Tuesday, July 11, 2006
A tale of 4 exams
Today is my first day of freedom - well almost. My exams are over but I don't really feel like I'm allowed to relax yet as I need to run all over Paris and get everything sorted before going to Switzerland for a nice rest and hikes in the mountains. The "everything sorted" includes imagining all the documents the US embassy might possibly demand of me before issuing my exchange student visa, and then getting them and photocopying them. It includes "proofs that I'll be coming back" whatever that means, and a very special picture of 5x5cm... of myself of course, would be too easy to just cut up any picture to these dimensions :p I also need to enrol at Uni again and go to all sorts of doctors to get wisdom teeth out and new specs on. Oh yeah and I really should sort all the work I've done and stack it up and try and reduce the mess that currently rules my room. It's big so mess spreads... But that's not getting done quite as yet obviously :p
"But, that's got nothing to do with your exams", I hear my impatient reader say.. to whom I'll promptly offer my most humble apologies before proceeding to the matter at sake. hu stake.
So the written exams were in April and I've just gone through the oral exams. It was 4 days, 4 exams, 5 grades - cause they also grade your level of spoken English while they're judging how good a linguist you are.
DAY ONE
No exams but an information reunion that tells you how everything is going to go. The jury looks real nice actually, almost too sweet. They make jokes and try and make you feel ok. Doesn't stop the stress from going up up up...
The fun part of that day is that you get to play the "lottery". They pass an envelope around and you have to choose a small round wooden token on which a number is written. That number will be your "name" for the next 3 days. That's how they call you from the preparation room to the presentation room and all, aaaand it tells you what time you go for what exam. There's this big board on which are written all the dates and times. You can start at 7am or 11pm and it all depends on your number. Actually I cheated because a friend of mine had number 39 in a previous session and she had great starting times, i.e. not too early, and so I specifically looked for that number in the envelope and grabbed it :) I knew I'd get it actually because I'd had a pretty good sign a few hours before: I went to visit my friend Arielle whose house number is 39... So that was lucky :)
I got home sooooo stressed out that I had to do a stress-dance. It doesn't look grand I'm sure, but it involves a lot of jumping around and throwing legs and arms around - a little like Régis does for those who know him - and a lots of Salam Namaste hits to dance on (Bollywood). That helped me settle down LOADS, I highly recommend it in situations of stress :)
DAY TWO
I'm always late. I used to be always on time and now I'm always late, for some reason. However I decided to be bloody early for exams in order not to miss them, for some reason. So I got there about 40 minutes early, which was fine, at first. But the more it went the more stressed I was... aaarrrggg!!! It was good that one of the other students was nice so we chatted a bit to make time pass...
Other than that, day one was my super lucky day :) I had the choice between two topics for the oral dissertation I had to give. On my way there I was thinking "wow it would be great if I got like 'coordination and subordination - compare'" cause that's a topic I knew really well and it's got some syntax in it so I could only do good stuff with that. So I get to the room and what topic do I get??? Coordination versus subordination basically!! I'm like YEAY... I still have a look at the other topic to see what is it, convinced I'll take the first one aaaand... It's a quote that my linguistics teacher already had analysed in class and spent like 4 hours talking about... and I'd just re-read the notes two days before!!!!
So I go 'dude! which one would make me look even better than the other????' :p 45 minutes of hard decision-time later I take the second one. Mind you that's not too much, you have 5 hours total to prepare and the 45 min included 20 min of analysis of each subject so I only really 'lost' 20 min. I go in the examination room and all goes as well as it could do: I didn't even speak too fast!
I was chatting outside and one of the jury comes out to have a cigarette and when I'm about to leave starts talking to me for a few minutes and ends the conversation by telling me it was 'very good' :D :D So I walk away, exulting like hell!!!! Aaaand one of the people in the jury was a teacher I'd had this year whom I really like and is sweet, so that was the extra lucky bonus!
DAY THREE
This included two exams. One was a linguistic commentary and we were overly prepared for those so even though it can be on WHATEVER in the English language, there were only 2 or 3 topics I would have hated getting. Buuuut I hadn't thought they could actually give the topic I got: articles. That's 'the' and 'a' in English for the non-grammarians out there. So it's extremely common and very basic in English right? And the thing is everybody agrees about them (linguists always disagree) so it's not something you can really shine at by giving clever thoughts and in-depths analysis. And there are so many occurrences in the text you need to work on you can't reaaally go deep down and show off. And there really isn't much I could say syntax-wise on that topic, and syntax is my best asset in linguistics (and the only thing I could have said I didn't DUH). So it didn't go tooo well: there are so many basic things to say I never got to the more difficult ones because I thought I HAVE to say this and this and this and this because it sucks if they think I don't know it... And then they asked me all the interesting things at the end and I was like 'why why why didn't I include that in my commentary???' But anyways... So that didn't go all that well.
The other test was translation. It's you listen to a recording in English and translate it in French on the spot (you can take notes). That one I usually understand everything and have slight problems putting it into French because I'm tempted to imitate the English syntax so I know I make French mistakes and I never get great results... After it you get a text from the French press and then translate it into English in 5 minutes (and then dictate it). It was on the Da Vinci Code and all the esoteric plots and mysteries that are popular at the moment so really not too hard but they ask questions at the end and they sort of threw me out of balance with them... So easy but they made me loose confidence so not grand but should counterbalance the first part.
So not so great a day but no absolute disasters.
DAY FOUR
Last day yeayyyyy!!!
Starts by a really scary thing. I get a phone call at 8:15, pick up the phone and hear an official-sounding voice say: "Virginia Fumagalli?" And my heart goes PUMP PUMP PUMP what exams have I missed, it's the jury, there's a huge problem, I've been sacked AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Instead it was my linguistics teacher returning a phone call and wishing me and the my co-examinees good luck!! I still freaked out and called a friend to check I wasn't late or hadn't missed the exam....
So last exam was a very very special thing they invented for us. They give us three documents, one literary excerpt, one document that's more historical like, and one picture. So it can be on ANYTHING at all as long as it's in English (well 16th century English counts as well) and it's sort of related to the English-speaking world. It kind of tests your culture you see. So I'm cool with Shakespeare and contemporaries and with the 19th century and with the early 20th. So that leaves a big gap in the 18 cent yeah? And my documents were all from 1760-1792...obviously. And I suck at French history (you know me you know that, goes along with I suck at geography). And the docs were on the way the British saw the French revolution... obviously.
So I did what I could, which involved a lot of talking fast for them not to remember the beginning of my sentence and pay more attention at the way I was saying things rather than what I was saying and I tried dodging a couple of things and playing with the face of the jury to know if I was going in the right direction or not (very dangerous game)... we'll see how that worked out when I get the grades for all the exams. That'll tell us if I'm a bluffmaster or not :p
Voilà. That was it. And I'll probably remember these days for most of my life. And if I don't this will always be there as a reminder :)
Results on the 18th of July at the latest, and on the 15th -my B-day- at the earliest. I'll keep you posted ;)
# posted by V @ 11:40 AM 
