Today's rambling: Hear me roar!
Written on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2003 at 12:05 p.m.
while feeling a bit

There's an epidemic of wangitude spreading through Diaryland! And now that I've done my part, on to today's news. ;)

I somehow MIRACULOUSLY managed to get an A on my Health test. Mind you, this was with a curve, and even then it was a rather low A, but nonetheless I got an A and I just Don't Know How I Did It. I almost forgot to look on Blackboard and check, too...had it not been for Kristen asking me when I'd find out my grade, I would have probably gone on for quite some time before remembering that I could go online and find out! :P Blackboard is a mighty tool.

After History today, I got my test back (everyone else got theirs back on Tuesday, but that was my sick day). I got another A, but it was a 92%, which absurdly disappointed me. Amanda got a 100%, and we'd both studied quite a bit together so for some reason I thought that I might get the same grade. Even Kevin, who didn't really get to study at all, got a 94%! As Amanda pointed out to me, I still got an A, which is something to be proud of. And yes, I am...but it's just that because it's a low A, my brain is screaming, "Too much room for improvement! You're not doing as well as you should!"

And of course, the practical side of me is screaming right back, "Shut up! What do YOU know, anyway??"

Yet I still sit here feeling not quite as satisfied as I should be feeling. Who am I?? I wish I could have the old "Hey, as long as it's not a D or an F, I'm okay!" Amber back...But hey! On the bright side, thus far I've got a 4.0 for the semester! That's something to be proud of, right? I'm not even striving for this GPA so I can brag about it: this is for me. I want to be able to prove to myself that I can do this, and that I am smart. I know it sounds silly. But after 12 years of just being mediocre, I want to prove to myself that I'm better than that. It's a self-esteem thing.

I'm also planning to stop by my French professor's office this afternoon to do a wee bit of complaining. Here's where all signs are going to start pointing to "suck up!" but I can assure you with all honesty that this is meant as anything but that. See, yesterday when the tests were handed back to the other students, the professor said that everyone had done really poorly on the oral part (that's where she asks 3 questions in French and we have to write down the answers in French). Now, on this exam we didn't have to listen to the student tape, like we did on the first exam. Someone asked if we'd have to do it on the NEXT exam (which is after we come back from break), and I think the professor implied that we won't. She also said that since we'd done so badly on the oral bit, she wasn't going to put that on the next exam.

Now, I don't know if she was joking or not. All I was interested in at that point was getting out of the classroom. However, I was rather peeved by this. It's not that I did well on the oral part--Madame actually changed the first two questions to another form because she realized that Miranda and I had had difficulty understanding them--and there's definitely a part of me that would like to have things easier. It would ensure my A in French, after all! :P However, if I am paying this much money for my education, I darn well want to LEARN something! And no, I don't feel that I'm exceling, exactly, but I do feel as though I'm being held back by all the slower people in the class. The fact that they don't understand half the stuff being taught is fine. However, they should NOT have signed up for an intensive course! So now I'm being hindered because the rest of them are too dumb. And I'm not just saying dumb intelligence-wise, either. They're lacking a lot in the common sense department, too.

A big part of our grade is going to be based on a conversation we have to participate in with the professor at the end of the semester. One by one, we have to go in and have a brief conversation--completely in French--with this woman, and she even told us at the beginning of the semester that all these oral and aural things would help us out with that. It's not like we speak French in class very much...I mean, for goodness' sake, my last two years of high school French were more challenging than this! So the only REAL practice we're getting is from those two parts on the test...and now she's suggesting taking THOSE away? How are we going to keep afloat when it comes time to hold a conversation??

As I've mentioned dozens of times before, I'm not taking this language because of some kind of requirement. Foreign language isn't even a requirement for Communication majors (which doesn't quite make sense, but that's beside the point). I'm taking this because I want to try and be the best that I can. I want to be challenged! Even if it makes me throw myself on my bed every night and sob because it's so hard, I want to come out in the end with confidence. I want to be able to at least speak the language understandably! I'll probably never be fluent, and I know I'll never get rid of the American accent, but if I can communicate, that's all I care about.

So that's what I want to go in and rant about. I hope she won't get irritated with me, hehe! I mean, I won't put it in quite those vehement terms, but I do want her to know where I stand in all of this. I'm not like all those other students who just want to slide by. I'm in this for me, not for some notion that you MUST have a college degree in order to live in the world.

And now that I've made my rant, I need to go memorize my essay for today before I go talk to zee professeur. :P