So, Masters degrees are stressful. There’s a lot to learn and only one year to learn it – and when the subject at hand is a skill like conference interpreting, a year seems like an impossibly short amount of time to pick it up. But I’ve been progressing well enough, and at the mock conferences we’ve been running these past few weeks I’ve really surprised myself with how much better I do when a) I’m interpreting a live speaker as opposed to a recording, and b) there’s an audience sitting there and actually relying on me to understand what is being said. The good news: That’s exactly what interpreting is like in a professional setting. The bad news: It’s not what it’s like in the final exam. All in all though, I’m feeling pretty confident.
Tag Archives: French
Episode Seventy Four – On Writing
Well, that was an intense semester.
Aside from my written and spoken language requirements, I’ve had a literature module each for French and Spanish, and they have been fantastic. Especially the Spanish one. The Spanish Newspaper Column By Writers was perfect for a blogger, as the assessed coursework was not an essay but rather two of our own newspaper columns, our handling of which was supposed to be indicative of our understanding of the column as a literary genre; being a blogger helped me to compose these assignments, and composing the assignments was useful for my blogging, too. Not just the assignments, in fact, but the course in general: I learned a great deal from the module, not only in terms of Spanish literature but much more generally as well. Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Episode Sixty Six – First Days Stateside
It’s been a while since I’ve been in America, and even longer since I’ve been to Grant’s family home. Because of my world travels, he’s been visiting me in my various homes around the globe for the past year or so; first in Costa Rica last summer, then in Scotland at Christmas, and finally again in France in the spring. I spent about a week with him in Akron last October but never made it to his home town in that short time, so all told it’s been about fifteen months since I’ve been here.
And things have changed since then! The family room has received a beautiful makeover and the gazebo’s been updated too; the first thing I noticed, though, was that Grant’s younger brother has moved into the other room in the basement where his sister used to live. Her absence was sorely missed that first evening when I went to take my shower and found that, in place of her usual array of products carrying such names as ‘Rose Garden’ and ‘Moonlight Whisper,’ I was offered only a single choice of shower gel: ‘Power Stick‘. Continue reading
Filed under America
Saturday Spotlight Twenty – Things I’ll Miss
Well, well, well. Look what we have here: the last day of my year abroad. Weird, huh? Especially for those of you who have been following my journey since before I left home for Costa Rica last July. I’m feeling a little sad to be leaving the semester (and the year) behind – but also eager to get started on the next stage of my life: my final year of university and a great job! (At least, I’m confident that it’ll be great, though I haven’t started yet).
Filed under France, Saturday Spotlight
Episode Twenty Five – Goodbye, America
The other part of my spring trip I want to tell you about is our egg-dyeing session. Of course. As I’ve mentioned, Grant has an account of our D.C. trip in the pipeline, and while I’d love to tell you the whole story from my perspective too, I don’t really think anyone cares so much about those three days to require two separate accounts. Plus, I might have a shot at finally getting this blog up to date if I let him take this one. Continue reading

