The story of why I dropped out of Honours

Last Friday, I withdrew from studying Honours in German.

It was a pretty big decision for me. There were several reasons behind it, some of which I'll go into now:

1. Worst subject ever
The way my Honours course was structured was a little odd. Because I was going on exchange in Semester 2, they had me doing just one culture course in Semester 1 (to come back in 2014 to write my thesis). The only culture course on offer (at my level) was one on Die Leiden des jungen Werthers ('The Sorrows of Young Werther'). It is a book by Goethe (kind of like the German version of Shakespeare), and I would not recommend reading it. In fact, I will summarise the plot for you:

boy moves away from home/girl troubles; boy finds out girl he is about to meet is engaged, is warned not to fall for her; boy meets girl; boy falls for her anyway; boy spends the next half of the book raving about how wonderful she is; girl's fiancé comes home; boy moves away from girl troubles; boy is unhappy in new life; girl marries fiancé; boy moves back; boy laments that now she is married; boy complains some more (the second half of the book); boy commits suicide because he can't bear it any more.

So not only was the plot terrible (he is so whiny!), but the course was really dry too, and no one understood what was going on in lectures (in fact, a few of us used to get together after the lectures to try to piece together what the lecture was about).

This is basically what he spends the whole book doing: OH NO, SHE IS TOO PERFECT!
OH NO! SHE IS MARRIED AND ALSO PERFECT!

But I was going okay, until it came time for me to do my (18-minute) oral presentation. I thought I was going to be super prepared for it, and work hard, because I'd chosen my topic in week 1, and I was presenting in week 6! It'd be fine! It sounded like an interesting topic, too!

But then it got to week 5, and I realised that despite having got books out from the library, I wasn't going to be able to present in week 6. So I asked if I could do it in week 7 instead (which fell after the two-week mid-semester break). But I did nothing during the holidays. I tried! - I sat down in front of my computer, trying desperately to research for my topic... but I couldn't find anything, and I didn't know what angle to approach it from or anything.

(For anyone wondering, my topic was: Medien und Kulturgeschichte – Soziale, ökonomische und politische Aspekte im Roman und im deutschen Bürgertum der 1770er Jahre ('media and cultural history - social, economic and political aspects in the novel and in the German middle class in the 1770s').)

The night before, I was a mess. I had no idea what to do. With the help and support of my parents and boyfriend, I was able to piece together about 400 words of terribly-written German by about 2am. But I decided that that was ridiculous, and I would never be able to write 1500 (or get 18 minutes' worth of notes) by 3pm the next day. So, I emailed my lecturer and told him that I wouldn't be in class tomorrow, and that I was struggling, or something, and went to bed feeling very unsure about everything.

(My lecturer has been really nice about everything, so that is a good thing.)

2. Thesis topic
I hadn't chosen one yet. It's already May, and although I had an extra semester to write my thesis, I really should have chosen a topic in the Summer holidays. I had got a (very) broad idea of what I wanted to do, but was finding it difficult to narrow down into a tackle-able topic.

This does not look fun at all.
Image credit.

3. Delaying Real Life
The study bubble has been a pretty good place to be for the last 19 years. But if I'm honest with myself, doing Honours for a year and a half was partially just a way to put off having to face Real Life. Because I don't know what I want to do yet.

4. A way to get back to Germany
If you know me (or if you don't), you may have picked up that I like Germany by now. I don't know, I'm pretty subtle about it. While I had already started investigating Honours when I found out that I could possibly go on exchange as part of it, by the time all the discussions about exchange were happening, I honestly said 'if I can't go on exchange, I'm not going to do Honours'. Now, although I desperately want to go back to Germany, and my flights are booked, and my accommodation for our holiday beforehand is all sorted, putting myself through a year and a half of extra study just to spend five months in Berlin is not a good reason.

Our holiday route. Arrive London August 20th, arrive Berlin September 28th.

5. Long-term benefit?
They say that Arts degrees are useless. And sure, my degree(s) don't lead anywhere in particular. Like I said, I don't know what I want to do when I grow up. I'm just not sure that studying for a year and a half just to get some extra letters on my parchment is going to be worth it in the long-term. Granted, I now have some letters on my transcript that pretty much say 'failed at Honours', but I don't think that staying at uni for longer is actually going to help me find out what I want in life.

So, after a lot of soul-searching and pros and cons lists writing, I decided to withdraw from Honours.

My plans now
Well, I already have my flights and accommodation booked to get to Berlin, so I'm going to do that. My plan at the moment is to secure an internship at a company in Berlin and stay there for five-six months. Unfortunately, not really knowing what I want to do makes finding an internship that I'm interested in pretty difficult. Perhaps a stint in a big city will help me find that out.

Credit

Incredibly scary as it is, I am going to be working towards Real Life. Though I expect I'll take a while to get there properly.

Flights are all booked!

This afternoon, Justin and I booked flights from Bergen to Tallinn (argh it leaves at 6am, but it was SO much cheaper) and from Krakow to Munich... that means that all our flights for our trip are booked now! We thought this was a bit cheeky though...

A payment fee?! This was before I'd even said what payment method I was using (so they couldn't have added it for credit card). I guess it's more often called an "administration fee"...

60 Tiny Love Stories to Make You Smile

I was crying by the end.

Berlin and graduation

I have been accepted as an exchange student by the Freie Universitaet Berlin!

I will be studying in Berlin from Oktober 14th until February 15th (well, those are the teaching dates); leaving Australia on 19th August and staying in Europe (leaving from Berlin) until 3rd March (arriving in Adelaide on 5th March) and I am very very excited!

