Ten Little Chances to be Free

HAHA THAT'S RIGHT BITCH, WHO GOT STRAIGHT A'S HER FIRST SEMESTER AT SMITH.

...now I just need to not fail French 360 and Foundations of Computer Science this semester. And not flail too hard at the prospect of taking assembly language in French this fall.

Resolved with ONE EMAIL to my academic adviser, who proceeded to forward it to the registrar and the dean. (Potentially embarrassing: my informal grousing about pain-in-the-ass quintuple-signed petitions was included in the forward. Oops.) Turns out I was right: they meant to make me a second-semester sophomore, but somebody screwed up and they made me a second-semester freshman. The surprising thing is that they heeded my request, which was to make me a regular sophomore who graduates in May instead of January. So my class standing is sorted out, yay!

And now I can worry about junior year abroad, the deadline for which is most definitively February 1. The good news is that my adviser also forwarded my email to Dominique Thiébault, the study-abroad adviser for the comp sci major, who says that Smith has an agreement with University of Paris VI that would allow me to take classes at the Jussieu campus. Sweet!

Also my adviser says that the French department might be sympathetic to my lack of college-level credits because a) I'm a transfer, b) I'm (hopefully) taking a 300-level class, and c) I got an A in FRN 230. I totally DID NOT KNOW the last part because grades aren't published until Monday, so YAY.

I am a leeeetle too tipsy right now to email him (and the dean, and the registrar, and Dominique Thiébault) back, so I will confine my celebration to my LiveJournal. COMMENT PARTY Y'ALL. My academics are back on track and there's a good chance I'll be spending a YEAR IN PARIS.

Umph. So I am in a cloud of generalized anxiety over school things; being a transfer is already weird and screwy and it doesn't help that I don't know my class standing. I've been kind of ignoring it all because it was winter break, but interterm started yesterday so I should probably start emailing people because I have three inter-related problems and one separate one.

1. I need to come back early to audition for voice lessons; there are limited slots, and there might be a wait list. Should contact Karen Smith-Emerson about that, since I know her through chorus. Also I've promised my boss to work through the Wednesday of the last week of interterm, which might be a problem.

Inter-related shit:

2. My class standing is still screwed up and I really should talk to my academic adviser about it.
3. I also have to email the professor of the French class I'm signed up for, because I don't have the prerequisites but I really want to take it.
4. The deadline to apply to study abroad is February 1. I don't know if it even fucking applies to me because my class standing is screwed up, but assuming I get it ironed out and become a regular sophomore, that will be my deadline for junior year abroad. But I'd need special dispensation of the French department because you're required to take 4 college-level semesters of the language before you go; I have one, and I will have two if I don't get kicked out of French 360 for lack of prereqs. This is all really fucking stupid because my French is, or will soon be, good enough to study in Paris, but bureaucracy is goddamn intractable as I have recently learned.

My current thinking on all this is that I should go back early to sort it out, but again, I promised my boss to cover on the 21st while she goes to a wedding. So I will have to worm my way out of that if I want to go back early.

I also need to talk to Dominique Thiébault, who apparently is the person who knows what computer-science courses are available in the Paris study-abroad program. And whom I have never met in my life. This is important because the study-abroad application goes over your graduation and major requirements with a fine-tooth comb.

Ugh, sorry to bore you, f-list. I just needed to organize my thoughts, and I am less likely to lose a LJ entry than a piece of paper.

What have I spent this afternoon doing? My increasingly-complicated computer science project? My five-page French paper on literary representations of Paris? The giant calculus assignment that's due tomorrow? The Old Norse translation project I haven't touched since Thanksgiving weekend? Something productive and necessary like oh, I dunno, showering?

