(no subject)

[dchenes]

The only problem with spring break is the amount of work that has to be done after it. I'm going to be almost insanely busy for the next couple of months. I've got the glossary, a 5-page translation and analysis, however many weeks of draft and final 2-page translations, a 15-page paper and a 20-minute presentation in French, all due on or before May 5. I've also got two sessions of modeling next week, which is good, but which cuts down on the time I can spend doing translations and readings and research and glossary entries and all like that there.

I did finally find that book I was looking for, thanks to a citation in the library's online catalog that said there was one copy shelved with the oversize books. That's the one I ended up with. The thing weighs a ton, but now at least I can finish reading it. I've also got the English versions of a couple of plays so I can write the 15-page paper on the differences between the translations and the originals.

Tomorrow, laundry and grocery shopping. And glossary entries. And translation. And if my Literary & Cultural Translation midterm doesn't turn up, I have to resubmit it. The prof says she knows she had it, read it and graded it, but she can't find it, and I can't work on it if I don't get it back. (Yes, I have to revise it. Sigh. At least from the sound of it, though, mine needs less work than my classmates'. I've been writing American-style academic papers for longer than they have.)

I need a backup brain, by which I mean I need something I can ask to remember things for me without my having to stop and write them down. Things like the list of stuff I need to get dry cleaned one of these days when I have money and time and all that. (Cashmere and velvet and silk, all of which I could hand wash if (a) I had somewhere to hang them to dry and (b) I didn't loathe hand washing.)

Oh, look, 6:15. Time for dinner and miscellaneous other things, some of which are only marginally related to getting work done.

Comments

[enochs-fable.livejournal.com]

did you ever receive any direction on how to write academic papers?

[dchenes.livejournal.com]

Oh, ye gods, yes. It started in about sixth grade with learning to write essays.

American academic papers are apparently a lot more structured than European ones, since what the prof mentioned was the organization of my classmates' papers. I can't write a paper that doesn't begin with an introduction; my classmates can. They also don't seem to have such a strict requirement about laying out the argument in the body of the paper and going from Point A and all its explanations to Point B and all its explanations to Point C, etc.

Technically, that's what Research and Writing last semester was about. For me, it was more about how to do the research and less about how to do the writing. It also seems to have been one of those classes that most people take because they have to, and then proceed to forget everything they had to do for it. I would think it would stand to reason that if we had to use MLA format for citations last semester, we'd have to do it again this semester for the same prof, but apparently that's just me, because people aren't (and are getting nailed for not doing it).

Maybe my view is colored by having been a working stiff for a while; once I learned to do something one way at work, it generally didn't change without tremendous amounts of fanfare and "from now on we're going to do it this way" meetings and such. So unless I hear differently, I do things the way I was shown (unless I can improve on them, and that's usually not a problem).