Emily Winck's Blog » School

Graduation!

Emily — Sun, 20 May 2007 17:55:00 +0000

Done.

Emily — Mon, 14 May 2007 08:22:00 +0000

The tests are done.
The projects are done.
The papers are done (three due today).

I’m done.

That fact has definitely not set in yet. It probably doesn’t help that I’m still at school for the next three days, working. But, I am DONE with schoolwork for the indefinite future.

On to the next adventure in life…

some observations

Emily — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 11:41:00 +0000

“Spring” semester has begun.

1. why is it called spring semester? we’ve gotten a good 6 inches of snow in the past couple of days. we probably should shovel our driveway…
2. my religion prof gave us a binder with notes and articles to read. it smells like band-aids. i don’t like that.
3. one of my classes, my four credit internship class, will meet one more time this semester. i like that.

sometimes I use words when I don’t know what they mean

Emily — Mon, 08 May 2006 19:45:26 +0000

that’s what happens when I start writing papers at 6 p.m. the day before they’re due… at least I already did the research, and have a thesis statement. But it’s not totally my fault; I was in Madrid this weekend on our group excursion.

Favorite part? Obviously not the rain, or the gross hotel food we ate for dinner. Nope, I’m voting for the two things I did that weren’t scheduled with the group – the botanical gardens

and the Museo de la Reina Sofia.

(that’s Guernica, it’s a really big really famous painting by Picasso, and I saw it on Friday!)

::UPDATE::
This just in from the professor:
“Yes, you read correctly. You may have until the end of the semester for your papers.”
Excelente. My procrastination skills are about to kick in, because I now have over a week to finish this paper… and I’m already over a quarter of the way done!

On learning Spanish

Emily — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 18:24:10 +0000

I’m getting better at Spanish. This is a good thing, since that’s really why I’m here. But it’s not quite the way I expected. I thought I would learn lots of new words, and that would constitute becoming fluent. But I’ve realized that my lack of fluency wasn’t really a lack of knowing words. I know a lot of words. The problem was identifying them when I heard them and putting them together to make sentences. Living in Spain, I now actually use the words that I know. All those vocab lists I learned over the years come to life here, and almost makes all those vocab quizzes worth it…

I really wanted to go to class today

Emily — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 13:12:18 +0000

Today, we had a Monday schedule for classes to make for a Monday we’re going to miss later in the semester. Mondays I have one class, Advanced Grammar, at 11:30. Or so I thought. I got to school at about 11:15 this morning and Cheri told me that advanced grammar was going on, and there were only 5 minutes left of the class. What? Class starts at 11:30! But no. Today, apparently, grammar was from 10:30 until 11:20. Since most of the Calvin kids have class at 10:00 on Mondays, almost everyone was there. But not me. Nope.

And then I found out that the director of our semester sent us an email about the schedule change last night. At 8:00 p.m. Now, a little lesson about my life in Spain (and most of our lives in Spain). I check my email once, maybe twice a day, usually in the morning between classes, and sometimes in the afternoon at about 5. Which means that an email sent at 8:00 p.m. is only received that night by the lucky few who have internet access in their houses. Which doesn’t include me.

So that’s my story. I guess I don’t have class today after all.

weather

Emily — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 11:31:34 +0000

Grand Rapids, MI
3�F
Scattered Clouds
Wind: NE at 4 mph
Humidity: 85%

Valencia, Spain (1 hour from Denia, where I’ll be next semester)
68�F
Clear
Wind: SW at 5 mph
Humidity: 33%

hmmm, where would I rather be…

I’m procrastinating

Emily — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 18:18:51 +0000

The writing wasn’t so bad

Emily — Mon, 21 Nov 2005 00:02:52 +0000

In retrospect, the writing of my 10.5 page term paper wasn’t so bad. It’s the editing that I can’t seem to bring myself to do. I’ve never liked re-reading my own writing. I’m one of those kids who never even looks over her test before turning it in, except to skim and make sure I didn’t miss any questions. Never re-read my essays. I just hate doing it. And with this long of a paper, I just can’t seem to bring myself to start. I’m daunted by it. And I’m the one who wrote it. I know that once I start, it won’t be so bad. But I think I’m scared that if I take the time to actually read it, I’ll realize how awful it is, and have to do a ton more work. But I can’t bring myself to hand it in without reading it over at least once, either. So now I’m off, to skim-edit my term paper that’s worth a good chunk of my grade. Actually, I just checked my syllabus to see how much it’s really worth, and the syllabus doesn’t even say. So I could be throwing away 50% of my grade, or 5% of my grade with my lousy editing. Bah. It’s worth the risk, right?

Already?

Emily — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 20:11:10 +0000

13 days of class
5 days of finals

I can’t believe it’s already done.