So, I am currently in the back seat of my family’s Ford Edge, about an hour outside of Moncton on our way home from Freeport, Maine (yes Ben, you’re hometown!). The end of the Holiday Break is fast approaching as I’m heading back to Mount A on Sunday morning. I think I’m ready to go back – I’ve been doing a 
whole lot of lazing, eating, reading (the fun stuff, not of the academic kind), and some may even say, too much sleeping. The days feel pretty short when you’re only crawling out of bed between noon and one o’clock in the afternoon, but hey, I am one well-rested teenage girl. I think I’ve finally established my natural body rhythm – up around noon, bed around 2 AM, a solid 10 hours of sleep – nice. But yeah, the point is, I’ve been doing a whole lot of pointless stuff and I’m about ready to get back on track with a purposeful life. It’s been oh so nice and very necessary for me to have a good long break, but it’s time to get back to my wonderful home at MTA :)
If I’ve checked correctly, my last blog was in the middle of November (oh goodness, that’s bad). But this time (like I say every time I’m late with a blog), there has been good reason. Maybe not so much reason for not having been blogging over the Holiday Break, but definitely good reason for not blogging during the final weeks of the semester. Just after my midterms finally wrapped up, I remember being in such a great mood – no work for a while, midterms are over, that’s wicked! Then, I thought I’d be a good student and take a look at my calendar to see what work I had coming up in the next few weeks, you know, get ahead of the game a little bit. That’s when I realized that the next few weeks were the last weeks of term. No work for awhile, huh? “Funny, this calendar is telling me I have three final papers to hand in and an in-class debate to prepare for during the next three weeks,” I thought to myself. That’s when my shoulders slumped, face darkened and high-spirits faded. Boooooooooo. But then, oh, then I thought, “Well, as long as I can get through these next three weeks, I’ll be fine after that.” Um... not entirely true. I kept reading the calendar – “O
kay, last paper due here... three days of classes after that and then... finals. Finals. Oh my god. Finals. When the hell am I going to study for those?!?!?!” Minor panic attack occurred at this point. Mild feeling of hopelessness ensued. So I was going to go into major paper writing mode for three weeks, have three days off and then go hardcore into exam study mode for two and a half more weeks? “Hmm, well, maybe my exams will be nice and spread out and I can study for most of them in between each exam.” Load up MTA Connect on my laptop, log in, bring my exam study schedule up onto the screen. “Okay, no exam for German, knew that, awesome. Topics in IR on the 12th, Global Governance on the 11th, two in a row, that sucks... Canadian Federalism on the 13th and Economic Growth on the 10th. So that’s 10, 11, 12, 13. Wait a minute. 10, 11, 12, 13. That’s four exams in four days... THAT’S TERRIBLE!!!”
Needless to say I survived, as is obvious by my writing to tell you about it. But man, was it hard. I’ve definitely never worked as hard as I did during those five/five and a half weeks and I was absolutely exhausted by the end of it. I never realized how many hours I could work in a day, how many words I could write in an hour or how much information I could retain all at once. There were a few scary/depressing/panic-filled moments during these weeks, my favourite (looking back on it now, definitely not at the time) being when I met with a friend to go over Canadian Federalism at 9:00PM the night before the final and he asked me to explain a very basic situation and I couldn’t do it because I hadn’t had the chance to really look at it yet. Tears in my eyes and heart in my throat I buried myself in the 2nd basement of the library (the most quiet and isolated place in the library), worked until they kicked me out and then crammed until 3 AM in the study room in Harper. Next morning, 9 AM, I was nervous as hell, flipped over the exam and kicked it’s butt. It was my last exam and I couldn’t have been more happy when I left that classroom in Avard Dixon. Freedommmmmmmmmm!
The papers came back with good marks, the debate was awesome, most of the exams went through without too many shaky parts and my final marks came back over Christmas. That’s when I really, truly realized that hard work pays off. Had I not worked as hard as I did for as long as I did, I wouldn’t have gotten the marks that I did and would have been really disappointed. I really hope that I’ll never have to go through a period like that again, but deep down I know I’m pretty much guaranteed to during my undergrad and/or what comes after. Well, at least now I know I can do it.
Much love,
Sue
sjhumphrey@mta.ca
Oh, and the two photos of Mount Allison after the first snowfall are courtesy of another one of MTA's bloggers, Maria Maute. Thanks Maria! :)
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