Confession is good for the soul, or so I've heard

This week started out pretty good but has since headed straight into the crapper. On Monday, I got some good work in for some school stuff, and then I went to class. I had given my presentation the week before, so there wasn’t anything traumatic waiting for me there. Or so I thought.

I may have told this story before, but one semester, while some classmates and I were waiting for an exam to start, one girl suddenly realized she hadn’t turned in a paper for a class the previous semester. What a way to start a test, right? Guess what happened to me in class on Monday? While the teacher was droning on about sentence constituents, I remembered that I was supposed to do a make-up presentation for a master’s colloquium I took last semester. Our department was one professor short that semester, so 2 classes worth of students were crammed into one class, and there were not enough presentation slots to go around. So those of us who got the shaft were supposed to arrange to do it this semester. *Supposed* to. *sigh*

This is a course we are supposed to have completed before we can apply to take our master’s exams/write our master’s theses, so I had a horrible sinking feeling beyond the normal self-recriminations for being so disorganized. This whole debacle feels like the pigeon-poop icing on the cow-patty cake that has been my education in Germany. I am going to go talk to the professor on Thursday to see if I can salvage what’s left of my dignity and school career.

I have felt extra-scatterbrained ever since Monday afternoon. Small things slip by me all the time, but I eventually manage to get them done. Today, I wanted to work on my laptop while holding my office hour in the English Department, only I left the cable at home, so I could only work for about 55 minutes. I neglected to go to the post office, and I totally forgot to write Hannah an excuse for her school-absence yesterday. That didn’t help either. She woke up with a tummy ache and promptly barfed (just a little). I could have sent her to school, but it is hard to tell with her whether a little barfing first thing is a cure for what’s bothering her or just a preview of what’s to come.

So having her at home yesterday and my bummed-out-ness over my presentation weren’t very conducive to any sort of effort at anything on my part. I was the sluggy-est slug to ever get addicted to Cake Mania on the Nintendo DS.

But today I vow to do better. I came home from my only partially successful morning in town and started hacking away at some of the household-y stuff I have been needing to do. Hannah should be home any minute, so after I get her fed and started on homework/amusement, I need to work on a heavy edit of an article one of my professors sent me. Just reading over the first paragraph made me want to beat my head against my laptop, but I shall perservere!