Friday was the deadline for the short stories for both of my writing classes, and I had a partner presentation the coming Monday in linguistics that I needed to get ready for. My activity outside schoolwork can best be summed up by the number of pictures I took. I can take 200 pictures a day easy. I can take 200 photos within the span of three hours, and the only thing stopping me from taking more is the memory space on my camera. This week I took four pictures. Not a day, for the whole week I had only four pictures taken. Yeah. Not going to be much visual illustration of my points this time.

I did get some interesting insights into the academic system though. The first was the grading system. It’s one thing to read in the syllabus that the percent that a student is expected to manage out of 100 is lower (from what I’ve gather up until now this is because 100% to them means perfect professional quality.) It’s another thing entirely to here “I’ve done this sort of presentation for this teacher before and I got a 62%, which is pretty good.” It took awhile before my brain could catch up and realize that 60-70% here is a B. unless I go above and beyond all expectations on all my course work, I think I’m going to have mini heart attacks when I first get grades back on things before my brain can make the conversion.

My partner for the linguistics presentation also believes in aliens. I really didn’t know what to do with that, especially since it followed a discussion of what he felt was the best TV show Britain produced (Only Fools and Horses.)

The other interesting academic point was how assignments are turned in. the system is set up so that your work is graded a objectively as possible. Work isn’t handed into the teacher but rather submitted in a room that has boxes for each of the years. You fill out a cover sheet with your student number and the course information, and your name is covered so that the person grading can’t see it. You then drop your work in whatever box the course corresponds to (year one, two, etc.) and then you go home. The end. It’s actually a really nice system.

And here’s a picture of a chocolate lamb that I bought to help me stay on track when I was writing. There’s nothing like the promise of chocolate to make things go faster.

The middle was interspersed with little air bubbles, which was nice since it prevented that coating of chocolate you sometimes get on your tongue. That’s always the point when I’m like “okay, I don’t think I want chocolate anymore.”