Overcoming Finals Week Frenzy . . . by thinking about grammar?

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I'll bet you're thinking that I didn't make my full quota of postings, and you'd be right if it weren't for Dr. Toffee.  I asked her if I could add the last four I was missing on the due date, and she said it was okay as long as I got them in by this Thursday, when we are finishing our final exam.  My problem was that two of my classes had both final exams and projects due last week (why they did this, I don't know), so I got behind.  This week I only have my English final, which is working out great for me.  Anyway, before last week I took some time to read a few things, including The Paris Lawyer by Sylvie Granotier.  My reaction doesn't have much to do with the plot, characters, or even the setting.  It's about grammar (I know-- I never thought I would react to grammar, of all things).

I don't know how other people feel about this, but I absolutely loathe fiction that is written in the present tense (for example, "Catherine can see a stand of trees behind the house").  I can't forget that I am reading and just lose myself in the story.  It feels to me as if I'm hearing somebody discuss the story rather than telling it, and this is even more true now, after writing my critical analysis paper where we had to use what Toffee calls "the literary present tense."  So, this was my problem with Granotier's book.  It seemed like a critique of what I would call a real novel.  All the way through I was debating whether or not I should give up on it, which doesn't make for a fun experience.

Strangely enough, the present-tense thing did not bother me much with The Hunger Games, once I started reading it.  It was kind of obvious that Collins was using it because Katniss is the narrator and that meant that telling it in the past tense would eliminate any suspense about whether or not she survives in the end, but I'm not so sure that it would have mattered to most of the people reading it if the book had been in the past tense.

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What are fairy tales for, anyway?

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The final exam essay question seems harder already:  we have to analyze the fairy tale (it's called The Three Ravens, and we won't see the video until Wednesday!) using a critical model (Toffee is absolutely obsessed with critical models) from the handout she gave us last week.  The handout is a short reading by Bruno Bettelheim, who apparently was a very controversial guy.  I get most of what he's saying, I think, but without knowing The Three Ravens, I'm not sure what I can apply to the story.  She showed us Hans My Hedgehog (it's kind of a Beauty-and-the-Beast story) yesterday, which was pretty weird, and I figured out a few things from the handout that could apply to that.
For one thing, Hans's father doesn't love him, which is why Hans leaves home.  I can see where a kid whose father is kind of cold might get some help from the story, since we find out that the father realizes he cares about his son after he leaves AND since Hans does live happily ever after in the end.  The story also shows that you have to keep trying if you ever want to be happy, which is something that is mentioned in the handout.  There is one thing that I wish the model did explain, which is why Hans has a horse-sized rooster that he can saddle up and ride!  No help there. 
It is interesting, to look at fairy tales this way, I mean, and I can see where they can give kids a way to think about stuff that bothers them.  It just never occurred to me that the stories had a purpose.

The article below has a really good discussion of kids and fairy tales (and it talks about Bettelheim, too).

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Oh, No! The Final Exam!

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The final exam is coming up in another week, and there is going to be an essay question about fairy tales.  Dr. Toffee wants us to write about how we take exams, stuff like how we pick essay questions when we have a choice.  Well, obviously, I pick based on whether I can think of something to write about the topic of the question, but sometimes that turns out badly anyway.  Usually, I try to figure out what the teacher wants to hear, based on what was said in class about the topic, and I try to get as much in as I can.  I don't know if that's going to work this time, because we are going to analyze a fairy tale for the exam. 
One good thing-- she's going to give us a study guide, and it will have the essay question on it.  That way, I can deal with figuring it out ahead of time.  I hate having to ask for an explanation during an exam (even though I'm pretty sure that everybody else needs one and feels the same way).
I never thought much about how teachers make up exam questions, but the article below makes it seem really complicated.

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