications. I'll have to go and talk to my professors about handing in the paper early to get the Schein by February 15th. I hate this kind of thing!
I'll also need a certificate that shows my language abilites are up to the standards of the university, that either means I'll have to do another TOEFL test or that someone in my faculty signs me a sheet of paper saying that yes, I can indeed speak English.

It's all so much of a hassle, and it may come to nothing if there are tons of external applicants who are better than I am. Who's better and more suitable is decided by the marks received on the intermediate exam.
To receive our intermediate certificate, we do not get a mark, because we do not actually have to pass an exam to obtain it - we just have to pass all the courses necessary and we get it. To apply, I have to include two of those intermediate exams - which are not marked, so external applicants who have been marked are automatically better off than me. It's so unfair I could scream. I would have wanted to complete a marked exam, only that my university does not provide the possibility, so now my chances at this university may be worse than they could be because of the misgivings of the same university.

Keep your fingers crossed, it looks as though I really, really need it. If this application fails, all left to do would be changing the uni (for Hannover), leaving behind my examiners and costing me a few semester to catch up with the courses the other university without a doubt wants me to complete in addition to the ones I've done here, and costing my parents nerves and money we do not have.
Everything is just awesome.

Another possibility, the one I do not even dare to think of, would be to complete my Magister's degree and go back to Glasgow to do a Postgrad course to become a teacher... In Scotland, the state would even pay my fees. That would not clear up the funding problem one bit as it'd still mean I'd have to move out, but at least I'd know when I'd finish. It would mean parting with Crocky, but it would mean I'd be able to go back to Glasgow.
I miss the city, every day.

Mistle Thrush

The sycamore is weeping leaves of fire;
a maple stands in its own flaming lake;
shy birches isolate in yellow puddles.
You'd half expect these young trees to kick

their fallen skirts away. Bride? Bullfighter?
Dervish dancer rapt in a swirling cape?
When I went out an hour ago to muddle
through the leafdrift at my door, a flock

of mistle thrush descended - a deputation
froom the wingéd world with urgent and with fatal news:
Dying is simple. You breathe in, you breathe out, you breathe in,
You breathe out and you don't breathe in again.
They acted like it this was cause for celebration
- the first minor chord of my winter blues.

-- Paula Meehan, 2000

Current Mood: broody
Current Location: My Room

Did I mention that the designers of our lovely, shiny new E-Learning system FORGOT about Minor subjects?

EDIT: some of them, that is. Some were lucky, but then, it only befits my faculties to be sloppy and unorganised. They always are.

Until today, students could only enroll for courses in their Major subject - in most cases. Minors - pshaw, who even needs those?

I only need one more course in my major, all other courses I need are in my minor subject.
This whole thing is so typical of my university - instead of introducing it little by little, for the new students who enroll this year first of all and then, after a test phase, subsequently for the rest, they do it for everybody at the same time and are dismayed when it does not work - as everybody with a spoonful of brain would have known from the beginning.

For most courses on the syllabus of my lovely German literature minor, it's still not possible to enroll online and I'll just have to come along to the first session and basically see what happens. I hope nobody'll kick me out or anything. Studying in Hamburg is nothing for the faint-hearted, each semester, some new, half-baked plan will amuse old hands and cause younglings to despair.

Today, I'm going to try and get someone to explain to me what I'll have to do when I change from my ordinary Magister-course to the "state examination" teachers have to take in Germany. The courses themselves are pretty much the same, it's just another title and stupendous amounts of paperwork if you want to change your course. The only difference is that you have to take more of everything as a teacher and have to do internships and Latin.

Oh, and I'll get my Latin results today. *crosses fingers*

Anything else? Uh, no. *sigh* Nothing interesting ever happens in my life. Other than waiting for Stine to work properly I am reading a lovely book on "courtly culture". I'd love to be able to go back to the late years of the 12 century and hear what those Minne songs really sounded like.
Couldn't these guys hurry a little with realising that not only church music deserved proper notation? I know that those cunning folks have been using neumes back in the 9th century, couldn't they be a little more liberal and teach those illiterate courtiers not only to write the words but the notes of their songs as well?
It feels so pointless to look at the text of a song without any idea whatsoever what the music sounded like.

