#1

...of how many more to come (or, not come), I don't know. My first real suit - that's something to be excited about, right? Now, all I have to do is get a job.
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Into Easter

It’s been about a week into Easter break. To no one’s surprise, the Library was bustling with students, once again, on the first day out of the Easter long weekend. If only people would stop recalling my books, I could legitimately spend my days at home instead of trekking to the school.

Not that the recalling of books would ever cease. I’ve been repeatedly amazed at how limited the book and journal selection is at the LSE Library. Recent books written on the most political and economic of subjects, such as the WTO, don’t exist, and their subscription to online journals is limited - you can’t access some journals volumes printed in the 1990s. It’s as if the school thinks the 90s is a decade long gone, of neither particular interest nor importance to students today. As a historian, I obviously object: history, of all things, matter more often and dominantly than we may like, recognize, or know.

I digress. It is now week 2 of Easter break and my review/essay-writing schedule stares at me from the bulletin board. This is no ‘break’ at all, with three assessed, 4000-word essays, 4 exams, and a thesis looming darkly over the back of my head. I would be tempted to call it a ‘break’, watching people leave residence for a week-long trip to the Eurocontinent, fly home to their respective countries, and/or party hard night after night… yes, for some it looks as though this is some ‘break’. But really, for all intents and purposes, if you seriously take a glance back to reality, this is what the Canadians call ‘Reading Week’. A good chunk of students go off to ski or snowboard or even dare to surf - if not, at least a camping trip of sorts would be in order. And of course, there are some who stay put, and do exactly what the week says it’s for: READ.

The belated posting of the 2008 exam schedule gave me a pleasant surprise, although it seems to have pointed a dagger to the throat for most others. I have three days in between each exam, and all my exams are at 2:30pm, instead of the dreaded 10:00am. I start with the easiest, and end with the most difficult. Not bad at all.

The assessed essays are a bit of a downer. As you can imagine, considering how all my work so far has counted towards 0% of my final grade, that the essays constitute 50% or more of my final grade is both a curse and a blessing. On the one hand, my formative grades seem to say I should just play my game and if written in the usual manner, the outcome should be of a similar numerical figure. On the other hand, £13,000 goes down the drain should I royally screw it up. An all-or-nothing deal is not exactly we, the North American-educated, are used to - but, there is no turning back now.

If there is one fat, ‘F’ I should be receiving, it would be in Job Hunting. Job hunting sucks, period.
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Here came Lent - Now, gone.

10 weeks sounds like a long time, but it really is not. The Lent term began in the second week of January, and its end arrived just as I started to feel like I was finally getting used to it. This sense of familiarity, however, was covered up by a hurricane of assignments (unassessed, of course) in the final two weeks. There was no time to look back and reminisce about where the 10 weeks had gone - papers needed writing, presentations needed completing, tests needed taking.

At the very end of February, I took an examination with the United Nations. The UN had been very mysterious about the format and content of their exams, so I spent the the last two weeks of February memorizing resolutions, conventions, terms, phrases, all 8 Secretary-Generals, dates, facts, and case-studies. The exam itself was not surprising, either in content or format. 3 full essay questions, and 8 short-answer questions - 4.5 hours of straight writing. Needless to say, it was a long and grueling 4.5 hours and my hand hurt at the end of it.

Preparations for the UN exam took up the last two weeks of February, so I ended up neglecting a lot of school work. Luckily, I had planned for this to happen, by being at least a week ahead of all my classes until those two weeks. Afterwards, there were only two weeks of school left anyway, and I simply played the catch-up game until the end. Not a big deal.

What really is surprising - and I say this knowing that I’m repeating myself - is how quickly the 10 weeks had flown by. The Michaelmas term felt much longer. Although there is one more term left in the summer, and a few classes here and there, this past Friday was the last day of ‘real’ classes. No more lectures to really attend, no more unassessed assignments to turn in. Three more assessed papers, four exams, and one thesis - and I’m done. Scary.

But I suppose they say that time flies while you’re enjoying something. In hindsight, the Lent term may have been more enjoyable than the Michaelmas, but I attribute this more to the fact that I knew my way around things in January than I did in October. Plus, I knew what to expect, and so more time was spent doing the work rather than figuring out the logistics (recalling that course selection was a bit of a nightmare).

11 weeks until exams, 6 weeks of Easter break. The first thing I did on my first weekend off since January? Read Harry Potter.
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