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2007/2009: I want to go to the U.S.

Summer 2009: OMG I am meeting Americans.

2009/2010: OMG those Americans are still my friends. Still want to go to the U.S. but moved my butt to Germany instead.

2010/2011: Back in Paris. Sightly depressed by the weather and the lack of (persistent) social interaction. Or maybe I just don’t have friends. My crazy plans: going back to Germany, working my ass off, being accepted by any American university, and live in the country of superlatives (read: of literally the sweetest food in the world).

2011: Spent two months writing applications, i.e. failed at being productive and eating correctly.. Almost died of imaginary panick attacks. Now wishing to discover a nice email from any American university (yes… I admit I am hopeful a fool). Been upgraded to a, to quote a friend’s dad, Half-bright  inbetween (was invited to an interview with a Fulbright commitee).

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Studying in the U.S. That was my plan… until I developped an irrational attachment to family, friends, fantastic (read: European) food; a sudden and irrational interest for Eastern Asia; a slight allergy to papers and piles of books. Silly brain.

I was in a lift in the company of two adorable women: “Could you please avoid blocking the door? Oho, can you hear me?! I don’t want to have to run through the platform to reach my train, we are already late.”

Note that the train was supposed to leave at 12:43.

Just a foretaste of Paris.

Yes, I know how ironic this post is.

Two years ago

I was naive, I thought my stay in Bonn was an extended summer vacation. My days consisted in attending classes, cooking, procrastinating, meeting up with Sprachtandems, and enjoying my 15 min long walk to uni (which included crossing the Rhine river and thus embracing a breathtaking view, breathing in pollution, taking small paved roads, etc.).

Now

I should start reading for my MA Thesis but I am still stuck with application-related stuff. I live in a neat appartment in the company of spiders. I depend on public transport to go to uni (ok, granted, I am 10 min away by tram , which  is really nothing, but I guess I just love ridiculous self-pity parties). Most of all, I did not have the time to arrive earlier in Bonn to get used to the German way of life. I brought my Parisian stress with me.

A few hours ago

That was til I kicked my arse. Because there are two few people here who appreciate true anale personality.

Editor’s note: Spending 60 dollars on this book is reasonable considering the frequency you may need to refer to this book in your life.

Leading an aimless life and being a loathsome worm.

July, week three, four and five

Spending three weeks in lovely, colourful, and rainy Danmark. Which includes crying whenever I checked the price of Danish books, nodding as if I could understand a conversation in Danish, and being deprived of any answer in Danish though I made the tremendous effort to speak their language.

Semi-related: I learnt how to say “Did you take a poop?” in Japanese (I now know how to say it in seven languages) and watch a Dane swim in the clean yet cold canal of Copenhagen.

August

August started with a disease of the throat (and I am not talking about the Danish language), followed by weeks of brain death. I became dumber and number after reviewing for the GRE and the TOEFL. The only semi-intellectual activity consisted in working on Lithuanian Jews, going to the French National Library to check books, and crying over the fact that I had no life.

September

Put an end to brain death by taking the GRE and the TOEFL. Ran back and forth between Paris and my place to finalywe my application at la Sorbonne and collect various items for an ulterior application to grad schools. Made my last pilgrimage to libraries to copy books I may not have access to in Germany.

Now, the only thing I can hope for is that no shit will happen.

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Revised version on September 29, 2011.

About a year ago, a good friend of mine suggested I should attend another M.A. parallel to my M.Phil. at la Sorbonne: “The Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) provides a real good research training and you will keep an interdisciplinary perspective. Etc.” It sounded alluring so I applied to “Arts and Languages” and got accepted. Then reality hit me in the face.

- I live an hour away from Paris ; wasting about two hours a day commuting is quite a challenge.
- I was told more than once that what I was doing was suicidal difficult, and that many students who started a dual M.A. had to give up one of them.
- My schedule was pretty full: most of my seminars at the EHESS ended at 7pm, meaning I was home at 8pm.
- I had to write a M.Phil. thesis for la Sorbonne and submit a (solid?) M.A. thesis topic proposal for the EHESS. Which means that I (a) spent hours in the library and/or at home trying to focus on books while being sleep drunk, (b) had to bear loud people in the library, (c) dreamt of chocking a couple of loud high schoolers who sneaked into the German Department library, and (d), as the truth must be told, did not have an extended social life.
- Oh, and I don’t drink coffee (except two weeks a year), it gives yellow teeth. Yeah, it would have matched my skin colour, I know.

Given those circumstances, I am very proud to brag say that I made it. How?

- If there is one thing I have learnt from Americans is this very question: “Yeah, why not?” Being a typical French (Parisian?) pessimist, I needed a good mind-framing. Don’t be sensitive to what people think of you or your projects. Focus on those who heartedly lie to you: “Of course, you can do it!”, that is it. In that respect, I wanted to thank each of you who supported my crazy ideas.
- Stay organized no matter what. Always do everything ahead. I was shitting bricks last year because I was badly organized and had been procrastinating, so that I did not use my six months in an efficient way to write my B.A. senior thesis. Plus, I realized too late I would have needed a whole year to write a good one and get more guidance, and most of all, to proof read my German properly. So this year I started reading from September on and allowed myself a month to proofread.
- Break your gigantic work into smaller workloads and set a tight schedule. If you don’t manage to respect it, do EXTRA HOURS. It’s a job, so do it.
- Keep a healthy way of life so that your brain cells remain more or less fresh. You can try to starve yourself every now and then, it makes you think faster (JK).
- No self-pity party.

