German woes

[liaku]

I am incredibly frustrated with myself at the moment.  There was one night a while ago where Pages (iWork's equivalent of Microsoft Word) crashed and died on me, and the internet was massively slow so it took me two hours to download a free word processor to use in its place.  Basically, I had lost all of my work for the past five hours since I, like an idiot, didn't save, so I was up late re-doing all of it.

That night I wasn't sure if I had the rough draft of a big essay due for German the next day or two days later since the teacher had been vague.  I threw together something at 3AM anyway just to be safe.  Good that I did, because it was due then.  We got the drafts back today, and I keep telling myself that 1) it's a rough draft, I didn't take it seriously, 2) it was 3AM, I didn't take it seriously, and 3) I was really fucking pissed off and fed up at the time, so I didn't take it seriously, but I'm still really angry with myself at my grade.  The rough draft's only worth 50% of the total grade on the essay, but as it stands, I have a B-.

I'm not sure if I'm more annoyed with myself for getting the grade (which is generous, trust me, there's as many red pen marks on it as there is printed text) or just the massive amount of errors I made.  That I made.  I don't tend to make many errors on things I turn in, even if they're in another language.  In any case, if I get a B+ or higher on the final draft, that'll balance out to a B or more, and that's something I can work up from for the rest of the semester.  We got another paper back, and I had a B+ on that, which also annoys me since that's really low for me as well.  I knew I wouldn't be able to get an A from the start of the semester, but with how I'm standing currently, I think A- might be a massive, perhaps unfeasible, struggle.

Now, I'm going to go finish my Hungarian homework really really fast.  (Hilariously today in German, it was the first time the teacher wanted to collect homework from the workbook, and we'd all gotten into the habit of not bringing out workbook, so the classroom shared a very long ".............."  Now I need to, uh, actually do the assignment, and email it in, but that comes after Hungarian.  It's only 8 sentences for the workbook anyway, but the problem is 1) I don't actually know how to use um...zu and damit [though I at least know weil, which is the other they ask for, though I'm particularly bad with da-compounds, not just damit], and 2) I don't know anything about "den Umweltschutz in den deutschsprachigen Ländern"] so I'm going to have to come up with something after HNGR.)

Comments

[pargoletta.livejournal.com]

Can I be of any remote assistance?

[liaku.livejournal.com]

If you're bored enough to look through my final draft, I'd really appreciate it. I have greenie1980 to look at the second (and knowing me, third) drafts, but unless she develops insomnia or the sun stops moving, I'm pretty sure she'll be dead asleep when I'm doing the final touches. Of course, if you're also across the pond from me, I guess you'd be asleep too. Or alternatively, look through my next rough draft since I think I've already burned most bridges for this one. >.<

(For our current German project though, do you by any chance know any good apocalyptic slogans? Our assignment's to make up our own political party with a platform, and naturally we're an apocalyptic anarchist party running in favor of world destruction in 2012.)

[pargoletta.livejournal.com]

I'm in Chicago.

How long is the draft?

For your slogan . . . how about something like "Timewave Zero NOW!" Short, sweet, easily yellable, looks good on a poster.

[liaku.livejournal.com]

It's actually really, really short for something worth a sizable fraction of my grade. It's supposed to be 300 words, but in my wanting-to-sleepness, I clocked in at 220 or so for my rough, and he didn't notice, so I'd say the final will be about 250-300. The only reason it'd be a painful read is because my German is kinda loltastic.

Ahaha. "Timewave Zero NOW!" amuses me muchly. :P

[pargoletta.livejournal.com]

Well, send it along via PM. I have to take off for office hours and then gamelan practice shortly, so I probably won't get a chance to look at it until later this evening, but I'll give it a look-see.

[liaku.livejournal.com]

Sweet. I don't have class again until Thursday, so I'll probably take until middayish tomorrow before I finish up a final draft. Thanks so much. <3

[valancystar.livejournal.com]

Going by reputation, Germans are super-progressive about environmental protection, recycle better than any other nation (or at least really well) and have a lot of green stuff. Almost always when I find ecologically produced stationery, it's German (random fact from years of letter-writing). So that could get you somewhere to start with, though you'd probably have to look up a bit more information than my vague general knowledge. And since it's German-speaking nations, I don't remember anything about Austrians... Except that they seem very efficient at recycling, too, and you'd run into separate containers for different kind of trash also in public places (whereas we just sort household trash and in the public places it all goes into the same bin, at least usually).

Is the grading system in the US somehow weird so that it's really bad not to get an A in everything, or are you just perfectionist? Because I got less-than-top-grade quite a lot (less often in language classes, admittedly, but still) and I was still considered an excellent student... Getting our equivalent of B- wouldn't have been a big issue for me, especially when there'd be mitigating circumstances like that, but maybe you guys view it differently?

[liaku.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recycling tip. :)

I'm a perfectionist. C means satisfactory, but I think a B is usually the average grade amongst students. I've always maintained straight A's (kinda; I'm still busy pretending my Economics class is not, in fact, on my transcript), so a B- is a hard hit for me since I've never received so low a grade on anything in college before. It's also pretty bad in its own right. For someone less of a perfectionist, it's probably wince-worthy but not anywhere near emo-worthy like how I'm taking it.

ETA: Actually, let me correct that. If you're ambitious (and I am), it's Not A Good Sign for sake of getting into grad school, but not fatal. It could be worse. It could be a C. It could be a course for my major (in which case, it would flat-out be A Bad Sign). And if I have a B- average overall, I'm not eligible for study abroad, which is also bad.

[valancystar.livejournal.com]

I guess our system works a bit differently. We have a 5-point scale, from 1 to 5, and while I've mostly gotten 4s and 5s (which are both considered very good, getting a 4 is already quite something), getting a 3 has never been a shame at all. There have been courses so difficult I've been happy just to pass (ie. get a 1). Then again, here nobody looks at our grades all that much either in most cases, though I think it might matter for getting to be post-grad student, and getting into the exchange place you want is probably a bit easier if you've got 4s and 5s rather than 2s and 3s. We have a ton of courses which count towards your average, one doesn't usually make a huge difference, it's more your general tendency in grades.

Though I've also always been rather lax about the matter of grades, despite the fact that I normally get good ones. I'm more interested in how I'm performing than in grades, and if I know I wasn't (for whatever reason) putting my best effort into something, then I don't expect a good grade either, and just leave it at that. My grade for my final thesis was way below what one would think based on my academic record in general, and I haven't really given a damn. I was just glad to be out of university.