Current Mood: cynical
Current Location: My Room
Current Music: For the Beauty of the Earth - Rutter: London Sinfonia

Yesterday, after the Latin lesson, one day before the Latin exam today, a small group of diligent students met downstairs in the Great Hall and, when our wonderfully batty teacher had walked past and wished us good luck for today, hurriedly stuck their heads together and had a whispered conversation.

"The paragraph she'll use in the Latin exam is going to be one that deals with a battle, and it can be understood as a whole without loads of info about stuff that happened before?"

"Yes. And judging from the vocab she had us practise, it's going to have the words "acies", "collis", "impedimenta", "homo", "equitates" and the like in it, too. Right?"

"Yep."

"And it is definitely going to be from the first book, right?"

"Yes, she said so."

Frantic page turning and silence followed as furrowed brows bent over bilingual versions of the work of the great commander.
"Heeey...the only paragraphs he does have that actually discuss a battle are 24, 25 and 52." Members of the Secret Service could not have been more proud.

"Yes! That's true. Oh! Oh!"

Frantic counting ensued.

"Paragraph 24 has only 97 words! That's SO going to be it. It also has "acies", "collis", various horsemen and "montes" in it. Oh! And remember how she said that she had to change one of the "uti"s Caesar keeps using instead of "ut" into "ut" to make it easier for us to understand?"
A triumphant finger was thrust at the offending sentence and six hopeful faces stared down at the page. The huddled congregation was joined by other students with various books and printed pages.

"Paragraph 24?"

"Paragraph 24."

And the despairing recovered hope, the busy felt as though they were going to manage it after all, the lazy relished the human kindness, and the meeting dispersed.
Did I want to believe that? Did I think that this most convenient solution for all our problems was, in fact, going to be the solution? Nooo. What did they do? They learnt the German translation of §24 by heart, and what did I spend my day with? Grammar, grammar, the content of the first book, translating a couple of paragraphs that could have been meant as well (24, 25, 51 and 52). I feel dumb. It was sooo obvious it was going to be that one, but for some reason, those hints always seem to be too convenient for me and I don't dare believe them.

Today, everybody had ominous white sheets of paper that bore the words Postquam id animadvertit, copias suas Caesar in proximum collem subducit equitatumque, qui sustineret hostium impetum, misit.

"If that text is not going to start with a "postquam", I am going to faint," came various whispered sighs, reading and re-reading their translations and asking last-minute questions to the learned.

The exam began, the first test sheets were distributed and anxious eyes followed our teacher as she gave out the sheets, hopeful whispers were heard everywhere in the room.

"Postquam?"

"Yep."

And a sigh of relief washed through the room, when at the far back people unfolded their smuggled German translation and started copying, word for word.

Too bad that I never manage to cheat properly and did not learn the German translation of the paragraph by heart like others. I could KICK myself.
Why do I have to be so utterly incapable of cheating?
I already found two possible mistakes, although I personally do not see why they should be treated as such - I hope they do allow us to turn the Latin text into a grammatical German translation instead of expecting an ungrammatical word-for-word translation. Hm. And I have the sneaking suspicion that some of those alleged ablativi absoluti might not have been, in fact, abl abs's. Damnit.

Well, we pass or we fail. But I don't think I'm going to fail.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: Rutter: Sanctus (from Requiem)- The Cambridge Singers

Tell me, are you attracted to Tuesdays?

How do you feel about the period between 2-4pm?

Is that a particularly... desirable part of the week?

Tue
2 - 4pm Medieval Lyrics
2 - 4pm The Notion of Taboo in German Literature
2 - 4pm Advanced Language Teaching: Subject Matter Teaching in a Foreign Language.

Well, it certainly is really the official proof that German students AND German uni staff is too lazy. Tuesdays are the first day of the week for the uni, for some reason, and especially in the depths of the Humanities there are few Professors who offer courses earlier than 2pm on Tuesdays, and since everybody only offers courses during the inofficial academic week (aka Tue, 2pm - Thu, 18 pm), most seminars are at the same time.

I need a time turner.

Or someone else to do a seminar that focuses on international literature and has a less boring topic. I mean - the notion of taboo - yes, very interesting, only not if your background reading for the course focuses on Fraser, Freud, Wundt and their cronies. Shudder. Not AGAIN. I mean, I always wanted to read "The Golden Bough", but I also always wanted to do a course on Minne.

