Exam Update #15 (or Master, the SECOND)

The more exams I sit or "talk my way through", the more I arrive at the conclusion that exams are neither predictable nor is the grade one receives really showing how well prepared you were for it!

English Linguistics is not my favourite subject, as you might know. Too many technical terms and hardly any room for discussion or interpretation - compared to Literature at least and even in some respect also to History.

I was not really that well prepared:
one, I had this stupid exam on Wednesday which I did not really manage to get out of my head on Thursday, as I was still fuming;
two, I find it hard to study for it, a lot of information and technical terms and hardly any time since my last teaching degree exam to prepare for it;
three, I was afraid of the professor (female), because she has such profound knowledge;
four, I don't like the subject!

However, this was the best exam I ever had - especially atmosphere-wise. The two ladies were really nice, they asked tough questions (give your opinion about this linguistic problem) and even controversial ones, but they remained in good humour, even when I had no clue what they were getting at and started to blabber and to throw random technical terms without any real connection. Still, it was, well, nice. Okay, I have to admit this was also due to the fact that they had examined me 20 min about the only topic (out of three) which I really knew: Language Policies in Ireland - Past to Present.

In the end there were only 10 min left for my other two topics: Morphology and Pragmatics (Speech Act Theory). Good for me, because she had no time to ask really more than just a few definitions and examples.

At least now I made up for the exam on Wednesday - if someone had asked me in advance how the exams would go, I would have told him the results the other way round, as I was a lot more confident in my History exam!

Anyway, the best thing however is, that now I know that the final grade, even with a D in my major (written and oral Literature exams make up one grade for the final calculation) will be better than my Teaching Degree and that is all that I wanted!!!! So, goal achieved, I would say...

:-)

Exam Update #14 (or Master, the FIRST)

Well, things are going from bad to worse, hopefully not to "the worst".

Today, the day of my first Master Exam was a strange one. I don't know why I studied for this exam at all and why I had to hand in a paper with my "two topics."

My topics were "The European Treaty System between 1871 and 1890" and "Youth and Education in the Third Reich". These were topics I had already prepared for other exams, so I was confident.

However, we left out the first topic and talked instead about "Habermas's Public-Theory" and the "EU-Treaty" and the role of Ireland. GREAT! Why did I study at all? I had hardly anything to say about this topic, as I am especially in the case of Habermas no student of communication and publication studies. Not really fair I would say, as I did not even got the chance to talk about "Bismarck", "treaties", Russia or Berlin Kongress! The first 15 minutes had nothing to do with my topics. If this had been a written exam and I had talked about "HIS" topics, I would have been a complete disaster and I would have failed completely!

No matter, at least the next 15 min he talked about Hitler and his education policies - HE talked and I had to step in, because he likes it to talk on end.

The final grade is alright, but FAIR is definitely something different...

This is not my week...

... or so it seems!

Okay, not all of this week was disappointing. I already told you about my PhD. There are some new developments:

• my grade is rounded down to 2,0 - which means that I fit the criteria
• there are two professors who are willing to take me on as a PhD student: my English Literature professor and my History Didactics professor
• the main problem, however, remains: financing another three years of study
• there are no PhD posts that are paid for social or language studies students - unfortunatley I have the wrong subjects - science or business students have quite better options
• scholarships are available, but I have to compete with all subjects, all degrees from all over Germany - it is an open secret that in some subjects a 2,0 is already a very "low" grade, which is completely the other way round for my degree in Bavaria, I am way above average! And: who supports a social studies or language students, there is no profit in such a student for business companies or research orientated companies!
  
• unfortunately the only thing my two professors can offer is that they support a scholarship application - which means I have to bridge financially at least half a year, of course without knowing that I will get a scholarship (my parents are not happy, I can tell you, as they are not able to support me any longer!)
• conclusion: FRUSTRATING

Today another one of my options was cut short: New Zealand

• I applied for a post as language assistent in New Zealand a few months back and only 2 weeks ago I was told that I managed the first round, which means that my application was sent by the German authorities to New Zealand and now they have to decide if they want to have me
• the problem from the beginning was that no one in Munich (home to my federal state authority for teachers) was able to tell me if the two years of teacher training which follow my academic degree can be combined with this language assistent post
• so far the only thing I knew was: This language assistent job might reduce my two years of teacher training by one year (great!), but I can only apply for a reduction three months after I started my job at the school in Germany (which is in September, so I cannot apply before December) and there is no guarantee that the commitee allows a reduction (still okay)
• also no one was able to tell me whether I am allowed to start my teaching post at all and whether I am allowed to adjourn my two years of practical teaching
• today I got an e-mail telling me that they recommend to complete a teaching assistent post BEFORE I start my practicals - well, and what do I do instead? Twiddle my thumbs?
  
• How do I finance half a year before the school year in New Zealand starts in February? Especially as the posts are not distributed until November - which might result in the fact that I bridge half a year and then I do not get a job and so six months were absolutely wasted???
• conclustion: FRUSTRATING

Anything positive this week? It is hard to find something positive among all these developments. I don't know, everything I started or worked for over the last few months (even years) seems to become useless in the end - mostly because of bureaucratic nonsense. I was told that a language post before my practicals would of course be more useful, especially for my language competence. Hey, I have already spent a year as Gap-assitent in London, 2 semesters at Limerick University and last summer I spent another 4 months teaching at RMS - I think I have spent more time abroad than 95% of my collegues here at university who finished their degree with me....

Don't ask me, I am a bit depressed and frustrated. I hope that my exams which start next Thursday will be alright - nothing to look forward to, but something to do where positive results are at least possible!!!

Dreams

Last night in the end I forced myself to open the letter. What can I say, I am surprised and really disappointed at the same time.

Surprised, because my grades in English were better than expected, really disappointed, because my history grades seem not really fair. I studied for my history exams (see exam update 4 and 5) for more than 6 months and in the end it was worth nothing, I could have get the same grades without doing anything at all in preparation. This is frustrating.

The worst thing, however, is something different. It is still a good grade all in all, but I missed the target that I needed for a Phd by 0,04 points! This is ridiculous! All because of the written history exams, because my oral exams in that subject could not have been any better. This is just not fair, what are 0,04 points in comparison to 13 exams?????

I am not sure if my exam-celebration at the beginning of August is taking place, because at the moment I do not feel like celebrating. And I find it even worse to motivate myself for my master exams, because unfortunately History Didactics is not a subject of my master degree and therefore it becomes a bit "useless" to go on with it as well. Furthermore, now after this option is gone, I feel even more certain that I do not want to end up in school in September!

This is it...

... the day my letter - THE LETTER - arrived. I did not expect to find the letter with my exam results in my letterbox today, as most of my friends who finished their exams more than a week earlier than me had not received theirs yet.

However, there was an insignificant looking letter with the unmistakeable "Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Unterricht und Kultus und Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst in München" postmark on it. I was not able to convince myself to open it yet. I am a bit afraid, to be honest.

I know what you are thinking, why should I! Well, I know how some of my friends finished their exams. Some were really good and I know I cannot compete with them. So I am afraid to be disappointed. However, I did others expect to do better, so I am also afraid that my results are even worse. This IS a Catch-22, I would say, because I am an extremely nosy person. I studied for these exams for months on end and to see the results in big Black and White Writing - I am not sure if I really want to see it written down. Especially as I am not so sure about some of the exams, as I related in my exam updates 1 to 5!

Fortunately I was faster than my parents, so no one in the house knows that the letter has arrived and so no one can force me to open the letter. I will let you know - maybe tonight - when I was too curious to find out the results to wait any longer!