What really matters in life...

This will be a more serious post than any I have ever written. The last few weeks have been horrible, but sometimes we seem to forget what really matters in life - family, friends and health.

I have been ill a few times and my chronic thyroid disease is sometimes a bit annoying, but I was never seriously ill. Two weeks ago my choir had a benefit performance for the leukaemia children's ward at Würzburg Hospital. Unfortunately this was the day when Natalie was baptized and therefore I was not able to attend the concert. However, I have been thinking about this topic a lot over the last few months. A good friend of mine was diagnosed leukaemia when he was a kid and survived. He was the one who arranged this benefit concert, because he himself spent many weeks on that ward in Würzburg.

Another friend told me about a UK blog called "Baldy's Blog" where 26-year-old Adrian is talking about his illness. He has been fighting for the last year and a half. Last week he was told that his leukaemia is back and that he has only weeks to months to live. He decided to stop any further intensive treatment.

This might sound strange to you, but reading his blog has been an inspiration for me, I have never seen anyone so strong and brave in the face of a serious illness. Even now since he knows that he has lost the fight, he is so full of life and it makes me realize that we often forget what is really important in life, because we exhaust ourselves with stupid things and do not listen to our body/soul - in my case exams obscure my clear vision. I feel sad that I am not allowed to donate bone marrow cells, because of my thyroid disease. I wished I could. Adrian has launched a plea for more bone marrow cells and if you have never thought about donating before, please do, it can save another person's life. By the way, Adrian's first transplant was from an unknown man in Germany, as Germany is considered the country with the best registration system for donors. And I guess we have all heard about various "Typisierungsaktionen" even in our remote area.

If you are interested, have a look at his blog, it is a great read. I sometimes feel ashamed while reading it, because I overrate my exams and what they mean to me. I have too great expectations and I am never ever able to live up to my own expectations. But does this really matter? Do my grades really matter? Do these grades really say something about my ability to teach or something about my personality? NO.

It seems I am in a very sentimental mood at the moment, which might be due to the fact that my body is telling me very vehemently over the last 3 days that my batteries are empty and that even my emergency batteries are running low and that I need to recharge them soon. I seem to have crossed the line of final exhaustion. But there are still 8 exams to go and no holiday until the 16th of August. If you happen to have a good insider tip to recharge my batteries, please let me know.

Exam Update #9

Friday was the day of my last English Exam:

Language Competence and Cultural Knowledge

This exam was great. Nice atmosphere, good questions and topics which were great to talk about. Therefore it was an easy exam compared to the one last Monday and I like my lecturer who is a real North-England-Guy with a good sense of humour and when you talk about stereotypes of the British Way of Life, we had a lot to laugh about. In the end it did not even take a minute for the two examiners to decide on my grade: both language competence and cultural knowledge - 1.

Consequently I was really happy. However, I would have been very disappointed if the exam had had another result, as this is the one and only exam I can really show what I know about the country. Okay, I was struggling with the question about the difference between the Church of England and the Church of Scotland, but I was able to improvise.

So now I have a three week break before my History exams. I already started today with my preparations for these exams. I guess the English exams were the easier ones, but I will see.

Exam Update #8

THANK YOU, LANGUAGE COMPETENCE!

Five minutes ago I left the office of Mrs Isolde Schmidt, my lecturer in English Didactics. I do not want to say that I "hate" her, no, but this exam was like sitting on a hot-seat and I have to admit, is was not very comfortable. Can you say that a question is "spongy"???? I don't think so, but you never really know what she is getting at. All the others had questions which were on our scripts, so you knew what to answer, but in my exam she never ever asked about things like "selection criteria for vocabulary", "Krashen's Monitor-Hypothesis", "Mnemonics" or "steps of a good grammar lesson". So it was mostly guesswork on my part.

I guess I am also subject to the "chain effect" of exams, in a positive sense, as my friend left the exam right before me with a D - so even though my knowledge was limited, it probably "seemed" better. In the end the only thing that really saved me was my language competence, my fluency and good pronunciation - she did not correct my mistakes, which she did frequently with others - and my ability to "babble" away. So when I got the grade in the end, I was told that knowledgewise it was a C, but due to my language aptitude and competence they decided to give me a B. More than satisfying, I must say!

So the last of my English exams will take place on Friday: Cultural Knowledge (Transport and Public Schools in the UK - what a surprise!) and Language Competence (so not to worry about, I should think!)

And then ... Concert on Saturday, Natalie's Baptising on Monday and 3 weeks without exams ... oh what a joy! Oh, and we will start the barbecue season Friday night to celebrate the end of the first round of oral exams!