The town has been a bit a lot quieter this month — it seems everyone, myself included, is busy with exams, presentations, paper deadlines and more exams, which aren’t really fun when everything happens within the same month (or week). I’ve only done some German exams and presentations so far, but there are four more during the next two weeks. Yay.

It actually isn’t much compared to local students – some of my friends got five exams in three days! I noticed that in Germany students don’t have a lot to do throughout the semester until the very last month. Of course, it also depends on the type of courses: if you’re taking language classes, Praktikum (Practical), Übung (Exercise) or Pro/Haupt/Ober-seminar (Basic/Advanced/Super Advanced(?!) seminar), then you probably get more coursework; but for Vorlesung (Lecture), you simply go to the lectures and take one final exam at the end of the course. This semester I had three lectures, two language classes and one proseminar, so I wasn’t too busy with schoolwork but still got something to do every week.

One good thing about having exams is you get to go home early. Normally my class finishes at 6pm and it’s already fairly dark at this time of the year. This week I could leave before sunset so I was able to see the city covered in snow, which was quite a sight.