Archive for the ‘School’ Category

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Work Week’s Got Me Beat

September 2nd, 2011 by Manda | 4 Comments | Filed in School, Work

When the earliest I can get home on any given day of the working week is 5p.m. (on a Friday!), it is very telling just how all-consuming my class/work/internship schedule is. Needless to say, I’m beat from this week. It’s almost 6p.m. on a Friday evening and I’m sitting on my couch in my PJ’s watching reruns of NCIS like an old lady. Not gonna lie, it’s kind of nice that I have absolutely nothing planned for tonight but to relax and unwind. Oh, and maybe tackle some of my readings…

I know I’ve talked about how busy I am on this blog before and it might seem like I’m complaining but I’m not, honestly. My schedule is something I chose and I’m happy with all the things that I’m doing. I just think it’s kind of scary how fast I went from being a freshman with a handful of classes and a schedule that was wide open in terms of free time to a totally jam-packed schedule where I’m juggling sixteen things at once. How did I grow up so fast? Where did the time go? Am I really expected to be an Adult in the Real World come graduation next year?!

(Oh, and in news I meant to post earlier but I completely forgot to and now it’s kind of late and outdated: I survived both the DC earthquake and Hurricane Irene last week without incident, minus the 24 hours or so I lost power due to Irene. My area was incredibly lucky as others were not as fortunate with either, or both, of the natural disasters.)

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It’s That Time of Year Again

April 5th, 2011 by Manda | 5 Comments | Filed in Life, School, Technology, Travel, Work

It’s that time of year again… The time where the end of the spring semester sends my stress levels skyrocketing and I am perpetually almost at breaking point.

This year, I’m freaking out over final exams, final papers, making a summer travel itinerary (and organizing everything that comes with a self-planned trip in southeast Asia), trying to coordinate a summer internship, preparing for my summer employment opportunity, figuring out if I have places to live… The list goes on. And to top it all off, my beloved MacBook gave out on me, so I am currently computerless.

Till my computer gets fixed (I have a Genius Bar appointment tomorrow and I’m hoping it’s not a big issue, so it should be fixed soon) I’m going to be scarce. I’m relying on my roommate’s spare netbook and my iTouch for my computer/Internet fix, but neither are ideal for blogging, unfortunately!

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I Can’t Write Papers Anymore

March 21st, 2011 by Manda | 8 Comments | Filed in School

I have not written any sort of essay, paper, or thesis since April 2010. To top that off, I have been (intensively) studying nothing but Mandarin Chinese since September. So, let’s imagine for a second what happened when I tried to write my term paper proposal for my only English class this semester, Chinese Media Studies.

If you guessed that it sucked, that’s a very, very kind guess.

I can’t seem to string together a coherent argument anymore. My sentences have become repetitive, identically structured, and lack the power of persuasion an argumentative research paper is meant to contain. A lot of this is probably because I’m simply out of practice at writing papers, but I think I’m also out of practice with using the English language in a formal context. Or in any context, really. Yesterday, it took a friend and I five minutes to come up with the correct English definition of the Chinese word “矛盾” (textbook definition is contradiction or contradictory, but I find a more accurate definition is conflict or conflicted). It wasn’t that we didn’t know how to use the word in Chinese, we just couldn’t think of how to explain the meaning in English!

Right now, I have a (very) rough term paper proposal written up. Every time I read it over in an attempt to fix the many things wrong with my writing, I cringe. I’m a communications major; writing is my passion. I’m good at it, dammit. But now my writing reads like English isn’t my native language. The writing in my proposal has a slight awkwardness and stilted feeling to it – and that has never, ever happened to me before, no matter what type of writing.

I guess it’s nice that my professor’s first language isn’t English, so maybe he’ll look kindly at my much-left-to-be-desired essay writing, at least for this proposal. But now I’m worried about how I’m going to cope with my classes senior year, when I’m taking the last couple course requirements for my comm major…

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