Incoherent Scribblings

Well, it is September first, so that means it is Goal Day!

As a reminder, my August goals were:

Continue to stitch at least 90 minutes a day.
** Once again, I more or less met this goal in August. I say more or less because in the beginning of the month I had no problem meeting it. However, since I started school again I haven’t been as successful in meeting it. During the past couple of weeks I have just been trying to stitch every day and not worry about how long I do it. **

Finish EMS RR. (Aug 10 post date)
** Yep. I finished up “Darth Maul,” got him mailed out, and received the next installment of the EMS RR all within the first few days of August. **

Finish Stitching Bloggers’ RR. (Sept 1 post date)
** Yep. I finished up my teapots and mailed them off to Cathy on Tuesday. **

Start my exchanges. (Sept 12 and 30 post dates)
** Yep. I started my exchanges. The stitching on the needleroll will be done later tonight and the Halloween exchange was almost done until I changed my mind about what I wanted to stitch. **

Continue with “Passing Admirers.”
** I did work some more on it, but put it aside in favor of the exchanges. Unfortunately, with my new schedule I don’t think I will get it done by September 10 as I had originally hoped, but as soon as the exchanges are done I will focus on it again. **

If I have time, stitch pansy #6 on “Stiefmütterchen,” my SAL with Susie.
** I had time and I got pansy #6 done. **

Re-think my rotation in order to better incorporate my obligation stitching.
** I did this as well. I solicited some advice on the Rotation Stitchers’ BB and came up with a plan that worked. **

In September I hope to:

1.) Stitch a little bit every day.
** Since I am back in school, I am no longer going to give myself a time minimum to stitch. I will be satisfied if I just get some stitching in every day! **

2.) Finish my exchanges and mail them out on time. (Sept 12 and 30 post dates)

3.) Finish the cross stitching on “Passing Admirers.”

That’s it for September, but since I am busy doing other things now I am sure that will be enough!

Today’s post is brought to you by Expatica.com!

When I finished my Master of Science Degree in Library and Information Science in 1999, it was never meant to be my final degree. I had always planned to eventually get my Master of Arts Degree in English and perhaps one day my doctorate. I figured I would have to do it part-time, but it was part of my long-term plans.

Well, a lot of things happened between 1999 and 2005 that I had never anticipated (moving to Germany being one of those things) and though my plans to go back to school had been put on hold, they always remained.

I spent the first year that I was here in Germany attending intensive German language classes four hours a day, five days a week. At the beginning of that first year, I planned on taking the German language proficiency exam once I completed the final level of language classes and then going to the university the following fall.

If truth be told, I did make remarkable progress in that year: I went from being almost completely unable to communicate in German to being able to speak, understand, and even read and write it pretty well.

However, I underestimated how much stamina learning German at such an intense pace would take out of me. I worked very hard the first half of the year: I got great grades and even jumped directly from beginning level 3 to middle level 2. But by the second half of the year I was so tired of learning German that my attention span began to wane. Once I got to the final level (Oberstufe) I could barely drag myself out of bed in the morning, let alone crack the books at night.

I began to realize that I really didn’t want to study English literature anymore and I wasn’t sure what else I might want to study. I wasn’t all that interested in going to the university at that point, I felt like I needed a break, and as a result, when it came time to sign up for the proficiency exam, I didn’t do it. I decided that I could take the test at a later time if I changed my mind about going to university.

For the next two years I thought off and on about going to the university and starting from scratch in computer science, linguistics, or both. As luck would have it though, I always had these thoughts in the middle of the semester and since I didn’t have that little piece of paper saying that I was proficient in German, I knew I wouldn’t get very far if I tried to enroll.

But a few weeks ago, I came to the conclusion that I am now definitely ready to go to the university. Unfortunately, I also realized that even though I took German lessons through Oberstufe, my German was no where good enough for me to get in this fall.

However, since something also told me that this was undeniably the right decision for me, I decided that in order to get into the university next fall it was time for some long-term planning.

The first step in the process is, of course, to pass that language proficiency exam. So from now until sometime next spring, I am back in the classroom working on perfecting my German skills because when the time comes for me to take the TestDaF (Test of German as a Foreign Language), I don’t plan on just passing it, I plan on acing it!