What's a girl to do...

Current Mood: dorky
Current Location: My Room
Current Music: Creed - Don't Stop Dancing

Hm, so after trying to log into the Stine thing those ten times with all kinds of variations, without ever succeeding, I not only sent an E-Mail to the supposed support address, but also called the info service this morning.

Which made me be late for my Latin class. Hm. Whatever.
On the phone was a young, vaguely panicky-sounding man who told me that he would not be able to do anything, either, but he'd take down my complaint and have a look at my account, but he couldn't promise anything. Actually, I tried to get him to log into my account, but he wouldn't for security reasons. Not that he would have been able to do anything with the password, anyway.

So, he promised me to do what he could, in sheer frustration I tried to log in again, and - lo and behold!

In I got.

It's creepy. Either me AND my girl, who both tried to log into the account, using all possible variations of the password (both of them, one with "i" and one with "l"), are too dumb to actually get it right - which would be likely if only I had tried it and only had tried it once or twice - or those guys are a lot more competent than they let on. Hmmm... Either way, Stine freaks me out.

And I feel like a complete idiot for calling them again and telling them in my "I-know-this-makes-me-sound-like-an-imbecile"-voice that it's suddenly working and sorry about wasting their time.

Gosh, I hate computers.

Current Mood: silly
Current Location: The Basement
Current Music: Crocky talking on the phone

Stine is our shiny new system that's supposed to deal with the applications for our courses. E-Learning and all that. The problem with my university and E-Learning is that most of the staff think the photocopier is the most modern invention they can accommodate, so you can imagine how well this kind of thing has been received so far. It does not work and causes havoc, apart from a few faculties, most of the uni just aren't ready for this kind of thing. I hate Stine.

Why?

They sent me a password that does not work.

IT DOES NOT WORK.

At all. Not possible to log in, even though it should be, according to the material they sent me, from "October 2006".

Which means that either the user name (which for reasons best known to my uni is not simply my matric number but some... code thingy) is wrong or the password (which some idiot decided to type out in Arial, anyway, which means that it's anyone's guess what this "I" is. i? L? Who knows? It's pretty much up to me. I'm only hoping that the "0" thing is indeed a "0" and not a slim "O". Nah, it's a "0". Other than that... I had about 10 goes at it. Without result.) I sent a mail to what I can only hope is the right address, because of course there is no kind of support other than the slightly better informed IT students standing around on Campus who I will pester tomorrow. I already feel sorry for them.

I hate my university.

Current Mood: enraged
Current Location: The Basement

Just had a look at what I have planned for this semester, and according to my preliminary time table, I'll have to write seven or eight term papers this Semester, each between fifteen and twenty pages long. Oh, yeah ,and I'd have three exams.

The success of this enterprise is not guaranteed.

Current Mood: indifferent
Current Location: My Room
Current Music: Out of the Deep - John Rutter

I must have been raving mad.

Well. Update on the Russian Writing Project II:

word count: 479.

Around 300 words to go.

Hand-in: tomorrow at 12. Why do I always put these things off until too late?

Why Why Why?

And I knew this was not going to be as easy as it looks.

Sigh. Why doesn't this man have a ton of uncles whose life and works I can desscribe? It's so easy for the guys with the authors and composers ("He wrote that. And then he wrote that. And then..." - seriously, they do that). Sigh.

Well, it's a course I'm taking for fun and it won't count in hte end. Still... I want to keep my A. Sigh. Tough. Too lazy.

Current Mood: aggravated

Go me!
Just finished my paper on "Time and Overcoming Time in Shakespeare's Sonnets". Not good, but it's a nice basis for some real research. I'll maybe come back to the topic. What others had to say was somehow not really precise, either.

12,990 words. They'll have my head on a plate. But then, it includes half a dozen sonnets, so it's not really that much.

Now I have half a week in which I will do absolutely nothing and then, there is the second term paper, on structuralism and narratology. Maybe I'll have a closer look at Toolan's approach, or I'll try and do something on characters, I've always wanted to do that.

In spite of all the whining, the bitching, the deadlines, the angst, I love writing papers, I more and more realise that. Even this one. The topic was great, but the fact that I only had three weeks sucked big time.

