Its been another 2 uneventful days of trying to study, though it proved fairly futile. Being on an exchange really does feel like an extended holiday, so much so that the primary objective of clearing AUs towards obtaining the degree has become an unwelcome burden. Then again, as much as we all like to complain, an important fact that remains is that for all the fun we are having, trying to pass some modules which would have been way more demanding if we did them in NTU sounds like a fair bargain, which anyone in the right frame of mind would take any day.
Started studying last weekend, there are 22 chapters of the textbook, and since they said every chapter will be tested, it was taken that the whole book had to be read. Then again, who will?! Tried to cover around 3 chapters per day but it was really more like skimming through, spotting possible questions and trying to remember the truckload of technical terms used throughout the book. Frankly speaking, a marketing textbook is the perfect specimen of the very subject itself. You just have to sound profoundly sophisticated, present yourself well and impress your target audience. If marketing has taught me anything, it has been summarised in this previous sentence.
Anyway, I do believe I have put in effort in studying, because whenever I do, my appeitite increases ten-fold. Statistical evidence to support this claim:
3 fried drumsticks..
2 packets of Myojo instant noodles which look deceivingly little..
Drumsticky noodles. Anyway this was for lunch on Monday which I forgot to post.
Lunch yesterday was similiar, with Myojo-noodles rationing in place, spaghetti pasta was called in as a replacement in a similar dish of dark-sauce chicken wing noodles.
The pasta looks like the yellow noodles back home eh? Less starchy but alot more chewy. Inferior but acceptable substitute.
I think friends should know too well the bad eating and sleeping habits you reluctantly get into during the exam period. Well my eating was indeed irregular, eating too little at times and excessively overeating at others, not including the apple rounds, stroopwafels, chocolate, potato chips and the chocolatey chocolate milk I feast on in between, you probably expect an overweight gh very soon.
Eating aside, I had no problem sleeping. Studying for a pass means that my mind has been automatically switched to the 'not-so-hardworking' mode. I don't cram as much things as I ought to, since there will be this voice in my head telling me 'oh you probably don't need to know this, oh and maybe that too.' I go to bed knowing that I had enough studying and I really sleep soundly till the morning. (unlike the nightmarish 3 back-to-back papers I had last semester, with some 4-5 hour sleeps at night only to continue cramming when you wake up. Fear induced from within is a powerful force)
Day 59
Woke up at 9 in the morning to do some final revision, cooked lunch and met some of the girls in my class to go for the exam. The funny thing about exams here are that the location of the exam can be somewhere like a 20 minutes train away. That was what happened today, and I had to spend an additional S$4 on transport, oh well.
Haha, would also like to share the experience of taking an examination here in Amsterdam. First, everyone arrives at the exam location looking like they're going out after the paper. Everyone's fashionable as usual, and there were a few people I met pulling their trolley luggage or backpacks, probably leaving for some holiday right after the paper. Others strolled in with a bagful of snacks and drinks, which would make one think twice about whether that guy was there for a picnic or for an exam. It was free seating, unlike the numbers we would get beforehand in NTU. The invigilators were more like people who just passed down the exam scripts and they hardly walked around. It seemed to me that they place great faith in the university students, that we will not cheat, and follow law by law, so to speak. The chief invigilator's instructions which alternate between Dutch and English made me feel like I was standing at the Jurong East MRT Interchange with the safety instructions given in the 4 languages. Hilarious.
The paper wasn't that difficult. 50 MCQs which took less than an hour to complete, I am fairly confident I will pass it, despite already spotting 5 mistakes. Hope it doesn't get many more than that. I just need to get 25 correct. Well in the event I don't *touchwood*, then I'll have to forgo my last day of June and go for the resit. I admit, that if effort is strongly correlated to results, then it will be a given that my results will be 25/50, plus minus 2 or 3 which also means failure. I know this will make all those friends back in school fume, but preparing for this paper made me felt like I was back in my secondary school days, where I will always study only the night right before the test/exam, and still score fairly decently. University is very much different, you won't be able to pull off this kind of miracle, and close allies should know too well that I do get cranky during the exam period in the semesters in NTU. Then again, this examination may not be such a good gauge, since its an MCQ-only paper. I shall reserve my judgement until the European Economics paper next friday is over.
All right, so much about the boring chanting of examinations, will use the fact that the library isn't opened on weekends as excuse for not studying. Still contemplating if we will go for parties this weekend, 1 each on saturday and sunday. If not, I will spend time trying to better my liquor tolerance. Since our arrival 2 months ago, (YES IT'S BEEN 2 MONTHS! GASP), I've been always telling Seb that I will get my beers and start drinking. We were on that topic again and I realise that if I do not start to drink more often, I will not get too much chances to drink cheaper beer back home.
24 300ml bottles for less than 12 euros, which translate to approximately S$0.90 per bottle. I know, spending the same amount of money buying Coke which will give me higher utility would sound like the better thing to do, but the opportunity cost of not drinking the beer now would mean I will pay much more back at home. We'll see how many beers I can drink from now till July. I know I won't become an alcoholic, I just want to be that irrational consumer who is attempting a temporary change in preference of goods. Hahaha. All right, will update again soon! Take care meanwhile.
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