22 September, 2009

The "Module" system and a final exam in 3 days

I have a final exam on Friday (that's why there has been a lack of posts on my part...)

I started school August 20-something, so about a month ago. Theoretically, I'm not supposed to get stressed out about finals until December, when (in my US experience) I'd have 3 or 4 finals or giant papers due within the same week at the end of the fall semester. Don't get me wrong, it was terrible to cram. I always thought that any of those papers could have been genius if I didn't have 3 others due at the SAME TIME.

But my schedule is a little different in Sweden. We have course "modules" instead of semesters. We have one course at a time, with class once or twice a week, for 5 weeks. We are only responsible for the homework and readings from one instructor, and since it is so condensed, we get "tested" on what we learned from the one course at the end of about a month. Stu's is similar, though he has 2 subjects at a time (and, he has a final on Monday and on Tuesday.)

I am currently in the "Curatorship" module. My final isn't a written test, but a group project, presentation and a short individual paper on curating an imaginary exhibition. Kind of cool, until you think about how much work goes into putting on an exhibition, and how we only had a few short weeks to think about it, and how our group members were total strangers before getting thrown together for the project. We have to present our proposal to a group of professors, curators and other students Friday morning, and we don't even have a title for the thing yet. So I am kind of freaking out.
Huh, I guess thats not that different from the end-of-the-semester freak outs I am used to. Its just too early for it.

So after the final, I think I'll post some images from our pretend exhibition. Maybe some of you would come to it, if it existed? And the next module is "Historicity" (whatever that means?!?) and will be taught by a Philosophy prof at the university. God knows what kind of freak-outs that class will lead to...

2 comments:

  1. good luck with your presentation!!!

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  2. I really like that system. It reminds me of summer school in college: one class in four weeks. I loved that. It's so much easier to focus on one class for a short period than five or six for three months.

    Good luck!

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