Category Archives: exchange

teach me how to midterm, teach, teach me how to midterm

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Midterms didn’t happen to me last semester. I’m in Arts, and besides that I study literature, and besides that I suppose I just got lucky. Midterms are happening to me this semester, though, don’t worry. I didn’t escape.

I’m not used to continuous assessment, being from the UK university system. It’s more than different; it’s like two people sat down and had a boring and in depth argument about the best way to teach and assess young adults, insulted each other, and then went away and made two completely opposing systems.

At home I have more reading and fewer assessments, but the assessments I do have are worth more. Usually I would have a 10% participation grade, a 40% final paper grade (we just call them essays), and a 50% or so final exam. We’re expected to participate in discussion more but take far fewer quizzes, and if we don’t do the reading then it’s our own fault if we fail the exam or write a shitty essay, and it’s our own problem, too.

Here, as I am sure you know, it’s a little different. Which is where we come to midterms, and my problem with preparing for them. In that I just… don’t know how? It’s half-way through the semester which means I only know half the stuff, so do I study for it about half as much as I would for a final exam? Or just as much? How come, if I don’t do fantastically, I can still get a fairly decent grade?

Baffled, I am. Or maybe I’m just using the confusion of school systems as an excuse to procrastinate. (That might be it, actually.)

Incidentally, two professors trading insults plus British humour equals…? Well, this:

entering the deep unknown

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I have just finished my first (half) week of classes. And wow. I have a lot of work to do.

That’s the part of moving out here for my exchange year that, thus far, I have managed to ignore. The ignoring it part has been pretty easy. You know the feeling; it’s the same one that you get at the end of every summer as you return to school, when you pick up your pen and think, wait, how do I use this thing again? It’s the brain turning slowly to reality TV mush feeling. That one. In the midst of that feeling, I’d managed to almost totally ignore what it means that I have to actually… work this year.

Ugh, work… I’m taking five classes this semester where I’m used to just three, though the reading per class is significantly less. I still feel like… how can I begin to keep up with this? It’s a lot. There is a lot to do.

On the other side of things, a week in, I feel like I’m getting the hang of living on campus. When I’m walking around I mostly know where I am now (and, okay, I still check a map before I set off anywhere, but that’s just me bowing to the very real fact of my awful navigational skills and seeking the help I need). I’ve been to the Village four or five times, and I’ve clocked where the libraries are and how to get things photocopied (though printing still eludes me, but I’ll get there). It’s a slow-going slide into familiarity and there are still ten things a day that jar me from thinking okay, I’ve got this into thinking wait what just like that, but the days are busy and I feel good about keeping them that way.

Before I came out here, people kept asking if I was nervous and I kept saying no. I wasn’t lying; it honestly didn’t occur to me to be nervous. In my imagination, this was only ever an amazing opportunity in my life, and being nervous would have suggested that it wasn’t a great thing I was planning to do. I couldn’t, and still can’t, see where the bad aspects of this exchange year are. Not that I don’t think parts of it won’t be hard. I’m sure parts will be very hard. Some parts already are, like my courseload and the fact that I have to remember to say ‘zucchini’ instead of ‘courgette’ (not particularly hard, right? But I’m an actual idiot).

But, in the scheme of things, what’s to be nervous about? If things are hard, I’ll deal with it then. Hopefully I’ll learn something from it. I’m not going to be nervous about something I can only imagine as wonderful and exciting and all of those good things that unreal futures are. So, I’ll keep going. Tomorrow I will learn the printing-on-campus ropes, and I might even figure out the banks out here. And maybe I’ll learn something.

i’ll be spelling realize with an s

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UBC Campus.

Let’s skip the introductions and go straight into talking about how absolutely beautiful British Columbia is, shall we? Because it is beautiful. I’ve been here for a week, and so far not a day has passed where I haven’t been knocked breathless and stunned by beauty. You Canadians ain’t so bad, either. *cheezy wink*. (I mean that in a spiritual sense. Mostly.)

You may have gathered that I am not from around these parts. Perhaps, for some of you, the stunning beauty of Vancouver is something you barely notice anymore, but I know some of you’ll be like me; new to this area and feeling a little overwhelmed by the picture-perfect-ness of it all. I come from a very picturesque part of the world, as it happens, but dang, Canada. Woah.

View from Comox, Vancouver Island, across to the mainland.

I’ve moved here for just the year on exchange from the UK and being here for just the year is already feeling like not enough time. How do I go back to Norwich (famous for precisely nothing, though maybe you’ll know who Stephen Fry is – he’s a national treasure to us Brits) after a year at UBC? Amongst the most beautiful sights you could wish for, in one of the most exciting and interesting universities in the world?

Fountain opposite Irving K Barber Learning Centre, UBC Campus.

I am a worrier, and this is a genuine worry for me. But, okay, I’m going to try to do the grown up thing and ignore that for now. I’m going to try to do all those things you get in annoying motivational emails like live for the moment and seize the day. I will endeavour to suspend my British cynicism and leap before I look a little. Not too much. I’ll be the one flailing in mid-air and screaming. It will not be graceful.

I come from a tiny little place in the north of England and I go to uni in a city that is, when compared to Vancouver, minuscule. Suddenly, I’m half way across the world. Time zones are the worst thing – when I wake up it’s already evening meal time at home, and my friends are waking up for class or work as I’m heading for bed. But I’m in Vancouver. I’m at UBC. I’m mid-way into spending my first night in res and this exchange thing is something I’ve been talking about doing since 2010.

I’m finally here. That feels amazing. You can throw anything you like at me, UBC. I’m in it for the experience – for the free-fall after opening out my parachute. And I promise to wave to you all – Queen-style – on the way down. Because this is going to be a fantastic year.

Sunset from Canada Place, downtown Vancouver.

(Note: Incidentally, I have no plans to parachute off of a very high thing this year. Partly because I’m terrified of heights.  Also because metaphors are awful and deplorable things and I am not going to encourage myself to use more by realising any of them. Everything I actually do, I’ll blog about.)