Starting to Wrap Things Up

Well, it's Thursday January 17th. It's been exactly two weeks since I returned from Norway. And...well...it's been odd, as par usual. The two weeks have been filled with everything from South Park marathons with Derek, to stressing over travel plans with Liz, to late night exam studying, to a whole week and a half with no more than seven hours of sleep on any given night. The whole examination thing here is quite odd. Nobody is expected to attend the lectures. And nobody, by the fifth or sixth week is. Except for the Kalamazoo students and the foreign students. No matter how much you want to resist waking up at 8:30 to go listen to a lecturer who sounds almost as motivated delivering his presentation as you are to hear it, you still force yourself to do it. K just puts that kind of guilt inside you. That being said, Derek says I'd make a wonderful convert to the Catholic faith with my amazing ability to feel guilty for no other reason than that I currently don't, and that in itself must indicate a sinning on some part.

Separate from lectures are tutorial, think class discussion in smaller groups. Because you are graded upon your attendance of tutorial, everybody shows up. And that's about it. They decide that fitting their plodding earthly frame into a chair for an hour is doing the University of Aberdeen a service, and beyond that, expecting anything more of them, would be the equivalent of asking them to get "Peace in the Middle East" sorted out over their next lunch break. Dombos and I were chatting about this last night. We're so glad not to be around an atmosphere of cut-throat academics, to really be able to go down to the pub on most nights, meet new people, have a good time, and come back to our rooms without slitting our wrists over the workload remaining. But, as I've shown above, this really does come with a cost. At K, the expectations are so uniform and understood by all students, in terms of academics. You study, study, study, binge drink, study, study, study, pass out at the soccer house, and pray that androgynous geeky kid in the back row of Latin III doesn't try to take advantage of you.

At Aberdeen, if you're even minutely motivated at all to do well, that's it. More or less, that attitude right there ensures you a diploma. In the end, the Scottish people, hell, the Europeans in general *prepare for a sweeping generalization* are just very slow when it comes to progress. If you want to go places and do things...I can see how Europe might not be the most ideal location. It's hard enough to get a good coffee here. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of cultures (US, perhaps) that have taken the polar opposite stance, and don't have much time, if any, to appreciate anything. College is free in many of these countries. But, over here, a college degree is like a high school diploma back home: it usually costs nothing, requires very little work, and in the end, nobody is really able to put those skills into application in something else.

We're different, I guess. Not that I should be surprised or something.

I just finished up my finals about 3 and a half hours ago, and have been starting to clean up my room. There's still a lot to do: the room to finish cleaning, trinkets and whatnot to buy for the people back home, there are still a few things around here that I need to take pictures of, people I need to say goodbye to, a few financial office issues, and managerial issues to handle. Needless to say, I've got more than enough time to do it in. As for those of you who want to know how things are going down from here, here's the rough plan, if I don't get around to telling you: I leave next Friday for London, and then go from London to Prague, then to Austria, and finally to Germany. I will be back in America on February 9th, though this may change if the ticket prices are really awful, I had to delay booking for two days to make sure my credit card company didn't go apeshit protective again.

From there? I take a few days off to try to get back on American time, and then I start work at the Grand Haven Tribune for a couple weeks. I can easily make a half grand in two-three weeks there, I think, so that'll help compensate for the traveling. Take a few days off to visit friends, plan for housing in the spring, etc. And then its back to K. Back to my homies. Honest to God, I miss all of you. Sophomore year was easily one of the best years ever.

Well, I'm going to clean up a bit more, who knows what else. Take Care everyone