Just got done checking out my syllabi (this is the plural of syllabus, which is the thing where your teacher tells you what they expect you to do and you say “like hell am I doing that”) and making my schedule for the next couple of weeks. Thought it might be relevant, so I’m going to show it to you! It’s a sheet of plain, lined looseleaf folder to a quarter of the original size. Nothing fancy here. For your benefit, bonus information will be added such as due dates and course names. Oh, and one side note, any time I say “read” I mean “read and highlight important information.” It takes a lot longer to read and pay enough attention to highlight things.
Applied Linguistics and Discourse Studies (ALDS): Do readings before class (usually a couple of pages in length), write paper for the 18th of October (3-4 pages in length, and that is NOTHING - I expect to slap this together in very little time. It can be on anything relevant to our subject material, and the name should tell you that’s an extremely broad category. I’ve got a few ideas and I just need to find a few good citations and put it all together. This isn’t something I need to research for a week, I just have to write about a thing. My biggest concern with it is proper terminology - should I use L1 and L2 instead of typing “first/native language” and “second language”? I know that’s the norm, but I am an ENGLISH STUDENT and I DO THESE THINGS THE RIGHT WAY. Even if it takes six times as long to type!)
French (FREN): Watch J'ai tué ma mère (french indie film from Quebec, heard good stuff about it, I just need to spend time on french culture), write my cultural journal (due October 5th) about the movie (basic summary, personal evaluation, what did I learn or like about it), write my cultural journal about the Voltaire passage I read (some random thing of his that hardly anyone remembers, but it happens to be only a hundred pages or two and that’s far more palatable than Candide), read Cyrano de Bergerac (I did this during my public transit time today, which is great - just had to read the first act, and I’m in love with the language), do research on Gilles Vigneault (group presentation near the end of October, 10-12 minutes in length, and I’m researching his political life - it will be very easy to get behind on this, because I have a vague due date and nobody to report to. Will have to get some group organization going on so we can practice and stuff), write résumé (this is a summary of an article about “une phoque moine” which is a sea lion or whatever and it has to be 150 words long lol)
Computer Science (COMP): Assignment #2 (due October 13th, and we have yet to learn the stuff it requires, so while I could teach myself, why waste my time? I’ll check it out next friday probably)
Linguistics (LING): Finish reading Chapter 3 (Phonology), take notes on Chapter 3 (in OneNote, so this is my “studying” and will also make it easier to study for my midterm), do assignment #3 (due October 7th), study for midterm on October 14th (chapters 1-3, not sure just how much studying I’ll do - review the assignment questions for sure, read the notes I took on the chapters and lectures, but I don’t know if I’ll read the chapters themselves again… it takes a loooong time)
Psychology (PSYC): Read chapter 3 (accomplished this morning before class, the last few pages after class - this is what we’re covering next week), takes notes on chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3 (this is for studying purposes, and will likely take a long time - but it’s important, because I have to…), study for midterm on October 13th (chapters 1-3, all multiple choice, worth 20% of final grade - will read review sections in book, personal applications (practice questions I think?), some stuff about how to pwn multiple choice exams, and check out past exams at the library)
I have no class on friday, but I am going to the University of Ottawa for a study comparing my first (english) and second (french) languages. Should be cool, actually! I’ll get a 1% credit for my final mark in PSYC 1001, and if it’s neat, I may write my first ALDS paper about it, or something related to bilingualism. I’ll spend the morning and early afternoon (my appointment is for 3:40 PM) working on stuff for french, because it’ll be nice to cross that stuff off. If I have extra time, I’ll keep reading chapter 3 for linguistics. Third LING assignment if I have time.
Saturday, I’ll probably take notes like a madman, and that’ll feel great because I like all of the things I’ll be reviewing and I like to have a fat block of text to look back at. If I wind up with extra time at the end of the night, I’ll pretty up my old notes and upload them!
Sunday, I’ll do whatever didn’t get done the last two days. Taking notes, ALDS reading, french projects, whatever. I know I won’t finish this all in one weekend despite my obvious optimism, so the goal is to make sure I have things for the following week done. Namely, the cultural journal for french, my LING assignment, and the reading for ALDS. So that’s not really a lot of work. The rest is all working ahead and that’s a very smart thing for me to do.
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Wrote that last night and tumblr died forever but someone revived it so we’re ok now. However two addenda (plural of addendum): one, I need to check out my lecture slides and copy stuff into my notes that I didn’t have time to copy, and two, I need to check out my french textbook so I can learn french grammar blah.
Also, it’s funny to learn linguistics and realize that bullshit grammatical rules have no value and then go to a class and have to force bullshit grammatical rules onto myself. “It’s just the way french is,” “It’s just what we do,” “It’s a direct complement so it does this duh,” like none of this makes any sense so don’t pretend like it does lol. At any rate science is working to improve language teaching courses so the future should be great for other people.