Peace of Mind

For some reason, every time a professor asks to speak with me after class I get slightly nervous. I have no explanation for this, because I can't think of a single instance in which a prof asking to talk to me has meant anything bad. So when Prof Torvik asked me to wait after class today my first reaction was "but I was going to walk with my 'cousin'" followed shortly by, "what did I do?" I worry about everything though, even when I know there is no reason to worry. And in fact, talking to her gave me greater peace of mind today. I got tapped for a project. A project that will count toward my study points for next spring. Awesome.

Euroweek is a forum for building international cooperation between students, mostly in Europe, but the project I will be working on was proposed by a professor from Columbia. Six students from three countries investigate a topic and give a 45 minute presentation and create some sort of display and write a short paper. Then they get judged. Getting a special project might send me into a panic, no matter how cool it is. Because I have my big ugly thesis paper to write. And I haven't gotten started organizing the thesis into something that might eventually become a paper. Or done anything more than some preliminary research. And I panic about everything. But I feel pretty good about all this right now, because I also got some more information on my spring courses today.

My Euroweek project will count for 5 of my 30 study points in spring. My thesis will get to take up 5 more of my required points. Yay! I get time to work on my thesis. And I'm an impetus to get another program that the school has been wanting to do started. The international office has been wanting to try to get foreign students (this might just mean the American exchange students, I'm not sure) who have studied Norwegian previously into regular Norwegian classes, but with a lower competition level. The literature class that St Olaf's and I have been following as an independent study has been a proving ground for the project, so in the spring I'll be taking the other half of this class as a more integrated student, earning 10 study points instead of just 5.* And my independent study points remain available for my thesis work. Things are still not settled at all, but if this all works out it makes some things easier and everything more interesting. The Euroweek project will be a great thing for preparing for grad school, and hopefully help me get in to a good grad school as well.

*The class I am in now is lit before 1900, the spring class is after 1900. Both classes are covering credits that I need for honors in scan studies major.