Also, be aware that your mentors’ guidance is very important. You should pick your mentors carefully depending on their areas of interest (obviously!), but also depending on whether or not they have time for you. You need to meet up regularly so that they can discuss your work, criticize it, and recommend further readings. Bad mentors are the ones who don’t manage (or refuse) to find the time for you, and who barely criticize your work. Those who are psycho-rigid and think *their* way of thinking is the only good one belong to that category too. And yes, it is tedious and unpleasant to be told what you have been writing is not good (or worse), but you better get it demolished now than on the day you submit/defend it.

Informal conversations can also give you surprises. As I have always kept an interdisciplinary perspective, my conversations with a friend in econs and sociology were – still are – highly stimulating in the sense that you would connect ideas which, at first sight, have nothing to do with each other.

By the way, this modest insight applies only if you want to (or try to) go on further in research. It is not about being motivated by a place in a famous institution (even though that must come into consideration) or by high salaries (I honestly think I have “fait vœu de pauvreté” by willing to go on this way), but by topics and problematiques you would like to investigate during years, by new perspectives your own work brings to you (and possibly to other people, as you need FUNDING).

Oh, I forgot. I probably did not talk about it that much, but there is actually a life besides “studying/researching”. Make time for it too.

A more superficial post is coming right after my work is done. If I die meanwhile, I want white roses on my tombstone. And Mon Chéri chocolate. And two Martini bottles. And ‘Bonne Maman’ biscuits. And Nokian winter boots. And a pile of Bill Bryson’s books to keep me company while I am going down to hell. You can also kill yourself and become my BFF in hell (not really, I am misanthropic).

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Definition:

Modesty (n.)

1. A basic and required quality that will serve you if you fail.

2. The step before the I-AM-SO-GOING-TO-BRAG-ANYWAY state.

- trying to convince yourself your piece of shit is the work of a genius
- realizing you do not make sense at all
- realizing you are not a genius… at all
- straining every eye muscle
- damning the German academic language which does not offer the possibility to express the same idea in thirty different ways (we French do have a HUGE choice when it comes to phrasing, mainly in order to hide some intersideral brain void)
- praying that this paper, sent along with your grad school application, will fool professors
- stuffing your face with chocolate every time you are done reading a paragraph
- not getting desperate: ES SOLL UNS DOCH GELINGEN.

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© 2011 The crazy cow

Some people are not sensitive to one’s accent because they are used to hearing so many ones. I suppose English speaking people would fit in this description. *I* personally tend to grant it much importance. Probably because 1) I like to hear some pronunciation varieties, 2) I live in a country I find quite normative and unifying regarding the language (sorry, it’s probably a Parisian point of view?), 3) I am untolerant.

Thing is, I am very sensitive to one’s accent. If your pronunciation differs from the way I like am used to, I can sometimes focus on it so much that I will lose track of what you are saying. I do not know if this is a good or a bad thing. I probably enjoy distinguishing different voice tones, accentuations, pitches etc. But being aware of it, I do not dare speaking if I know I have a strong accent.

It is the case for many French people I know – without generalizing though. When talking about it with non French friends, they tell me they do not care about accents, the most important is to be understood. A Canadian told me that he even thinks French people underestimate their language skills because they are so self-conscious.

AUTO-CRITICS

Another factor of self-consciousness: auto-critics and auto-correction. French people tend to correct each other. It is almost like a game. “WUT? YOU FORGOT TO PUT YOUR VERB IN THE IMPERFECT SUBJONCTIVE!” Kidding aside, I know that French people would systematically and immediately correct each other, suggest words if they see you cannot find the right phrases, etc. It of course depends on the language syntax, but by contrast, German usually let you speak without suggesting a word – from my very humble experience. They started correcting me after I threatened them begged them to do so.

Sorry, I got slightly carried away. The point is (no, there is actually no point), as SM as it sounds, I feel uncomfortable speaking a language and not being systematically corrected. It is like living with the doubt that I may have made a grammar mistake.

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Edit: I am not mentioning the eternal debate of how a language should be possibly taught. French stress the written part, it probably contributes to some self consciousness? Or they start – at least in my old times – emphasizing the oral part when kids become teens, that is at the moment when innocent children turn into idiots who like to laugh at each other: “Why are you always answering to all questions in class, you dork?”

Because, you know, it makes just as much sense as asking a random Christian – a Protestant, for example -, what he thinks about Pope Jean Paul II’s death. (No, the point wasn’t to compare the Pope to Bin Laden.)

Am I the only one who think such questions do promote stupidity?