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: university
Episode Seventy Seven – Even More on Writing
I’ve been quite quiet lately because I’ve been “busy”. For me, that means oscillating between periods of utter apathy, Words with Friends and alarming quantities of snacking; and moments where all the important things I must achieve put so much pressure on me that I work frantically on one whilst feeling guilty that I’m not doing the others. If you look over my shoulder and observe me typing up an email to a translator, politely asking how one enters into the specialty of translating cookbooks (my current life goal), you can be sure your nose is brushing the angel that sits there screaming in my ear, ‘you have two essays to write this month what use is it knowing how to get a job if you fail your degree because you were too busy jobhunting to study you imbecile‘. Yet, when I am studying, the angel decides this would be the perfect time to take the entrance exam for the internship I applied for last week, and criticises me for being too much on-paper and not enough on-the-ball.
Filed under Scotland, Uncategorized
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
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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
Saturday Spotlight Seven – On Bucket Lists (Part B)
What’s up, everyone! How are those reverse bucket lists going?
As I mentioned last time, I don’t actually take objection to the idea of writing a list of goals. It’s a good way of staying focused, keeping your priorities prioritised and reminding yourself what you’re saving up all those pennies for. Yes, listing your goals is great: maybe you just don’t make one called 500 Things To Do Before I Die. That’s just setting yourself up to be overwhelmed, disoriented and, ultimately, unsuccessful.
So, I’m keeping my own list short, relevant and to the point. I have more than my usual five for you today, but significantly fewer than 500! These are all the things I want to achieve during my semester in Strasbourg.
Filed under France, Saturday Spotlight
Episode Forty Four – The Juggler Who Couldn’t Catch
It’s true – during my last couple of years of high school, this was what they called me.
My group of friends was something of an offshoot from the main clamour of students. Most of us were not part of the ‘elite’ classes you always find in secondary education; nor, I like to believe, were we looked upon as nerds or outcasts (for the most part). For the lack of a more universally-accurate description of us, we were generally known simply as ‘The Jugglers’. I think I started going to Duncan’s Juggling Club in my fourth year, and I learned a few new skills, made a few new friends, and achieved my original goal of operating in the same circles as the boy I liked, back in the day.
Give me three hacky sacks, apples, clubs even; and I’d be able to knock your socks off with 3-ball cascades, inverse tosses, showers or even the occasional flash. But throw a projectile my way with as much warning as you please, and I would miss it every time. It’s not difficult to see why they called me the juggler who couldn’t catch. Continue reading
Filed under Costa Rica
Episode Thirty Five – Something New: Something Old.
Today I’m going to do something new with this blog: I’m going to post something old. Old pictures, to be precise. Not all of them are very old, but they all seem very much as though they’re from my past now. So this post will mostly be pictures and not many words: something new indeed! I was just looking back at all the pictures in my iPhoto library today, and feeling proud of my life up until now. Here are some photographs that made me stop and think ‘Well done us’.
Filed under Uncategorized
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


