First of all, I didn't have my exam that I was supposed to have yesterday. Literally at midnight the night before I got an e-mail from the professor saying that he had a conflict and would have to move the exam date. I like the professor well enough, though I was a bit frustrated since he had set the date, and we had decided on it nearly three weeks ago. Also, since I don;t start studying at midnight the night before an exam, usually, I had already put a lot of effort into memorizing details and stuff for his exam over the course of the last two days. Therefore all that effort is basically pointless. Not entirely, but really close because I will have to go through all my studying again, and I definitely felt that I was ready to take that exam. Oh well, what can I do. Now I take it literally right after I get done getting spanked by my 3 hour Chinese exam next week. Woot!
However, I am in an extremely chipper mood because I totally totally rocked rocked rocked my oral exam for Management International. I was given ten minutes to prepare for a ten minute "exposé" which is the French term for I guess "informative presentation of viewpoint" basically, you could have presentation on how a certain printer works (shouts to Dad!!!) but you couldn't have an exposé on how a printer works. Therefore basically all scholastic presentations are called in French, exposés. Anyway, I thought that seemed like it was going to be difficult because I knew that ten minutes to prepare would be so short, but ten minutes of talking would be so long. (I had my oral commentary from high school as a reference - and we were given twenty minute of prep for a 10-15 minute commentary, and that was in our first language!!) Also I brought up my concern at the lunch table yesterday and Margot said that usually students have 30 minutes of prep for a 10 minute exposé, so I am just not sure why he only gave me, a foreign student, 10. So knowing that this would likely prove to be difficult, especially since I wouldn't know the subject until right before, I opted for the Ellen Full-Blown-Memorization Technique, in which I literally could recite to you about 10-15 minutes of the skeleton of the material that the teacher had presented in class. In other words I put a logical order to the information, and then just memorized and made it coherent. I figured that at least that way if I had no clue how to directly respond to his question I could indirectly cover all the highlight of his course in an attempt to impress him. haha. I can list the 5 determining factors in the attractiveness of a foreign country, including the 4 types of distance, The 6 reasons why more and more companies are going international, the 3 personalized choices that enterprises make when they have decided to go abroad which includes the 4 different strategies for attacking an international market and the Ricardo and Heckscher-Ohlin Theories, the 7 stages involved in going international, the internal (3) and external (4) factors that affect the speed of those stages, the 3 types of decentralization as related to going international, the 7 dynamics that are found more frequently in the world thanks to globalization, and the 3 types of disinvestment in a foreign country, AND, I am quite capable of providing examples, implications, and further knowledge for each of the above ideas.But yeah, I am pretty sure that sums it up (I have only practiced reciting them like a hundred times in the last 24 hours).
Either way my technique served me well because I had a general sort of question that I could respond to in using my abundant lists. I used all of my ten minutes and would have liked more (I literally just got through writing as many of the list factors as possible) because I knew I would speak more coherently if I didn't have to try to think of the list items. I didn't finish but he said to begin so I did. And I really did well. I spoke quite coherently, made a point, responded to his question with an opinion (instead of a weaker mix of both yes and no) and even made him laugh by making up a vocabulary word - don't worry, it was the kind of word that you understand easily, like what a kid would say because they haven't learned all the words yet so they use the rules to invent. This word just didn't follow the rules. Overall, I would define that as about as successful an exposé as possible and I am very satisfied. He did also ask me some questions at the end and I was able to respond quite well. Also, I didn't have a time piece on me (and no clock in the room) but I would say that I did speak for about 10 minutes, and with questions we probably spoke for around 15-20? I don't know... but I'll say it again, either way I'm happy.
In one hour I'll be heading out to do a cooking thing with Nicole, which should be a lot of fun, I am quite looking forward to it!
Also, in case you have lost your calendar, it is officially one week until David joins me in France! Woohoo! We are both terribly busy with school and whatnot, but in one week he arrives and we celebrate his arrival and my going away party in my shipping container. Well have a great day I am off to get some other work done!
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