I screwed up...maybe that´s a chance!

So, as posted I screwed up! That means, long story short, that I won´t be able to make it into the job until February. On the one hand that is definately a bummer, since I was planning to get a dog, a car, be freer to move and go places where I want to go but, so be it. I have managed to survive on climbing classes the past years and actually lived an amazing life, so the story may as well continue. I had written of my US trip (something I LONG for) due to job formalities but since these have more or less be postponed (euphemism here) I´m actually focusing on November/December! That leaves me with the opportunity to make as much money as possible, temps in the Valley will be better, Bishop might be climbable, Moab will not be boiling...so many possibilities! I´m seriously psyched on my options!

The reason why I long for this trip so much is pretty simple my love for travelling. I want to go and see as much as possible, experience as much as possible and also just speak English. Well, that´s what I realized yesterday when I ran into a biking couple from Tennessee on their 18th cycling trip through Europe...talking to Sam on this horribly croweded train brought my first serious English conversation in MONTHS and I just liked it very much! For some strange reason, I actually prefer English over German...can´t explain it, it´s a gut feeling but hey, these matter a lot.

Yesterday´s exam in Didactics of German proved to be a test for my ambition and persistence after the big mental blow received last week. Punch taken, still in the fight and winning! I got through the exam pretty smoothly, shrugged off the idiotic comments made by some of my fellow students about Prof. Kiefer being "the worst case scenario in Didactics" and just went in for a relaxed chat. Turns out we both got along well, that is, I came close to an A, as I was told later. They agreed on B+ in the end and I can´t disagree, I made a couple of slight mistakes and personally don´t think that A would have been deserved, so there´s concord on my part. I´m done. That´s it. Studies of German Literature and Linguistics hereby FINISHED!

Now there´s English to come. I don´t worry about them, except maybe for Grammar on Friday this week. I still have a TON to prepare and as soon as I´m finished writing this, I´ll head to the grocery store, get breakfast, make some coffee and get started...all other English exams will be a piece of cake since they´re only about my fields of interest and so I´ll do a little bit of celebrating on Saturday...hopefully I´ll also feel unshackled and finish a project or two...I´m in shape right now but in the end, even though I pride myself of good nerves when it comes to being examined, can´t deny this all gets to me. Not in the way of making me all shaky and completely beat up but in a sense of not feeling free.

Out to go shopping!

After setting 25 boulders on Friday, I actually managed to get some rock climbing done on Saturday...today was spent setting again...that leaves me with a ton to study tomorrow morning, but I gotta make some money...

Out to go back to "The International"...AWESOME MOVIE!

Yap, that´s about how I looked last night when I found out that for some reason my calendar was wrong...my psychology exam was scheduled for yesterday, not the 23rd! I don´t know what made me put the 23rd. in, I SERIOUSLY DON`T, but alas, it can´t be mended, that´s what I was told this morning.
Damn...long story short, I wasn´t there...that´s a fail obviously! That means that I´ll have to redo the whole pedagogics/psychology exam in fall, meaning that my nice B grade in pedagogics is worth as much as shit...it also means:
-no US trip this summer! (exams will be in August/September)
-no job start in September...I´ll have to survive on giving climbing classes!

What can I do? Well, all that´s left to me is reason it out, accept it and do well in the remaining English and German exams...gotta show `em what I´m worth. Turn the anger into focus and strenght. What don´t kill you will make you more strong...along those lines...

This is a sad post since it definately puts an end to US summer plans...but hey, I´ll do these exams and then come and visit later the year. Temps will be better, I can stay in the Valley longer and maybe it´s all good the way it is...

Out!

First round done...

I´m very happy to have completed my first week of oral exams with three straight B´s...2,0 three times! Considering that my fields of interest are still coming up (or as it was the case with textual linguistics, had to balance out my C-grade in historical linguistics) this is pretty sweet! I´ve been getting some climbing as well and considering that I went to Arco, climbed a lot, biked a lot, hiked a lot (aka lived!) instead of just morphing into a total book worm this actually came as a surprise at times...but hey, that´s my approach! In my opinion, exams are knowledge, admitted, but also to a large extend about the right state of mind. Since I´ve learned over the years that I can take in A LOT of information in a very short time, I trust that approach. To make it work though, my mind needs to be calm, ready and focused. In that sense, to some going bouldering a day before an exam might seem verging on the brink of academic suicide, to me it´s preperation. It´s actually pretty rad if you can prep that way...

Textual linguistics/historical linguistics kicked the week off with a good exam about texts as communicative acts, pragmatics, semantics and pretty much what I´m interested in. To my surprise, I got a mail asking for my historical linguistics literature list the morning of the exam...which was the moment I found out I had to at first deliver such a thing and then know pretty much about it as well. Well, let´s say that I made coffee, realized that I had about 4 hours left and started reading! Well, fortunately I was able to get away with semantic change from Medieval German to Present German (luckily my professor´s field of study, so she agreed) and since I´ve always been treading the border of linguistics, communication studies in general and the semantics/pragmatics interface, I knew something...I only had to refresh my memory. Turns out it worked.

Since I won´t ever run into my Medieval German Literature professor again, I´m safe to say that I wasn´t expecting too much after the girl examined before me totally crashed, left the room almost crying and told me that guy was a bastard. I do wholeheartedly agree! I have met a couple of seriously ego inflated narcists way too pleased with themselves but this one topped it all. Not only was the exam lacking a clear structure, he also chose to quote Goethe and others at random just to show how smart he was (at no time related to anything halfway exam relevant), cracked some pretty stupid jokes and was mightly pleased with himself, to a point that made it close to creepy. Anyway, to my surprise, I got another straight B! I guess I owe this to my Salinger thesis, when I was asked if there are prologue like structures in modern literature, I came up with the theory that Salinger´s "The catcher in the rye" actually starts like one...It does. I checked it. He was PLEASED! So was I leaving the room...

To round it of, yesterday`s pedagogics was fun. I liked the topic, the examiner and the whole thing. Went climbing afterwards...added two more sweet projects to my list and climbed well, especially considering that I had had a crappy night with almost no sleep...I hate it when a system moves in, it ruins my sleep!

Out for more exam prep and then some bouldering/climbing! YAY!

I SERIOIUSLY DIG the facial expressions of owls...speaking of which, hopefully I won´t look like the one above in my pedagogics oral exam tomorrow...
So far my exams have been pretty well (two straight B´s, to be exact in the oral ones, no written grades yet) which is rad, considering that doing a FA before the rain comes can at times interfere with exam prep. but hey, you gotta live it up!

So let´s get this one done and hope for an IMPROVING forecast...

Out!