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.