Wow, It's December!

I can't believe it's already December. I realize that I've been slacking on my blog, my apologies for that. When you're abroad, you'll understand. Anyway, let's see if I can get my blog up to date.

Sensation white is a giant concert that requires everyone to dress in all white. Yes, white tops and pants/bottoms. And yes, all 25,000 attendees. If you're into EDM music or just want to experience an incredible party, Sensation is a sensational idea. Tickets were about $120 each but being from Hawaii, it was nothing like I've ever experienced before. Imagine Aloha Stadium with giant rotating stages, water works, crazy lights, performers and 25,000 people all dressed in white and partying on the field. Expensive but well worth it.

Unfortunately my camera broke so I don't have any photos to share from my recent adventures. Pro tip: don't put your camera in the same pocket as your magnetic money clip. Actually, that's more common sense than a pro tip and is something I obviously lack.

During the two months since my last blog post I've gone to Vienna, Austria, Prague, Czech Republic, and Heidelberg, Germany. All very unique and culturally rich cities, Heidelberg was actually more of a town. When at CBS you'll realize that you have ample free time and is perfect for 4-day weekend getaways. I highly recommend any future exchange students to take advantage of any opportunities to experience new cities. Not everyone will agree, but money should not be an excuse, ever, when you're studying abroad. When your semester or year is over you're not going to say, 'shoot I spent too much money experiencing new things and taking advantage of once in a lifetime opportunities', it's far more likely you'll say, 'dang, why didn't I go on that trip to Budapest or Berlin'.

Since Thanksgiving weekend I've been lame and pretty much just been working on projects or studying for finals. I have finished 3 of my 4 finals so far, one 4-hour closed book, one 4-hour open book and an oral exam. Call me a creature of habit but UH's methods of final examinations are immensely better. First off, none of my classes had midterms, participation/attendance points, homework assignments, or projects. Every single one of my classes the final exam makes up 100% of my course grade. It's funny how diversification is a universally accepted best practice and yet it is not applied when determining students qualifications in a course. Even worse, my closed book exam was a 1 page article with 3 questions. Maybe it's just me but 4-hours to answer 3 questions... I don't feel confident with 2 out of 3 of my answers so I think I'm pretty much screwed, excuse the expression, but seriously, I'm hoping for miracles on that one. The 4-hour open book exam wasn't too bad. It had 3 parts, multiple choice, computational problems and an article case study. Needless to say that went a lot better. Be aware that while 4-hours seems like a long time for an openbook and notes I still ran out of time and not because I was constantly searching, because it was just a lot of work. For the oral exam I had to write a paper and then defend it as the test. I was extremely frustrated because there were no guidelines or instructions on how to do the paper. I was basically told to choose a topic and use methods and theories to discuss the topic and write a 10-page paper. I'm pretty sure I cannon balled the paper because the professor and the censor examining me looked surprised everytime I answered one of their questions. It's like they were wondering how I knew the answer because it wasn't in my paper, well it wasn't in my paper because I didn't realize I should put it there, obviously.

A few more notes about exams. The time in between my last lecture and the exam was an average of 4 weeks. I had a difficult time pacing my studying because I had so much time, it felt unnatural. The exam period for exchange students is around 3 weeks. I have friends who finished exams at the start of this week and I don't finish until next week which sucks cause I'll miss graduation. Two of my Danish friends don't finish exams until next year! Don't worry about that though, all the exchange students finish before Christmas. Lastly, exams aren't always on campus. My exam on Tuesday is like 20 minutes from campus at a badminton club. On top of that I need to bring my own computer and printer. Weird to say the least.