Italian Exams

I'm blogging in my sheer excitement at the fact that my exams are over (woohoo!)

I know that over half the people who read this blog are students and I'm pretty sure almost all of you still have exams, so I'm sorry for this gloating but I can't help it and I KNOW you'd all do it in my position. 

There's nothing like the feeling of literally having nothing to do! (although I'm sure I will be bored of it pretty soon.)

Just thought I'd write a short blog post about the Italian exam system, because it's been an eye-opening experience to say the least.

I had one written exam on Romanticism and one oral exam on Detective fiction. To begin with, the written exam. 

For those of you who are not students, a quick insight into an English University exam. Once you enter the room, you must be silent. A clock is clear on the main wall you are facing. You can only take in water, and you must take the label off the bottle. Technically no phones in the room, definitely no phone on you personally. You cannot leave ANYTHING on the desk other than your pen and student card. You cannot leave the exam (unless emergency toilet break - even then with a chaperone)..etc etc.

To begin with, we had no idea how long the exam would be going into it, half way through, she casually decided to just add on an extra 15 minutes on to the end of it. There was no clock in the room; one of the chaperone's phones went off, she answered it (in the exam); the papers didn't turn up for 10 minutes, whilst we were all sat at our desks waiting, at this point, everyone was talking; the exam was split into 2 papers and half way through we could leave the exam hall for a 'break' to get coffee/chat with friends; I had a can of coke at my desk. The 'literature' exam had some multiple choice questions (I know, wtf?!), and the longest answer we were required to give was half of one side of A4 (compared to a usual 8 sides of A4 answer in a usual English Literature exam).

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it was easy...it wasn't. I didn't know the answers to some of the questions because it was so date/historical context based but hey...it was an experience...and you only need half to pass and I think I can safely say I've passed!

This morning I had my oral exam. It lasted around 20 minutes and most of the time was spent with our lovely teacher telling me how much he enjoyed having the Erasmus students in his class. My problem with oral exams are their subjectivity. My tutor even said, if the teacher doesn't like you, you're screwed (in not so many words)...luckily, he LOVES us. It didn't feel at all like an exam and I was over the moon with my mark. The best mark I've ever had in an exam, ever! (and I only spent 2 days revising for it...think I'm starting to like this Erasmus thing :P)

This time, the fact is was an oral exam worked in my favour, but who knows what will happen next semester!

Anyhow, I am going home the day after tomorrow (Saturday) for a whole month before next semester begins.

 I get to spend time with friends and family and just relax, watch lots of tv, read books for pleasure...not because I'm being forced to, and play an unlimited amount of Sims 3 (which I am re-installing as we speak :P) 

I am also going back to Leicester on the 28th until the 31st of January which I am SO excited about because I have missed those guys so much!

Now, all my student friends..stop reading this and procrastinating and go do some work ;)

Ciao