Ok, that's it. Back to France.

[ChuckF]

No, not really. At least not yet. But I'm definitely starting to search for cheap airfares to faraway places and thinking about getting the hell out of Dodge.

Here's the story. I got full funding for this academic year, which is a big deal in my department. Since, when I registered for classes this semester, there was no guarantee that I would get funding next year, logic and economy required that I take the maximum course load since it's all paid for, and I may have to pay for classes next year if I don't take them now. It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Now I'm taking the two most difficult and reading-intensive classes I've ever taken (they both meet on Tuesday, too) and two other less demanding but still distracting ones. One of the "less demanding" ones meets tomorrow afternoon, and I usually do the reading on Monday night, since Wednesday-Monday evenings are reserved for the big classes. Three PDF files. 167, 137, and 57 pages. :wtfsign:

If only I had skills of some kind I could find honest work! Damn it!

[D. Scarlatti]

Three PDF files. 167, 137, and 57 pages.

Pffft. Try law school.

[Clutch Munny]

Three PDF files. 167, 137, and 57 pages.

Pffft. Try law school.

Yeah, but Chuck has to read them.

Just kidding! He doesn't really. It's just like law school.

[livius drusus]

Just import that French floozy you left behind and get her to perform filthy gallic acts upon you while you read.

[Clutch Munny]

liv, when you say "filthy gallic acts", somehow it sounds so dirty.

[livius drusus]

Well, the lack of showering and the undeodorized, hirsute armpits were implicit in the phrase, that's true.

[wildernesse]

I would point and laugh, but such an experience is too close to me to be funny right now. About May, I will point and laugh.

[D. Scarlatti]

Yeah, but Chuck has to read them.

:shiftier:

So busted.

[ChuckF]

:grin:

[viscousmemories]

I'd like to empathize, but I never went to college full-time precisely because I couldn't read (or skim) 400+ pages of material in one evening if my life depended on it.

[Clutch Munny]

Not many people can. But those bold-faced words defined at the end of the chapter go a long way towards easing the problem. As do secondary sources. And paying attention to the stuff the lecturer focuses on. Take all that together, and resign yourself to missing about a fifth of the material owing to your slipshoddery, and you can walk away with your 80% average.

[Dingfod]

I would point and laugh, but such an experience is too close to me to be funny right now. About May, I will point and laugh.Why, will you have taken your annual bath by then?

[Kyuss Apollo]

I can empathize with your plight Chuck. But at least your reading material isn't handwritten and measured in feet, like these (http://www.rihs.org/mssinv/Mss629-3.htm) or especially these (http://www.rihs.org/mssinv/Mss483sg06.htm)... :haha: :mock:

Speaking of reading, I should really stop fucking around on the internet and truck off to the state archives--I wanted to investigate "petitions denied by the General Assembly" this week and see they are worth my time researching. I have already gone through "petitions granted" which are on about 55 spools of microfilm. These aren't--I think they are just piled in boxes. Many boxes. With no indexing by date and town, like most of the petitions granted. I'll find out. I only get two hours of free parking if there's nothing on the street, and 1 PM is a good time to find an empty space.

[chick]

I cant disguise the pounding of my heart
It beats so strong
Its in your eyes what can I say
They turn me on

I dont care where we go
I dont care what we do
I dont care pretty baby
Just take me with u

[livius drusus]

chick and Chu-uck, sittin' in a tree...

[viscousmemories]

Not many people can. But those bold-faced words defined at the end of the chapter go a long way towards easing the problem. As do secondary sources. And paying attention to the stuff the lecturer focuses on. Take all that together, and resign yourself to missing about a fifth of the material owing to your slipshoddery, and you can walk away with your 80% average.
Dammit, Clutch. If you keep poking holes in my excuses I'll have no choice but to go back to school some day.

[godfry n. glad]

Not many people can. But those bold-faced words defined at the end of the chapter go a long way towards easing the problem. As do secondary sources. And paying attention to the stuff the lecturer focuses on. Take all that together, and resign yourself to missing about a fifth of the material owing to your slipshoddery, and you can walk away with your 80% average.
Dammit, Clutch. If you keep poking holes in my excuses I'll have no choice but to go back to school some day.


