Exams and more

Most blogs I wrote so far are about travelling and other exciting experiences I had in Norway. But now I get closer to the end of my exchange, I need to take part in the exams for the courses I took. And that means that I have to start studying. Studying… What is that? The last three months this word hasn’t passed by frequently, so this meant that I had to change something drastically.

It started in the beginning of November as I had to prepare two presentations during that week. I met a couple of times with my group mates to discuss the topic and divide the tasks. This worked out quite good . The only thing was that I was quite nervous to present about a specific topic in English. However, I assure, as you speak English all day long it is not hard to present. The more you speak English, the better you will learn the language and after a while you get used to communicate only in English. It is the only language everybody is able to understand, so there is no choice.

Next to this, my exams started last week. The weeks before were quite busy and I spent a lot of hours in the library. But it is like what I usually do in Tilburg: studying the whole day, having breaks and lunch with friends in between and in the evening there is time left to relax a bit. It is quite common that we cook together and forget about all study-related things for a couple of hours. So this combination ensured that I survived the last weeks. My first exam was last Monday, it was Norwegian. Since I attended almost all classes, prepared myself well-enough and I really liked the course, the exam was not hard for me. Moreover, the Norwegian language is quite similar to Dutch and German, so I this didn’t cause any problem. Next to the written exam, I also had to take part in an oral exam. During this exam I had to speak 10 minutes in Norwegian with another exchange student. Five minutes before the exam I met my exam mate, so we were able to discuss where to talk about during the exam. We were assessed by an independent observant and our teacher was in the room as well. The only thing we had to do was talking in Norwegian all the time, ask questions to each other and answering them. At the end, both of us could be satisfied with it as it went quite well. Furthermore, I have two other courses for which I have a written exam. One of them (Purchasing Strategy and Supply Chain Management) I already had last week and now I am busy preparing myself for the final one (Quantitative Risk Management). It seems to be that the exam will be hard, so I won’t get bored during the next days.

Fortunately, a friend of me will visit me this weekend and I am really looking forward to that. I will show her around in Bergen, the way we party here and of course we will meet with my friends. Like the Norwegians say: jeg gleder meg!

After this I only have to finish a course paper for Social Media Marketing Research and then the semester is already over. To end my exchange semester I am going to ski in Norway for one week and after that I will travel to the northern part of Norway for about 10 days. I will tell some more details about this in my next blog.

Ha det bra!