The Moment of Truth

Today was the moment of truth and I wimped out. Well, I wouldn't say that exactly. I just decided that it would be better not to get a grade for the ENS course. It's only one assignment, they still haven't mentioned it, and since I'd have less than a month to write it (15-20 pages, single spaced, in French about French literary history) and I'm not actually a Normalienne, I figured it would be best not to do it for a grade. I might still write it though - why not, right? It would be fun to write that much in French! But, I don't really have a super in-depth knowledge of French literary history, no matter how many of the books from Justine's list I've read.

Other than that, the class today was still great. We had another guest lecturer who talked about critics of the study of literary history. I really appreciate the French way of looking at things and speaking - as all French professors, this Swiss professor from Geneva arranged his two hour lecture exactly like a dissertation with a problematique, three parts, and in those three parts, he addressed every side of the issue. So, he discussed the opposition of studying literary history, but also discussed their merits and what they were saying that was correct. Obviously, his ultimate conclusion was that the study of literary history is certainly a valid field, but it is much easier to agree with someone who seems to be so rational and open-minded. I mean, it's obviously he didn't agree with these critics, but he had studied them anyway. I really think it makes the final argument much stronger. I hope my professors next year are okay if I write all my papers in the French dissertation style from now on. I just hope the English language can do it justice.

Other than that, I didn't do much today. I saw L'Arnacoeur again so I could write an informed article about it for the second edition of the newspaper (yeah...okay, so I saw it again because I like it a lot!), ate some Mediterranean food with Pierre (M. et Mme De La Taille went out), and finalized my courses for my last year in college and started looking at grad schools - scary stuff. Next semester, I'm taking La France Contemporaine (because a semester in France doesn't count as a semester of contemporary French, apparently), a French literature class on Dumas and Verne (should be great!), Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway (should be interesting), Opinion Writing (unless I can convince the lousy writing seminars secretaries to let me into Advanced Fiction Workshop...), and Complex Analysis (Imaginary Numbers! Yay!). It will be nice to get back to an educational system that I'm completely used to, but I'm going to miss all the French.

Anyway, that's it for tonight - I need to finish writing my first drafts of my articles for the second edition of the newspaper. I've written two and a half and have two and a half more to go (but one of those should be really short).