For those of you who don't know, I'm studying Honours in German this year, and will be completing most of my coursework in Berlin, before returning to Adelaide for Semester 1, 2014 to complete my (12,000-word) thesis (in German!).

Justin is also going on exchange to Berlin (what a coincidence!) and we are travelling around Europe for a bit beforehand. This is what our trip looks like (at the moment):

Very excited :D we'll be visiting Kat and Andreas in Bergen, will be in Munich for Oktoberfest, and will visit Cate in Heidelberg and be there for the Heidelberger Herbst

I graduated last Thursday from my Bachelor of Media, Bachelor of Arts, and Diploma in Languages. The only person to get 3 parchments at the ceremony!

Thank you to my family and friends for helping me get here! I honestly could not have done it without your love and support :)

It's the end of the mid-semester break now, and I am very behind in all the work I have to do. I've been very stressed in the last few weeks because at one stage I had three jobs (though one of them is still not giving me any work). I have since quit one of them because it was a horrible workplace (I lasted two weeks) - won't name names, but may I just suggest no body go to a place which has ice and you can hire special shoes to go on the ice with, because they way they treat their workers and customers is pretty terrible.

Things will be calming down a lot for me now though - I won't have any more rostered shifts at Unibooks until next semester which is good because I was working there every spare day I had! Although I really like working in a bookshop, it will be good to feel like I have some time and space for myself. Hopefully now I'll be able to concentrate more on Honours - both my thesis and the course that I'm doing, and also on TAFE, since honestly both have taken a back seat to my AUGC duties and hours and hours of work. Hooray!

New dresses

I avoided joining Pinterest for so long, but there are just so many amazing craft/ sewing projects on there, I can't look away!

I went to a sewing day today with a few girls from uni, and got most of a dress made (with a bit of time at home too). Just have the armholes, hem, hook and eye, and pockets to go, then I will have another summer dress!

Quite pleased with how this one turned out, and my zip in this one looks much better than the last zip I put in, which was in this dress:

There are a lot of sewing/ craft projects that I want to try, but don't really have a reason to do them. We'll see!

I've started my Certificate III in Events at TAFE now - I'm doing it externally and got my book for my first unit today. I hope it'll be interesting. I'm also doing Honours in German part-time this semester.

Project for Awesome

I just donated to the Project for Awesome 2012!

The Project for Awesome is (according to the official website)

...an annual event that sprung out of various YouTube communities to support charities and other ways of decreasing the overall worldwide level of suck. Every year since 2007, thousands of people post videos to YouTube promoting charities on December 17th. We then come together as a community to promote those videos and raise money.

So that's pretty good. People donate money through indiegogo and either get a thing for their money (for instance, part of what I contributed gets me a Nerdfighter bottlecap necklace) or just donate because it's a nice thing to do.

The videos/ charities are voted on (by the general internet public, not some board of directors or something) and the top five get a proportion of the funds raised. 100% of the money raised actually goes to the charities too (minus the cost of shipping the things that people get and that sort of thing, but everything is volunteers).

Check it out, if you have a minute. They've been running a livestream and it's going for 48 hours, I believe. I watched a bit last night instead of sleeping, but it encouraged me to donate to charity so really I think it's a positive thing. Not just that I donated, but the whole thing - that the internet can do a really cool thing.

Also, while explaining to Justin what a bottlecap necklace is, I came across a cool craft website which made me think about doing crafty things again. We'll see what these holidays bring!

I tried a macaron for the first time yesterday. It was pretty delicious.

Pitch Perfect: a surprisingly good film

For a film that presented itself as Glee but at college, Pitch Perfect was actually enjoyable.*

Justin's birthday movie vouchers expired on Friday, so we made the difficult choice between Twilight and Pitch Perfect, as there was nothing else on (that we hadn't already seen) at the small local cinema.

Having made the decision to go for a swim and watch the sunset, we were running slightly late getting into the cinema. The last to arrive, we found a seat at the back and noted that Justin was the only male in there... promising, we thought.

I expected that it would be a film that would put all the funny bits in the trailer, and the rest would just be bad, but actually, it was consistently good. Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins start off as the commentators in what sounds like improvised hilarity, and the film maintains the jokes the whole way through. I was a little worried when there was a vomit part early on, thinking that that might be the stupid direction the movie would take, but thankfully it did not.

Anna Kendrick's character Beca was a little same-old - moody freshman who doesn't want to be at college and doesn't want to make friends, and I'm not entirely sure that the character won me over. Rebel Wilson was excellent as Fat Amy - a larger girl who has self-confidence! Hooray! Very refreshing to see. Also Australian, so yay for that.

Anyway, it was a funny movie which I would recommend if you like chick flicks, a capella, college movies, or laughing.



*I do like Glee and musicals though, so perhaps my opinion isn't the best.

I am so close to finishing ALL my degrees

ONLY 4500 WORDS BETWEEN ME AND MY DEGREES COME ON SEZ YOU CAN DO IT. All I have to do is talk about my placements this semester, and about how crap the Media degree is. Well, "critique" the Media degree... ha, ha, ha. I should look to this blog for resources about ALL the times I've complained about it. Perhaps I'll post up here what I write in my report, though I probably won't. But maybe I will.

I didn't write this article:

I could have written something similar though.

It's about anxiety.

I don't think I've talked about my mental health on this blog before. Long-time readers will probably be aware anyway. I'm not sure if I will again.

Here is a video that is good

I like it anyway.