First of all, my mother is fine! If you read my last post, I was going through a bit of a rough patch, worrying about my mom from thousands of miles away. She was in the hospital for bronchitis and they discovered some heart problems, but she’s completely fine! Arteries clear, no surgery needed. I don’t think I need to tell you too much how relieved I was to have that weight off my mind. I’m still worried about her, but it’s nice to know things are on the mend.

Now, I know we’re getting towards the end of the semester, which of course, means finals. For the past three and a half years, this means four days of an intense listing out of knowledge garnered over the previous semester. In Edinburgh, things are running a little differently. Over here, my finals are spread out over 6 weeks…and they’re from the whole year, even the courses that ended last semester. Quite a change from the A&M norm.

What’s even stranger is that I have four weeks off of lectures beforehand. My last lecture was three weeks ago, and I’ve spent that time trying to get a whole year’s worth of material together for my first final next Monday. If you think revising for a final at A&M is tricky, imagine trying to remember everything you learned the first week of September! Not an easy task. Still though, finals are finals. It’s that time when you just have to do your best and hope it works out. At A&M, finals are pretty stressful, but they’re usually only worth about 25% of your grade—I think the most heavily weighted final I took back home was 40%, which I thought was crazy. My final on Monday contributes 70% of my final mark for International Law. One two hour essay based exam over material from the whole year is worth almost three quarters of my grade. Needless to say, the stress is starting to build up a little bit.

While I’ve finished my lectures a long time before A&M finishes its lectures, I’ll still be in school while, back home, graduations are happening. My last final isn’t until May 16, and finals run for a few weeks after that for various departments. It’s a very strange feeling, because it feels like school’s been out, but without the happy, carefree feeling of summer or Christmas break as I know I’ve got hugely important tests looming over me.

So the system is completely different, but is it better? In terms of personal taste, I much prefer the A&M system. Yes, finals come at you quickly, but they’re only for the semester that you just studied, you only have about a week to prepare, and then you’re done. Free. Here, you have much m ore time to prepare for your finals, if you don’t slack off or get distracted, but there is much more pressure to do well as the tests are more heavily weighted. The combination of that, the four weeks of stress buildup, and examinations over material that concluded teaching in December is difficult to adjust to. On the other hand, the Edinburgh system does make sense in that it encourages students to learn material and really retain it, as opposed to cramming the info in your brain for three months, spitting it out and being done with it. Either way, it’s definitely the most obvious difference in teaching organization style between my two undergraduate schools, and hopefully I’ll do an okay job of adjusting to the Edinburgh way.

So for all my fellow Edinburghers, good luck going into the last week of revision, and for all my fellow Aggies, start getting ready, because finals aren’t that far away!