Text Explication Explication

[started writing this post at] 12:22 am, Saturday night. Here's what I did today:

-woke up --10:30
-worked on a text explication -- 11:00-2:00
-made and ate lunch with my friend Anthony -- 2:30-5:00
-worked on my text explication -- pretty much until I started writing this post

As you can see, it really is a crazy night life here!

But let me give a few reasons why I'm not a total lamo:

1) This is the first Saturday night since I've been in France that I've worked on homework.

2) It was rainy today, not very attractive weather for going out and about. Plus, a strike on the tram has made the times rather irregular. Yesterday there was no tram at all, in fact, resulting in more people on foot, on bike, and in their cars than I've ever seen in Montpellier.

3) This text explication is due on Tuesday. I started writing at 11:00 today (see bullet item 2).

4) Apparently I have to write this thing in French. Go figure. It requires a lot of time because first of all, I have to look words up, and secondly, when I look words up I start getting curious about other words and expressions and start looking things up that have nothing to do with my paper.

Despite those four very good reasons I'm not a lamo, there still remains the fact that I worked on this paper for over ten hours today, and still haven't finished. This reminds me a little bit of the time I wrote a paper for my metaphysics class about how time might not exist. I pretty much locked myself in my room in the Duvall basement, just reading, thinking, writing. Naturally, treating the nonexistence of time and all, I lost track of time as I worked, and even started to forget about meals. And since I have the habit of running my hand through my hair when I'm reading or thinking deeply -- which poofs up my fro wall-socket style -- I emerged from my lair looking and feeling much like a mad scientist.

Today wasn't quite so drastic. The subject matter, after all, is a fairy tale by Charles Perrault.

Sadly I hadn't known the name Perrault before I started taking this class. He wrote versions of many famous fairy tales -- Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Blue Beard, and others. And if any of you ever have a question concerning the 30 or so lines of "Le Petit Poucet" beginning at "La nuit vint" and ending at "si vous voulez bien l'en prier," I am the man to ask. Text explications don't really exist in the US. In fact, I don't think they really exist anywhere besides France. It's a literary analysis paper, but one that has to follow a passage (of no more than 30 lines) in a linear manner and focus with extreme precision on its composition. Sometimes I feel ridiculous taking notes in my literature classes, because a professor can spend a one-and-a-half hour lecture on a two-page passage. Of course, there's probably no better way to learn the intricacies of the French language than to do such a close reading, whether for native or non-native speakers.

I hope I didn't convey up there that I was complaining about writing the explication. I've really enjoyed doing it so far. Believe it or not, this essay will be the very first assignment I will have turned in this semester. There's been other homework (admittedly not very much), but we never have to turn it in. (It's the strangest thing, too: the professor will ask who has done the homework, and sometimes less than half the class raises their hands. The students don't try to fool anybody; they just sit there unassumingly, listening to their headphones or talking to their neighbors. And the teachers don't seem to care all that much, either. It's mind-boggling! And, sadly, rather contagious. It's hard not to assume that je m'en fous attitude when over half the class isn't doing the work.) So go ahead and congratulate me: after two months of classes, I'm finally turning in my first assignment!

I actually have several assignment due in the next few weeks. I need to complete or at least get a start on a commentary paper on a work by Rilke, an essay on the poetry of mourning of Philippe Jaccottet, a document analysis for my Geography of France class, and an oral presentation on a topic of my choice related to Spinoza's Ethic.

Well, I just wanted to put up a post on here before going to bed, and I also wanted to write in a language where expressions come easily to me. Recently I've decided to step up my language acquisition a bit: I'm journaling only in French, reading only in French (except for those emails and letters my friends and family keep sending me. Agh! Enough's enough already!), and trying to think and pray only in French. So this blog is a bit of a haven.

Before I couche myself, as some of my Anglophone friends are fond of saying, I should say that I found out last night that I was rehired as an RA for next year. I will be in East Hall, the newest (and easternmost) dorm on campus, having opened just last year. It'll be somewhat of a shift going from French dorms, which have no RA and where people often have wine or beer or vodka or anything else they please with their dinner, to Whitworth dorms. But don't get me wrong -- I am so excited to be RAing it up next year. (And if you're an incoming freshman to Whitworth and you're going to be living on my hall next year: No, I don't drink wine or beer or vodka or anything else that I please, and I never will. Good.)

Well if you've learned anything in reading my post, I hope it's a basic concept of a French text explication. And if I've learned anything, it's that I probably shouldn't write blog posts after midnight, especially if I've been in my room for over ten hours. Wow. I think this post is proof that I'm closer to mad-scientist status than I thought. I'm off to bed now -- church in the morning and early afternoon, and then back to my friend Charles.