A Welcome Break
So this weekend was the first in a long time that I´ve spent at home. Not travelling, not running around like crazy, but sitting in my room doing nothing but watching tv, pretending I´m catching up on my work, going out to bars at night, and generally organizing myself. See, this quarter´s been super-easy work-wise. Yes, all the readings were in Spanish, but I eventually started reading them in English when I a) had a lot to do at once or b) it was in translation anyway, so it might as well be translated well into a language I don´t need to think too hard about. But honestly, the expectations were few and far between.
Until now, that is. Now is exam time. I already took my Literatura Castellana exam, and I think it went pretty well. All of us CASB-ers in the class made a group study guide, which was extremely helpful, and then, at the last moment, Wolfman Zach sent out some Spanish kid´s study guide, which was even more helpful. So I passed at the very least, and we´ll see just how much I passed come next weekend.
Which leaves me with: my Temas y Mitos exam, my Cultura de Masas exam (a true headache to figure out, and which may turn into a paper), my Literatura Castellana paper, and my Guerra Civil joint paper with Danielle.
Did I mention that I´m hoping to get a rough draft of the Lit Cast paper done by tomorrow? And that I´ve barely started researching?
See, I was tired this weekend. I was coming off of 5 straight weekends of travel. Going for 3-4 days in Barcelona before packing up and heading out for 3-4 days, then coming back and doing it again. And I was sick the whole time, with what turned out to be a respiratory infection.
It makes you tired in a whole different kind of way. Sure, I´m exhausted generally speaking at Northwestern. But it´s not a physical kind of tired, even though I am often actually running around. It´s more mental. It´s more like I´m sensing how much I need to do and it´s weighing down on me and preemptively stressing me out. Here, I´m just plain vacation-tired. Getting up early to fully take advantage of the sites, walking everywhere to save on Metro costs, lots of crack-of-dawn flights followed, sometimes directly, by class. And I´m tired.
That´s why not much work on my Literatura Castellana paper has gotten done. So today, after I take advantage of the Museu Picasso being free, I´m on a mission to be productive for the first time all weekend.
And sometime in there, my Paris blog post will come too.
Wish me luck.
