First finals tomorrow

So of course I am blogging.

Just a short non-update for today.

I don't think I can express how awesome my Gothic Architecture professor is. He bashes the Queen all the time. He is a self-proclaimed athiest. He swears every other sentence. And he complains about how he can't drink gin and tonic during class. He looks like a mousy, old cartoon character (in an endearing way), and swaggers around kind of like Captain Jack Sparrow on the Black Pearl. You know. Quirkily and unsteadily.

The week after our midterm, he explained to us how he graded our papers.

"Most teachers at Cambridge grade papers like this: we drink too much gin and tonic (G&T) and then take all your papers and throw them up a staircase. We start at the top of the steps and mark A, A-, B, B-, and etc. all the way down until we reach F, and then we mark the papers how they land.

Now I must be terrible at throwing papers, because when I scattered them on the stairs, they all landed at the top in the A and A- region. ALL OF THEM!! I must've been extra drunk."

Awesome.

I am excited to finish my final tomorrow because as a class, we've all collectively decided to take our professor out for G&T. Our programme coordinator overheard our party planning and told us that he'd leave the bar open at the Union for drinks. AND. He said that the PKP programme had a budget for parties and that he'd give us money for alcohol.
Alcohol at 2:30pm.
ENGLAND IS AMAZING.

Despite all that, I'm still here studying at King's Library at 1:00am. Like most classes in the UK, this class is heavily based on writing and testing. This class is 45% term paper, and 45% final. After a long period of researching, I finished my term paper on Tuesday and ended a crazy day of 22+ hours of no sleep. I know Dr. Oldfield is a generous grader, but he's also an amazing mentor and deserves good work and good exams from all of us. Part of the reason people have done so well in his class is because of the skill and application he's instilled in us - in just 3.5 short weeks. I've learned so much in this class, and I've never done this much self-research and hands-on analysis by myself. It feels liberating.

This week marks the end of our first module of classes, and that means my time here is almost halfway done. I have a real blog post stored up for this weekend, but for now, I'm enjoying being here in the library and cranking out some real studying.

Our first real English rain was today. It smelled like home.

Love,
Katherine