Midterms

After my parents left Hong Kong, there were mid terms rapidly approaching, so for the last week, every day has been studying (hence the lack of blog updates). The weather has been cold and humid, classes have been intense, and finding motivation to actually put in hard work after 2 months of culture and travelling was much harder than anticipated.

Midterms are a curious idea. I normally do not have them in Denmark, as my classes are quarter based, rather than semester based. This means I have one final exam, counting 100% of my grade. In Hong Kong, where courses take a whole semester, midterms count for 25 - 35% of the final grade. However, the difficulty, extent, and grade percentage are all subject to the individual professor / department, and not all classes have mid terms (for example our two GLOBE classes). This means that most of the American students (due to the courses they are taking) do not have any midterms, while the Danes and the CUHK students do. I had 3.

Midterms are great in my opinion, because they force you to actually study your material intensely, and it gives the professor a good idea of how up to speed his / her students are. So basically it is what is required to break the habit of lazing about, which is what most exchange students do (relative to home, definitely). It also provides one with the satisfaction of having attained some new knowledge, and reignites the pleasure of learning.

So it is peculiar then that the midterms are not based upon the text books or lecture slides. Of course there is an overlap, but over 20% of all my midterms have been on topics similar, but not identical, to my courses. For example econometrics had questions on algebra, calculus and statistics. It forces one to think outside the box, but it also gives midterms a sense of randomness, since preparing for them doesn't give you a knowledge base to completely cover the questions.

At the end of the day, it feels nice it is over. Now it is important to keep the motivation and fully utilize the time left. A task becoming much easier with the warm sunny days ahead!