Monday, Monday, Monday

This week is going to make me stronger, because it's certainly not gonna kill me! It's funny how being in a foreign country and doing all of my work in another language has made me appreciate English more.

In the next several days, I will be completing the second and the third French-formatted composition of my life - the first one being an essay that my teacher saw fit not to grade beyond pass/fail for completion. French compositions at their very heart are based on logic. If you make one point, you should acknowledge the opposing view and state why that view is not the argument posed in your essay. It makes sense, of course, to write that way. As my teacher put it, if you show up to a debate without expecting the opposition, you are not equipped to make your own arguments (see every political debate ever).

My dilemma here is that I am writing about literature. What can one possibly do to deny me my right to read a text how I see fit to read it? Honestly, if I write something, I want my readers to read the work in their own way, and that generally doesn't involve picking apart every metaphor and saying, "This section relates to **'s desire to break free of social constraints" and other such literary mumbo-jumbo. But I am a good student of literature, and I secretly enjoy attributing things to authors that they probably didn't intend. I just prefer doing it in a language I fully understand, using my own logical structure.

In France, even the composition is policed. They say that we have issues. Well, at least we teach our students to write essays however they please! There's no real art to writing something using a form for the first time. It's like the first time I tried to write a sonnet. Any self-respecting Shakespearean scholar would have told me in a heartbeat that the metrical feet were wrong in several lines and I had the whole blank verse concept out of proportion in a few places. We've all got to start somewhere.

Here's the point. It's Monday; it's rainy and cold outside. All I want to do is cuddle on my bed and write a story about an American student in Paris who doesn't want to write her essay but who meets some mysterious  Welshman in the metro, and they fall madly in love... Ok, so I'm just being evasive. I think I just wanted to blow off some of my creative steam. The French certainly understand that! If you don't believe me, you should really be looking at this passage from Balzac.