No. I have been running from one fucking end of this campus to the other collecting the signatures of my advisor, my class dean, and half the goddamn classics department so that I can "petition to enter a year-long [Latin] class mid-year," and turn it in to the same people who told me not to bother registering as an audit at the beginning of the year-long class. So that I can re-enter a class that I registered for and they automatically kicked me out of because I wasn't registered for the beginning half on their own advice. Two or three of these people do not have ANY office hours at a time when I don't have class, and so I've been sending out all these goddamn emails explaining my fucked-up credit situation and why I need to do this and why I need an appointment. Why is my credit situation fucked-up? Because of all the arcane rules for transfer credit at the registrar, which incidentally is the same department responsible for this petition bullshit.

Fuck off and die, registrar. Fuck off and die.

(At some point I also need to email the professor of the 300-level French course I signed up for and convince her to let me take the class despite total lack of prerequisites. Because there is no way in HELL I'm getting booted from another class and going through this bullshit again.)

WHEREAS I have, in the space of the past two months, gone through seven Patrick O'Brian novels, a most shocking rate for a series of only twenty books that must be savored slowly; and

WHEREAS in the next two weeks I am responsible for completing: a final Old Norse translation project, approximately one hundred fifty lines of regular Norse translation homework, two weeks' worth of regular calculus homework, one computer-science homework project, one final project for computer science, an oral presentation in French, two French essays, a short presentation on mistaken identity in 17th century French theatre, and miscellaneous French homework to be determined; and

WHEREAS I am furthermore responsible for knowing the material in calculus, Latin, and computer science thoroughly enough to withstand the final exams, as well as knowing approximately one dozen varyingly difficult Renaissance choral pieces thoroughly enough to perform in a concert;

BE IT HEREBY RESOLVED that I will not read any more fucking Aubrey/Maturin novels until I have all my work done and I can sing Candida Virginitas in my sleep.

*peeks out from under horrifying pile of homework*

This entire week has been one giant endless Monday, Y/N?

After hours of busywork for calculus this week, enough to make me consider adding "more tedious than approximating integrals by hand" to my mental list of stock phrases, there is nothing sweeter in the world than getting 100% on a test the rest of the class bombed... and getting credit for a smart-aleck answer to #4 because "it's technically correct, but that's not what I meant."

I'll just have to let that console me when I'm up to my ass this weekend in French essays, Old Norse translation, more calc busywork, and writing an XHTML validator in Java. Sigh.

Many family phone calls exchanged about the cat. I miss my fluffy orange bundle of terror.

Also, I am holding out hope that the current spat with the Idiot Fangirl Contingent in Les Mis fandom will yield some sort of intelligent-discussion renaissance. Like, "I need to scrub the stupid out of my brain, let's all talk about symbolism for a while." Come one, come all to the Novel forum of Abaissé so we can talk about how Enjolras and St. John Rivers were obviously separated at birth.

One of the required books for my French course is by someone named Laurence Enjolras.

Yes, I lol'd in the bookstore.

Oh god. I just went back and read some of my LJ entries from my sophomore year at Simon's Rock, and now I want to go back in time and give my seventeen-year-old self a hug. And tell hir "It's not you, it's them." God, I thought I was such a screwup for not being able to cope while I was living in the Hotel fucking California--who the fuck would be able to cope?

( Simon's Rock-directed vitriol under the cut )

I placed into French 230. Which is a lit class. Which means I'm not allowed to take any plain old language instruction--straight into the frying pan with me!

You guys, I'm so happy but I'm probably going to die this semester from all the homework. And in a way it's a good thing that I won't be forced to make stupid oral presentations about what I did this summer, but writing essays in French about Maupassant might be excruciating in the opposite way. The holy shit I am not prepared to do this way.

The (other?) good news is that I get to audit Latin I, which means I only have to do the tests, not the homework. And I got into all the classes I wanted, and my adviser talked me into taking a few deep breaths and signing up for Computer Science I, not II.

...and I'm taking Old Norse! :D

And now that I have carted all my sheet music downstairs to the piano in the living room, there may or may not be quasi-regular musical theater singalongs in Tyler House from now on.