My landlord, Carlos, came to the apartment last night to get the rent for June and to talk to us about last minute house-keeping things, like where we leave our keys when we all go and all that stuff. Anyway, he and I were chatting and he was asking me how my exams were going. I told him that I´ve taken 2 of the 3 that I have and that I´m nervous that I didn´t pass the first one. The school system here is structured so, so differently than in the U.S. First of all, there´s very little homework throughout the semester; I´ve had a few papers here and there and a couple of translation projects, but in other classes, such as my Music class, I haven´t had any coursework as of yet. So the final exam of a class ends up counting as 60% (or sometimes higher) of the final grade. That´s pressure, people.
So anyway, my first exam (in my Syntax class, which has been the biggest pain of this entire semester) didn´t go so well. I was telling my dad about it a few days ago on Skype. The layout of the test was really bizarre and the questions were incredibly ambiguous. I was glad to see a few multiple choice questions on there... until I realized that instead of giving us four options (A - D) to choose from, she gave us 15 choices (A - O). So yeah, at the end of the 3 hours I turned in my test and there were still some Spanish students working on theirs - and they were the kids that were always in class and took really copious notes. So that made me nervous as well... I´m not sure when we´ll know the grades, but I hope it´s soon.
At least the weather has been kind of cloudy and rainy... nothing is worse than having to stay inside and study on a nice, sunny day.
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