I'll take "French Renaissance" for 1500, Alex.

So my assignment due tomorrow for one of my orientation classes, which I've been putting off all weekend, is "Write two to three pages on the role of François I in the French Renaissance." I am starting to suspect it is a sick joke the professor is playing on his American students, a sort of "Welcome to the French university system! This is how our essays work." Because it looks like such an innocent question. Until you realize that there's nothing more specific in the assignment, and yet essays are supposed to follow strict requirements for form, and how much outside research are we supposed to be doing anyway? It's a huge subject because François I pretty much WAS the French Renaissance, and two to three pages is so short that I could probably cough up the whole thing just regurgitating what he's told us in class. Except he probably doesn't want that, because he gave us a short reading list, but the stuff on it is not in the tiny library Smith maintains in their Paris building. So, uh, how much research does he want us to do, and how much evidence of said research does he want us to exhibit in our paper?

I think I'm going to fall back on the old introduction-three arguments-conclusion format we all learned in middle school, with the three arguments being roughly "François I symbolized all the newly hip and cool values coming out of Italy at the time," "François I instigated the importation of the Renaissance into France pretty much singlehandedly," and "the centralization of having the whole damn Renaissance personified in one guy was so uniquely French, and for bonus points symbolized cool new ideas like humanism and individualism."

Yes, I post about my homework to LJ. Deal with it. And yes, I am worrying waaaay too much about an assignment that probably won't even count towards my GPA. I just have no. freaking. idea. what I'm supposed to do or how Real! Live! French! Essays! work.

I'll take "French Renaissance" for 1500, Alex.

So my assignment due tomorrow for one of my orientation classes, which I've been putting off all weekend, is "Write two to three pages on the role of François I in the French Renaissance." I am starting to suspect it is a sick joke the professor is playing on his American students, a sort of "Welcome to the French university system! This is how our essays work." Because it looks like such an innocent question. Until you realize that there's nothing more specific in the assignment, and yet essays are supposed to follow strict requirements for form, and how much outside research are we supposed to be doing anyway? It's a huge subject because François I pretty much WAS the French Renaissance, and two to three pages is so short that I could probably cough up the whole thing just regurgitating what he's told us in class. Except he probably doesn't want that, because he gave us a short reading list, but the stuff on it is not in the tiny library Smith maintains in their Paris building. So, uh, how much research does he want us to do, and how much evidence of said research does he want us to exhibit in our paper?

I think I'm going to fall back on the old introduction-three arguments-conclusion format we all learned in middle school, with the three arguments being roughly "François I symbolized all the newly hip and cool values coming out of Italy at the time," "François I instigated the importation of the Renaissance into France pretty much singlehandedly," and "the centralization of having the whole damn Renaissance personified in one guy was so uniquely French, and for bonus points symbolized cool new ideas like humanism and individualism."

Yes, I post about my homework to LJ. Deal with it. And yes, I am worrying waaaay too much about an assignment that probably won't even count towards my GPA. I just have no. freaking. idea. what I'm supposed to do or how Real! Live! French! Essays! work.

Those shoes I thought I got on the cheap? $26 after conversion. Oops. (Still worth it though.)

Bad news: I didn't realize how weak the US dollar was until I started doing the math on my withdrawals in euros from my US bank account.

Good news: I don't have to freak out TOO hard over exchange rates when I go to London, because the pound is weak too.

Bad news: I'm going to VISIT London. I LIVE in France, and boy is the euro doing well. :p

Seriously, at the moment the mental math for euros-to-dollars conversion is almost the same as the pounds-to-dollars conversion. For euros-to-dollars, round the euro amount down to the nearest even number, divide that in half, and add it to the original amount. For pounds-to-dollars, same thing but round up. (€1 is hovering around $1.40, £1 is hovering around $1.60.) Which is a lot better than the days when pounds-to-dollars meant straight-up doubling the price in pounds, but the figures for the euro are... distressing.

Conclusion: I totally need to pick up some part-time work teaching English so I can get paid in euros. Also, tracking exchange rates is an effective (if depressing) method of procrastination.

Those shoes I thought I got on the cheap? $26 after conversion. Oops. (Still worth it though.)

Bad news: I didn't realize how weak the US dollar was until I started doing the math on my withdrawals in euros from my US bank account.

Good news: I don't have to freak out TOO hard over exchange rates when I go to London, because the pound is weak too.

Bad news: I'm going to VISIT London. I LIVE in France, and boy is the euro doing well. :p

Seriously, at the moment the mental math for euros-to-dollars conversion is almost the same as the pounds-to-dollars conversion. For euros-to-dollars, round the euro amount down to the nearest even number, divide that in half, and add it to the original amount. For pounds-to-dollars, same thing but round up. (€1 is hovering around $1.40, £1 is hovering around $1.60.) Which is a lot better than the days when pounds-to-dollars meant straight-up doubling the price in pounds, but the figures for the euro are... distressing.

Conclusion: I totally need to pick up some part-time work teaching English so I can get paid in euros. Also, tracking exchange rates is an effective (if depressing) method of procrastination.