Heh... I had a history prof advise an undergrad in a class I took for my master's that they should read: 1. The introduction and the table of contents; 2. the first paragraph of each chapter; 3. the last paragraph of each chapter; 4. the reader should then decide if there is anything which needs to be focused upon in greater detail, then read those chapters, emphasizing the lead sentence of each paragraph. His rationale was that mosst academic writers still utilize the "tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em, tell 'em, then tell 'em that you told them" system and, as such, the "skimming" technique should cover most of the information required to walk into the classroom, discuss the material and ask intelligent questions.

I managed to ace a social and cultural anthropology class by keeping track of the sources the professor mentioned in class. His lectures were more like wandering shaggy dog tales and difficult to take notes from, but I just figured that if he pointedly referenced a specific source, then he probably held those particular sources in relatively high esteem. So, when the one question take-home midterm came out, I left class and immediately went to the library, found tomes by the authors he'd repeatedly referenced and looked in the indexes for the topic he wanted us to write on ("freedom"). With about six or eight pithy quotes from his favorite sources, I spent the night writing, editing and typing the midterm (I gnash my teeth every time somebody wants to do a "take-home" exam, because I always end up spending four to eight times as much time on them as in-class exams), bullshitting at my best using the touchstone quotes. I aced it.

The same day I turned that sucker in, I had a gruelling geology exam. I was wasted from staying up most of the night on the anthro exam, but I'd asked a friend who'd taken the same prof the year before how he tested....he'd dug out his exam from the previous year to give me an idea. Well, when I dragged my butt into the class and the exam forms were passed 'round, I waited blearily for the bad news. None such. Instead, I found that of the eight pages of exam questions (front and back), six of them were exact duplicates of the test I'd been loaned by my friend. The last two pages were on our field trip. Despite being knackered, I aced that exam, too.

This latter situation demonstrates a situation which others have alluded to in other threads about higher education: Try to find out as much as possible about your professors before you sign up for the class...How do they test? Is the information presented in class a rehash of the readings, or do they augment the readings and clarify? Does the prof reward participation in class discussion? How does the prof grade? As an undergrad, I had a grad student tell me about one of my economics profs. He told me that everytime the professor used the phrase, "You hear me now?", write down what he said before the phrase...because it WOULD be on the exam. Sure enough, it was true to form.

[livius drusus]

Ironic thought it may be, there's a great book out now about how to talk about book you haven't read (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/24/books/24read.html?em&ex=1172552400&en=3fa36d40ad614493&ei=5087%0A). It's by a French dude, too! Chuck, clearly this is fate.

Now Pierre Bayard, a Paris University literature professor, has come to their rescue with a survivor’s guide to life in the chattering classes. And it is evidently much in need. “How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read?” has become a best seller here, with translation rights snapped up across Europe and under negotiation in Britain and the United States.

“I am surprised because I hadn’t imagined how guilty nonreaders feel,” Mr. Bayard, 52, said in an interview. “With this book, they can shake off their guilt without psychoanalysis, so it’s much cheaper.”

Mr. Bayard reassures them that there is no obligation to read, and confesses to lecturing students on books that he has either not read or has merely skimmed. And he recalls passionate exchanges with people who also have not read the book under discussion.

[Doctor X]

Just wish to add that the easiest way into France is through Belgium. . . .

--J.D.

[ChuckF]

Ironic thought it may be, there's a great book out now about how to talk about book you haven't read (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/24/books/24read.html?em&ex=1172552400&en=3fa36d40ad614493&ei=5087%0A).

:tldr:

I also need to read Hello Laziness (http://www.amazon.com/Hello-Laziness-Corinne-Maier/dp/0752871862/sr=8-1/qid=1172421243/ref=sr_1_1/002-4047954-5080862?ie=UTF8&s=books) (originally Bonjour Paresse: De l'art et de la nécessité d'en faire le moins possible en entreprise) by Frenchwoman Corrine Maier.

[Ymir's blood]

Interesting that the title is 15 words in French and only 2 in English. Looks like we don't need lessons in laziness.

[Kyuss Apollo]

Ironic thought it may be, there's a great book out now about how to talk about book you haven't read (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/24/books/24read.html?em&ex=1172552400&en=3fa36d40ad614493&ei=5087%0A).

Are there any Cliffs Notes for that? :duh: