Hell Week- CONQUERED!

Woo hoo!



My hell week: an exam in Latin American literature, an oral presentation in group for sociology, and an exam in Spanish grammar....defeated!!



The beginning of last week was really rocky. For my literature exam I was especially freaking out because honestly I'd only read about a quarter of the material that was assigned...my excuse, and yes I know it is an excuse, is that all of it was SOO boring. The first book that we had to read was Christopher Columbus' diary, in which the first 40 pages were merely "today we headed west, we went about 25 leagues, but we only wrote down 22, later in the day there was calm so we didn't get that far" and repeated for almost every entry!! Torture to get through, and all of the following readings were still about La Conquista, letters by Hernan Cortes, Fray Bartolome de las Casas...all of it so similar, that it was so hard to get through, that honestly I didn't read it.

Our professor told us that our test was going to be very specific, the first part identification, she's going to pull out a quote, and we have to identify the text, the author, and write a small paragraph of the significance of the quote to the story!!! and the second part an essay with textual evidence backing up our claims. So the night before the exam realizing how much I needed to catch up on I was almost in tears, realizing that i messed up because for this class its only a midterm and an exam and a paper, and I was positive that I was going to fail. Test day came I felt a little better after studying and making flash cards with all of the readings, authors and summaries that i could come up with from memory, and what I got from the class discussions. I recieved the test and felt better because I knew more than I thought I knew...ha ha. So I recieve my grade for my test next class...whenever that is...So i'll let you all know how it went in the next blog.



Next on Wednesday was my presentation in Sociology about Delincuency and Poverty. This presentation was in a group, we've had it since the beginning of the semester. There are three of us, we divided the work that I was going to talk about Latin America, another girl about PR, and another girl on the global level. We pretty much worked on our parts independently, until the day we were supposed to email the presentation to the professor. We set up to meet at Borders Sunday at 9 am. So I had to be out the door at 7:30 to make it on time, because I didnt want to be late, and you never know the bus situation, especially on the weekend. Well I get off the bus exactly at 9, walk around to find Borders, I get there, and no one is there, AND Borders doesn't even open until 10. So I'm not freaking out yet, I got get some breakfast at a sandwich shop thats close by, and when I come back to Borders I text my group mates if they're still coming, and they reply yes. Around 10:15 I get a phone call from one of the girls saying they're going to meet at a Borders in a different Plaza. When I told her I was already here and it would take me like 3 hours to get over there, she was confused as to why I was there already. I kindly reminded her that we had said we were going to meet at 9 AM! So then she told me that the other girl said she couldn't get out of church in time, so that they set up to meet at 11AM instead, the catch is NEITHER CALLED ME!!! At that point I was heated, cause it was so early I didn't have someone to call to vent. So they rushed over to where I was, and we put the pieces of the presentation together. We were running against the clock because apparently because of some accident, all Borders have taken out all outlets in their stores, so we had the battery on our computers, and that was it, but luckily it was enough, and we finished just as the computers shut down on us. ha ha
Presentation day was pretty nerve wracking, especially with one of my groupmates stressing that she HAD to look over my part to correct my grammar. In the end, we rocked the presentation, the professor said we did a good job. Yes, I stumbled on some words because I was nervous but it wasn't crippling, and I'm actually pretty proud of myself for accomplishing it.

Thursday's exam, I thought was a piece of cake. Especially after studying the night before with my fellow exchange buddies, playing jeopardy with the flash cards that I made.

I can't be sure... but I'm think this is going to be a good semester GPA wise. On my first exam for Sociology I got a 99, I got an 85 on my first exam in my Spanish Writing class, where there was no A's on the exam, and I got totally embarrassed when my professor called me out for going above and beyond because I'm American and actually did well on the exam (ha ha). Once I get these results back then I'll have a better idea for sure, but its exciting :)

That is if we can get the grades...theres a lot of revolutionary stuff going on around here, that I'll get into more in another blog. But for now I shall bid farewell, and get ready for my roadtrip to Mayaguez and Ponce during the week off that we have due to striking issues. Until next time!!!

~Cat