Exams and Edinburgh

Hello all!

If you’re reading this, that means you know that I survived my exams. My last final was yesterday and it went okay, overall I think my exams went well (especially for someone who has never studied in England before). The exam procedure here is so interesting. I’m not saying it’s weird, but I felt like I was taking the SATs again, do you know what I mean?

Let me set the scene for y’all. We were only allowed into the testing room 10 minutes before the exam. When we could, we were instructed to pick a number, and that referred to our exam seat. So the seating was random. Before we could find our seat, we were asked to put everything we brought against a wall (things such as coats, and backpacks). For things such as purses, wallets, and keys, they provided us a plastic white bag that we could put those things into, which would be then placed underneath our seats. Touching that plastic white bag during the exam would be considered an academic offense. There were so many things that a student could have done that would be considered an academic offense: leaving the exam room without receiving permission (so if you were lucky enough to finish early, you had to raise your hand until someone noticed to collect your script), having something in your pocket (does not matter what, if they found out you had something…), having a watch on, and the obvious ones like not switching off your mobile phone, having notes from class in front of you, etc.

So when do I start classes again? Um…last Thursday, haha. Term started last Monday. Some departments have lectures during exam time, the maths department tends to not hold classes during Week 1, but the history of art courses sure like having classes during the first week. I already have my first assignment for Tuesday. I took a little break this morning, I woke up and my brain felt like it was fried. But back to work soon for me. I don’t mind though, because this course I’m talking about sounds like it’s going to be a really interesting class. It’s called The Art of the Avant-Gardes. The course description: “This module aims to introduce students to the key themes and debates that have developed around the idea of the ‘avant-garde’ in the 20th century. Specific artists and movements as well as artworks and texts may provide case studies for this module”. Doesn’t that sound interesting?!

Okay in other news-aside from the academics-I spent New Year’s in Edinburgh. Scotland was really pretty! Me and another friend Emily Winn ’17 (who if you remember was my roommate last year) went on a Haggis Adventure Tour.

Our tour guide’s name was Jamie-he was great. We toured the Scottish highlands, took part in the Torch Procession that was part of Hogmanay (Hogmanay: Scotland’s world-famous New Year festival), saw Tom Riddle’s grave, passed the Elephant House (you know what I mean if you love Harry Potter), toured a whisky distillery, went to Edinburgh Castle, and because I love museums, we went to the National Museums Scotland. We also did a lot of walking…but since we’ve been in the UK, we’ve gotten used to it. It’s the way of life here, like how they say, “Do as the Romans do.”

 
But anyways, that’s all for now. Hope you all had a wonderful New Year’s. I know I did-one for the books, most definitely.

Cheers xxx

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 9th, 2016 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.