The epic kiwi trip

I've been planning and now I'm waiting impatiently for the great adventure ahead.

My mother is coming over to NZ in just 10 days and we are going places! First a wildlife tour to the Otago peninsula, then a visit to Cadbury's chocolate factory and then we're off to Queenstown! We're going to see the most beautiful place in the world - Milford Sound in Fjordland national park. Skydiving over lake Wanaka is booked as well. Then we're off to Nelson and the two national parks - Nelson Lakes and Abel Tasman. I'm also looking forward to meeting Eilidh's awesome family again. After Nelson we're going on a wine yard tour and then to Christchurch to catch our flight to Australia. After three sunny days in Sydney, we're going on a weekend surf camp. This is going to be epic!

But first two exams with sweat and tears then two parties and then a whole day of packing... The reward will worth so much more after hard work!

Fuck I Never Actually Learned Shit (=FINALS)

After having a dream about failing because the teacher locked me up in his office, I woke up much later than planned. I don't know who is more unreliable when it comes to waking me up - my phone or my flatmate Eilidh (I'm sorry, Eilidh, but you are a bad waker!). Luckily I made it on time and I found the examination room. Then I kinda sort of screwed it all up. The functions came out wrong, lacked the properties and that put me off. I think I failed it, more than nailed it so to speak.

I've been studying for over 2 weeks for this one (Microeconomic Theory), and today's exam just proves my incapability of succeeding in this paper. I'll show you what it looks like:




Ok, I could have done worse I guess, like this person:

Exams!

I find many ways to procrastinate, but I've forgotten this blog. I promise I'll do better and tell you all about the exam drama going on at Otago right now!

Tomorrow is my first and probably hardest exam - it's in Microeconomic Theory which means there is a lot of calculus and almost no formulas on the formula sheet. It's going to take 3 hours, a little less than I'm used to, but hopefully the time will be enough. I mean, you either know how do answer a question or you don't and time will not help you.

I'm (was?) horrible at calculus, so I'm very happy that I've done well so far. This is probably because of the awesome people in my class and our cool teacher, Murat. When we had assignments, we all got together do discuss and go through the solutions and we have bonded afterwards by going out together and having "field trips" to the local bars. Murat is best teacher ever, not only because he can explain everything so well, but also because you can call him in the middle of the night and he'll be in his office, tell you about his bridge tournament, offer you a beer and chat with you for ages about anything interesting. I don't know if he sleeps at all, or if he ever goes home...

Here's a photo from our field trip (more than half of the class showed up!):

Live, love, learn, laugh

I have never spent as much studying in my entire life as I do now. The late nights at the library have become all nighters in the commerce building, because unlike the library it's open 24/7. At the same time I have never felt as stupid as I do almost every day now. In spite of all this, my time here has been absolutely awesome! The people I've met here are so cool and funny and really friendly. A part of me always wants to return home, but the other part secretly wishes this could last forever. Now it's not a secret anymore - I'm having a blast!

This weekend, Connor, Alexa and I are going to Queenstown. Can there be a better way to start off studying for the 4 coming exams? :)

A normal Monday

8:00 - Woke up, took a shower
8:10 - Ate breakfast, breathing fumes in the cold kitchen
8:45 - Went to school with a backpack weighting way too much (laptop, books, lunch, glasses etc.)
9:00 - Tutorial in accounting, started with a 10 min quiz on this week's case
9:50 - Rushed to the next lecture in another building
10:00 - 2 hour lecture in another accounting paper, professor was going through exactly the same things as the book did (and I had just summarized the readings during the weekend)
11:50 - Ate lunch with Blake and Paula (fellow accounting students)
13:00 - Studied at the library with Paula
15:00 - Went to an econometrics lab, understood nothing, sat there through the next one and still had no idea what to do. Damn Eviews!
19:00 - Went to a meeting with my Activate project group, we brainstormed and decided we should do an event on time management
20:00 - Met Scott in the library and we tried to finish an assignment in microeconomic theory, but were too tired
22:30 - Went home, ate dinner, chatted with Eilidh about our trip to Nelson (mid-term break!)
23:30 - Fell asleep hugging my laptop

Cheers!

This is about as much daylight as I see every day

I know it's sad, but I spend all my free time at the library studying. It's open from 9 am to 11 pm, heated and offers good internet connections and cozy armchairs.

I'll try to keep the blog alive.

And I thought this would be easy...

When the university finally confirmed my enrolment for all 5 papers I thought this was going to be a nice and easy semester with a lot of free time to explore New Zealand. I was so wrong.

I have now reduced my workload to 4 papers and I still feel that I won’t be exploring anything other than what’s written in the bunch of thick (and expensive) books I’ve bought for this semester. Here I have to study all papers simultaneously and then have 4 exams within two weeks. That’s 100 % workload for an ambitious student (3 papers = 100 % for a less ambitious student). People pay for every paper they do, so there is no rush really and most do 3-4 papers per semester. And I thought I’d do 5, easily.

The difficulty of the papers here should be taken seriously. Some are really easy, while others feel overwhelmingly hard if not impossible. Students with good grades on their Bachelor degree can proceed and do an honours degree (one extra year). I wouldn’t say my grades are good in certain subjects; in fact they are really crappy. Yet I’m doing two papers for honours’ students and I find them arduous (just to use a nice word). I see them as big challenge because that makes me feel less stupid.

I would never have time to study 200 % and work part time as I did in Sweden. It’s not easier there, but the assessment is concentrated to exams and group projects. Here assessment is spread out as marmite on toast. It tastes salty, just like sweat and tears. I’ve had none of that yet, but I’m sure it will come sooner or later.

Now I’m going to find out what consumers really want in microeconomic theory.

Cheers!