Midterms are probably every students’ second least favorite time of year, right behind finals. Just the word “midterm” brings back memories of a week without sleep followed by mornings wandering around campus with coffee and energy drink like some sort of university zombie. Sommerschule midterms are what happens when you take all that and compact it over one day. Today I had a midterm, a creative project, a quiz, and an essay. I think everything is going to be ok–I’ve been getting A’s on my essays–but I’ll be lucky to get a B on that test. It was like a literature midterm for an entire semester, with text identification (name the author and the title from the excerpt), short answer fact and vocab questions, and two essays. Now that that’s over I have to read some of Faust. Seems like a lot to expect from B1 level students (we just finished a piece by Kant), but it is interesting.
The Sommerschule is now half over, which means I have one less class (which I was auditing, so it won’t make much difference) and some of the professors and students will be leaving. My literature professor for the first half, Nele Hempel-Lamer, will leave soon, along with the film maker/film teacher Harald Friedl and Professor Peters. I’m sad to see them all leave, and I was enjoying Professor Peters’ “Berlin Heute” class so much! However, there are a few things to look forward to about the second half, specifically the opera on Friday. I’ve never been to an opera before!
We’ve been having these crazy power outages lately that last several hours during the rain in the evening. It’s really very annoying because that’s just when you need the light for studying. You know, midterms and all. It would be fun if we had candles. But the good news is, my computer magically came back to life and I have tickets for a flight back home! Not much to worry about here.