My First University Finals

December 08, 2019

My First University Finals

As promised, I'm back with a longer post today to make up for last week's uncharacteristically short one. As I took my first two exams earlier this week and have over a week until my next one, I finally have time to sit down and write a little more about what I have been doing and what finals look like for me. Before I get into the stress that this week brought, I want to go back to what I didn't cover last week, which included an end-of-term celebration for Tandem with language games and lots of multicultural food, and an American Thanksgiving celebration despite being in Canada.

A girl on my floor who is also from the US decided to put on a full Thanksgiving dinner with a friend visiting from Washington and invited people on our floor. I didn't know anyone who was going, but thankfully that kind of thing is my specialty, and I ended up having a great evening. The girls had prepared a meal complete with everything you could want at Thanksgiving; there was turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, fall veggies, mashed potatoes, gravy, pie, and probably lots more that I'm forgetting. I met a bunch more Americans (as though I don't know enough already... I've some how ended up close friends with quite a few), and we talked about all our favo(u)rite and least favo(u)rite aspects of Canada, what we missed about the States, and spent quite a long time debating each other's Americanness. Being away from home and family on Thanksgiving has been one of the harder aspects of living abroad both times I've done so, but having this group to celebrate with made the distance much more bearable. In fact, this Thanksgiving was probably one of my favo(u)rites, and definitely one to remember.

Last Friday was the last day of classes, a weird fact considering how it seems as though the term started just a few weeks ago. Maybe it's because I'm used to 18-week semesters or maybe it's how much novelty and busyness has been packed into these past few months, but I'm not sure I've ever experienced 12 weeks going by so fast. The last lectures were very much welcomed for some classes, and more bittersweet for others, but one thing applies to every single subject: I did not like the fact that the end of classes signaled the beginning of exams. While I went to a party with my friend on Friday night and therefore had a bit of a late start on Saturday, a large portion of the rest of the weekend was designated to studying for my first two exams. On Tuesday afternoon I took my very first university final exam for my physics class, and the general consensus after that was that it was much more difficult than anyone had anticipated, based on the level of difficulty of the practice material we had been given. My computer science exam early the next morning unfortunately did not prove to be much better, but, in the end, I did the best I could and now just have to hope that I can feel a little more confident coming out of my next two exams.

Thanks to the twelve-day break I have between exams, I have been able to relax and take a bit of a break for the second half of this week. With the extra time, I've had time to be a bit of a tourist and enjoy Vancouver at Christmas. While it hasn't been particularly cold (although we did get a 10 minute flurry last weekend), there are lots of lights up around the city, and the warmish weather means I can still be rowing while everything back in the northeast freezes over. I've added some paper snowflakes to my room as my budget-friendly Christmas decor, and watched my fair share of Netflix Christmas specials, but without the snow it's a little hard to get into the full Christmas spirit. I'm hoping some snow will still be on the ground when I get back to Portsmouth despite the weird heat wave that seems to be heading towards New Hampshire.

Tomorrow I'll go back to studying, and when you hear from me next I will still have two exams to go, so we'll see if there's anything to report back next Sunday, but until then, have a great week and good luck to anyone who might be reading this that has exams coming up!