Study

Oh, right, I forgot, there is a "study" in "study abroad." For a while there I was thinking it would just be spending too much money on awesome weekend trips and going out with people in the evenings and living 45 minutes away from the beach.

A few days ago I was finally hit with the reality that I will be taking classes here, half of them are meant for native French-speakers, which means it is rather hard for me.

Going to classes here is exhausting in a way I never experienced at the UW. Don't get me wrong, I've had to pinch myself awake a few times in class, but here...

Suddenly my eyelids gain 50 pounds (perhaps at's all the bread and cheese) and I just cannot, for the life of me, keep my head up to take my half French half English half scribbles notes. It just takes so much more mental effort to focus and translate and write at the same time, that by the time I get back to my dorm I don't want to do anything but eat and sleep.

But I tell myself to stop, sit down at my prison-desk, and get some work done. And somehow, between looking for hostels and trains in Dublin, trying to plan my long weekend, responding to emails, writing my to-do list, thinking about what bills I have to pay and when I have to go grocery shopping, and "making dinner" (i.e. opening a can, gross)...I end up sitting there for four hours doing...something, but not my homework. And then it's 1:00 am, I'm too tired to focus, and I have not done anything.

One of my classes, history, has an oral final. At the end of the semester, I will walk into a classroom, the professor will ask my a single question which I will answer in French that would make Napoleon cry. 20 minutes later I will exit, and my grade will be determined.

Crisis number one. I stressed for days and days over whether I should take that class or an international econ class. Yes, the econ would have probably been a smarter choice, and from my use of past tense here you can probably deduce that I chose history. The econ class had a midterm the week after our 10-day break, for which I will be in Ireland and England so...

At the same time the history prof seems incredibly nice to us poor Americans, so I kept it.

Crisis number two. My other class. The class I thought was going to be a breeze, there was no question I was taking it.

I was wrong, it's really hard. It would have been nice if the professor had hinted at that the first week, or just not skipped the second lecture. Lectures here are once a week, and I had until the end of week two to decide what I want to take.

I was so scared I would screw myself over. And look at that, I screwed myself over.

I'm not trying to sound like a slacker here, but while I'm here I want to travel, I want to enjoy my time, meet some French people, go out. When I get back home I have Task Force waiting for me, that'll be more than enough stress. Then there'll be trying to decide what to do after I graduate, which...oh boy, don't get me started on that.

I'm not going to lie...I expected school to be sort of easy here. Judgement fail.

And so, here I am. I may or may not have broken down a total of six times in the past 24 hours, I need to go food shopping unless I want air for dinner, and I need to somehow get through what I estimate to be 150 pages of reading, try to plan a trip to Germany, find a place to stay in London, do my laundry, clean my room and do my dishes.

In conclusion... not a good week.