Current Mood: accomplished

... Geee-heeeermaaan... Didactiiiics...

Or so I think. The exam:
- started 15 minutes earlier than announced.
- lasted an hour longer than announced.
- contained things I had never seen before. Well, not really. I had seen them, but since they have never even been as much as MENTIONED in the friggin' lecture I thought it'd do if I only read them and not learn them by heart.
- contained a friggin' lesson plan. Which or Prof explicitly said he wouldn't include. Great.

I could kill our professor. It was all I could to not to mention in the lesson plan that at a German university, the lesson would consist of us handing out the text, talking to the students about something entirely else, finish the lesson later than we should have and writing a multiple-choice test on a similar but different test the students had never seen before in the next lesson.

And I am sooo angry with Crocksters professor. I have never heard of a bigger idiot! If you are not able to plan a sensible, understandable exam, then WHY, in the name of god, do you become a professor?!!
Poor Crocky. She really does not deserve that, and she KNOWS what she is doing, much than a lot of our empty-brained, uncaring German-gals do who are good because they learn by heart and do not care at all WHAT they are learning there, who never think about WHAT they are doing because they are doing what they are told. And who do not care what it is about. GRRRRRRRRRR. Crocky does. Grrrrrrrrrrrr. I could hit him over the head with my brother's guitar.

A thing which worries me - although it maybe shouldn't - is that a friend of mine who said she would be at home in Germany over the summer and who was still at home a month ago - who studies in London - does not answer my SMS's. Hmmm... I'll mail her. But I hope she is at home, safe, in Germany. I do hope her friends are alright. :(

The University of Blogging

Presents to
Mothwing

An Honorary
Bachelor of
Attention Seeking

Majoring in
Bad Poetry

Signed
Dr. GoQuiz.com

Blogging Degree
From Go-Quiz.com

Current Mood: fighty

Do you see my icon?
That volvox, that is my head. And the daughter cells are the stuff I have to learn for the exams. More of those and it's all going to burst. At the moment it's all fitting neatly, or so it seems, but it's all going to tear up at one point. Or so I think.

I am seriously fed up with stupid learning by heart for stupid courses. Honestly, its friggin' DIDACTICS. These people are telling us how seriously demotivating evaluation through one big exam at the end is and then tell us about the horrors they have in store for us next week. Once more we are learning useless scraps of information we are NEVER going to need for anything.
German tertiary education seriously needs a gigcantic didactic spring makeover. Didactics courses for didactics professors might be a good start. Booooy.
We are learning didactics ex negativo, starting of prime historical examples of how NOT to teach.Why do I need to know that? What does it matter which concepts failed in the past? I'd be interested in what we are to do TODAY.

This week:
Friday: Exam in German Didactics I.

Next week:
Monday: oral report on the history of the influence of English on German in Linguistics. Not hard, but annoying.
Tuesday: oral report (90 min) on Michael Toolan's Narratology - A Critical Linguistic Introduction - all of us, my two partners and me, can't help wondering in howfar this title is justified... It is about Narratology, but it is not critical, does not introduce and is not all that much linguistic. Meaning we do not really have all that much to say.
Wednesday: Exam in paedagogic psychology.
Thursday: Exam in German Didactics
Friday: Exam in medieval German literature.

Oh, and then there is the transcript, the two term papers and an excerpt. Yayz. I have three weeks for the first paper. Can anyone tell me why in the name of any deity who feels responsible why I joyously crammed eleven courses into my curriculum this semester? Some of the people in my semester have friggiin' six.
What is dangerous is that I somehow manage to overlook the fact that I am not sleeping properly or that I am stressed at all. And then I catch one cold after another. But that's only going to happen and the end of the semester.

Current Mood: rushed
Current Music: Placebo - "Protege Moi" - oh yeah.

First of all, belated hugs and strength to Sil and Greg.
My thoughts are with you both. :(

Nothing new here.
I am not used to learning anymore. Especially not to stupid learning by heart. Pattern practice, grammar-translation method, Krashen and his comprehensible input, structuralism and its effect on literature didactics... The tradition of language classes in Hamburg... 1870, 1964, 1975... all join the jumble of the history of didactics in my head. Horrible. Why don't we learn how we ought to organise a lesson? How teaching ought to work? Maybe we do, ex negativo. All we've learnt are the ways of *not* doing it.

