Balance

Bonjour mes amis,

Purpose. That was the word a woman once gave me to focus on. I don't know how she knew I needed a purpose, as I only saw her for a few hours out of my whole life and I never really spoke with her, but she was soooo right. That was probably one of (if not the) hardest year(s) of my life, and I still think about it pretty often today.

Success. This is my motivation, the concept of being successful. It is my reason for living and pressing on, no matter the circumstance. More for me than for other people I know, because my family is quite unsuccessful. My mother, father, and step-father are high school drop outs, my half-brother and brother are high school drop outs. My sister graduated high school, but failed out of college and has lived in her fiancé's parents' basement ever since. She has no job. I WILL make it farther than them. Let them laugh after I've gone and made myself who I want to be.

Balance. This is a new word I found today. I'm a hopeless romantic, when someone catches my eye, I get tunnel vision. Which kind of takes away from the concept of "success" and "purpose" especially with the guy I've had feelings for for a long while now, because he's one of those people you can just totally be yourself around and they always make you happy. However, no one can be happy with just one area of their life, you have to work on your work/schooling, your family life, that sort of thing. Oddly I have to thank Yahoo's horoscope for this word (and even Weird Al, since he prompted me to go check what my horoscope was).

So here's my effort to balance:

School starts on September 7th, and I have put a lot of thought into AP French and the things I need to do and work on, etc. But I need an actual plan. I'm an organized person, but I'm a lazy person, and without a plan I know things will fall apart by the second or third month of school. So you, my lucky readers, get a post filled with fluff you probably don't care about whatsoever. But if you do, feel free to comment or add suggestions!

[Week One]

9/7/10 (Tues) - Nothing. Use today to chat with people you haven't seen in ages since you're not going to after today. HW: After school, visit Mme Hanson, ask for the textbooks she mentioned.

9/8/10 (Wed) - Scan through textbooks for ideas on weekly vocab lists, begin HW. HW:Create 30 lists. Due Mon.

9/9/10 (Thurs) - Review tenses! Passé Composé (participes passés irréguliers), imparfait, conditionnel, subjuctif, futur, imperative, reflexive verbs HW:Create 30 lists. Due Mon.

9/10/10 (Fri) - Review lui/leur/en/y, conjugations of avoir, aller, etre, faire. HW:Create 30 lists. Due Mon.

[Week Two]

9/13/10 (Mon) - Go over conjugations of List 1 (present, p.c., imparfait, futur, conditionnel) & make some flash cards using them. Review other areas again based on need/time. HW: Print out 1 news article en francais (France/Quebec/Other).

9/14/10 (Tues) - Review List 1 flash cards. Spend hr in labs chatting onSharedTalk/LiveMocha. HW: LiveMocha complete lesson.

9/15/10 (Wed) - Review List 1 flash cards. Read article 1... a) WITHOUT resources b) looking up main words essential for understanding c) any other words you do not recognize. Summarize en Francais. HW:LiveMocha complete lesson

9/16/10 (Thurs) - Review List 1 flash cards. Search French About (Quebec!). HW: None.

9/17/10 (Fri) - Review List 1 flash cards. Journal 1 about your week en francais. HW: Watch a film in French you have already seen, without subtitles.

Basically each week during my open period I'm going to learn another list of vocabulary, read a news article switching off where it's from (France/Quebec/Other) each week, mix in other activities like chatting online with native French speakers in the computer lab, and end each week writing a journal using every vocab word I used. I'll be exposing myself to French music and movies as often as possible, and once I get a webcam I'll be able to practice speaking French more than just reading the paragraphs at LiveMocha to work on pronunciation.. What I do work on for actual speaking French will be at home. I'm too self conscious to do that at school.

Also, by the third week I should have my book, The Story of French, which I'll give myself a couple days each week to read it. It's in English but it should still be interesting, and hopefully I can get some French or bilingual books for Christmas since it's really only a few months into the school year. :)

Now that I'm sure you've either left my blog or fallen asleep...

À demain,

Mlle Delphine