I'm so fed up with this nonsense.
I want to be a jellyfish when I'm grown up. Then I'll look like a UFO without brains.

Thank god its Monday tomorrow. I have come to hate weekends lately - spent alone, learning. Everybody is busy and hence deserting me. Crocky, who has as much to do as I have, my best friend Marei, who has gone to bed and left me on ICQ, my cat, who is hungry, my family, they're also in bed - even my crown has left me last Tuesday.
But now it has been glued to the remaining stump of my tooth and we are united for ever. Hopefully. Thanks to the braces I had to wear on my teeth for a few years nearly all teeth have suffered. Even my incisors, as it seems. I love dentists and orthodontists.

I have found out that if you have to see the dentist every week due to troubles with the insurance and their inability to get things ready or fasten things properly, you lose all fear of them.

Oh, on a happier note: yesterday Marc and I have gone to visit our Professor for Middle High German at home with half the seminar. We had a great time translating the "Poor Heinrich", talking about language, structure and medieval traditions.

And the greatest thing which happened lately:
Crocky's an my tenancy agreement has arrived and duly has been signed, so now we are officially tenants of a flat in Scotland!!
September seems so close so suddenly...

Bed.
I wish Crocky was here. I feel like half a Euglena without her, about as useful, intelligent, good.

Current Mood: working
Current Music: Coldplay - The Speed of Sound

The lack of humour of my people has often been criticised.
Who says that has not seen the farces which are being performed daily in the Advisor of Study's offices at my University.

"Uhm... And... If I wanted to change my course of studies, I'd like to become a teacher, is it sensible to do that after my year abroad?"
"I don't know. I don't know what the newest new regulations will say about that."
"New regulations, I see. Soo... then it's probably better to change beforehand?"
"I don't know."
"Would it be sensible to finish my course of studies as it is and try and get another place after that?"
"I don't know."
"What exactly will be changed this semester? For our teacher's courses, that is?"
"I don't know. You'll have to wait for the new regulations."
"Sounds sensible. Do you happen to know when the new regulations will arrive?"
"I don't know."

The background to this illuminating visit to our advisors of study is this:
In the name of globalisation, my university is changing it's system to a Bachelor/Master system with degrees the UK apparently don't and won't accept. So much for globalisation. There will be tuition fees, there will be less professors - our Americanists have 0,5 Professor, I think - only because Prof. Rodenberg has half a position in another faculty. All the retirees are returning to give lessons because all places will stay vacant for at least two years until the University will hire new teachers. Boy, I am glad that I am not studying that subject.

Then I have learned that because my father earns too much money, apparently, I am not elligible for any kind of support from the Student Award Agency for Scotland. I'll have to wait for their final decision, though. If I have to pay the fees myself because I am not elligible for German support either, I am dead. Not only because my father will kill me because I thought I was elligible, but also because even though they may think that we do not have a problem at financing this, in truth we do. That is one of the main reasons why I was not able to change the University here in Germany and move out in the first place. I do not understand this system.
Well, let's look on the bright side: I will lose a lot of weight because I will not have anything to eat. Who needs food? Maybe I can fish in the Clyde.
...only that the Clyde has a crust only rivalled by that of the Ankh. I. Want. Holidays.

So, everything is great. To make things even greater, it looks as though I cannot actually change my course to become a teacher, because if I do that, I'll have to do a Bachelor in my two subjects and another BA in pedagogics after I am back which will make everything take even longer, But I don't know that for sure, because nobody. Friggin. Knows. ANYTHING. That would mean that the Professor who was going to examine me is not going to test me. Even he wants to retire for good at some point.

Well, and then, there is the end of semester with it's essays and audit trails and exams and and and. But then, I am not the only person who has to work a lot. Crockster's fate is far worse - I have never seen anyone do as much as she does in one semester, I bet she is glad when this is over, too. Poor dear.

So, apart from my usual whinery, there are not a lot of news. More quarrels with my father, no Crockster this weekend, my university going down the drains and politics making me wish I was far, far away from Germany and Europe.

I. Want. Holidays.

Current Mood: groggy
Current Music: Speed of Sound, Coldplay

Yay, finally managed to reach my doctor: whatever it is, it's not the thyroid glands, they are perfectly alright. Yay. But he enthusiastically enumerated other tests he'll do to find out what's wrong. Ah, well. Next week.

On Thursday, there'll be a demonstration against the tuition fees. Another demonstration. Not effective, maybe, since Hamburg is too used to demonstrations. Well, better then strikes, I guess.

( Student demonstrations in Hamburg: bring banner, whistle and feel free to demonstrate against whatever you like )

It'll be more serious this time, though. It's not only our lazy, de-motivated students who demonstrate with the energy of a group of pensioners going for a walk, but this time, it is bigger, because it's not only the University of Hamburg, but also quite a number schools of the city if they can organise it, and students from all universities of the north who come.

My brother is going as well, and I don't like that idea at all. It may very well get ... well, not really violent, maybe, but rough, and if they are already so tense if there is nothing to be tense about, how will they react to this? Last time most schools in Hamburg took part in a demonstration and my brother apparently was the only one of his friends who was not hit by the water cannons.
The last thing I want is a clash between enraged members of the student union and tense policemen with my brother and his friends sandwiched in the middle. I'll try to arrange to meet them somewhere if they really go.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Händel - The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba

... Meat nor drink nor money have I none,
Yet I will be happy, yet I will be happy,
Hey, ho, nobody at home...
It's one of my favourite canons, I love it. Maybe because it's easy enough even for me to sing.

I tried to reach my doc a few times, but the telephone was busy whenever I tried. I guess I'll pick up the results on Monday. When I come back from my ear, nose and throat doctor, who's going to have a look at my ears because of my tinitus. Honestly, studying or something else is getting at my health. That and my - wow, the dictionary tells me it's called "meteorosensitivity"- make me feel like an old woman.

What is good: I have found someone who'll test me in my final exam at the university and advises me during the time before that exam, the one for the master's degree. It is really amazing that he'll do it, because he is retiring at the end of the semester. But he said he'd still test "selectively", meaning he only accepts those he wants to test. I know from a number of people he'd turned them down. I am one of the happy few.

What is really bad: They have established tuition fees in Germany as well now. Hm, sounds odd as a collocation, do you establish fees? Anyway, now everybody in Hamburg will have to pay for their university courses, 500€ per semester... nothing compared to the prices in the UK, but still a LOT compared to... well, nothing. It'll mean that some of my fellow students will have to change universities or maybe even will have to stop studying altogether, if the social security system is not fast enough to provide for those who don't have those 500€.

What is good: The same Prof has also told me that the abstract I handed in was "good and precise". That is the best he ever has to say about something, so I'm happy about that.

So, time to copy and listen to a Psy lecture. Sigh. Work. And I should really stop eating lychees. However tasty they are.

I hate waiting for results.

Current Mood: full
Current Music: That variation of the "Peace Round" quoted above

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Mothwing

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January 2022

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Page Summary

Finished!
"At ligne Døden fra Lübeck"
My alma mater
Tipsy Donne is not amused.
Tolkien seminar
Into the Woods
Fantasy books with female heroines? British fantasy books with female heroines?
*sneeze*
Yesterday
Papers
Exhausting
Bingo!
WTF?
Männlichkeiten
The joys of studying with coelacanths...
Red
I have a life. Not much of it, but a life.
Mundtodt
Lunch break
A Day In The Life
Mary Celeste
A Piece of Reality
I hate hate hate the Universität Hamburg
Sense and Sensibility?
University of Hanover
The University of Hamburg...
Registry revisited
University of Hamburg's Registry's Stupidity: 1, Moth: 0.
Wednesdays suck, but the Confessions do not
Life happening
Virtual Worlds
Stranger Than Fiction
Latin III
Translation II
Amazing.
Autumnal brooding
Stine yet again...
Postquam
Ahh, Tuesday...
Stine II
Stine and why I hate my uni.
Hm.
Kраткая Биография Владимира Владимировича Путина
Done
*sing* I am faiiiiiiiiling, I am fai-ling
Being a student = stress
Jellybrained
...non enim sciunt, quid faciunt
Hamburg and Demonstrations
Hey ho, nobody at home...

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