Diskurswelt.de

Saturday, I had my last exam: Distributed & Mobile Computing. Just like Economics and Advanced Databases it went pretty well. I don’t really know what to expect in the two management subjects, but that did not matter anymore that day, because we had a barbecue at our place. Chris was the hero of the day: he had finished his exams the week before and when I returned in company of some friends to our home, we were delighted to see that he had already lighted the barbecue. Awesome!

We spent all the afternoon and evening lying in the grass, enjoyed some of the good stuff, talked about all the world and his brother and did not leave the green before the last rays of sunlight were gone. After dark, we went to the last Erasmus party in city centre. Of course, it was in Anthony’s flat and almost everyone was there. Great fun!

Unfortunately, our friend and housemate Isma could not join us – he had left already on Friday due to another exam in Spain. See you, amigo.

It is that time of the year again: examinations. My timetable is not much better than last semester’s. I’ve got five exams in one week.

The examinations in Distributed and Mobile Computing make up 50% of the final grade, the ones in International Business and Advanced Databases 60% and the Management and Organisational Behaviour 2 and Economics 2 exams 70%. I asked for permission not to split myself into two on Thursday and take the exams one after another. Fortunately, the examination office decided in favour of my request. Thank you so much.

Do you lack self-esteem? Want to feel really popular? Just bring a bag of nachos to a party. Thanks to Fernando, I was known as „Nacho Guy“ at Audrey’s birthday party on Saturday. We went to his new flat afterwards. Sadly, I promised not to write about the guy who danced with an ironing board. If someone asks, you did not hear this from me.

Last Monday Katharina arrived. She’s a friend of Frau Schmidt from Dresden. As she arrived two weeks after everyone else due to exams, I told her a bit about how the ITT works and helped her to find the right people to talk to. In the evening we went into town, where I introduced her to Isa and Chris. We just love Grand Canal Square after nightfall, so we went there together with Katharina. Well, she seemed to like it, too. Although there’s not really much to see and you won’t find it in a tourist guide, I think it’s really worth going there, because of the atmosphere. Difficult to describe, you better see for yourself.

Wednesday is salad day. Again we met at Carmen’s place. Chris and I prepared a superb salad: iceberg lettuce, cashew nuts, chicken breast fillet, feta cheese, cocktail tomatoes… anything your heart desires. I really could get used to having one proper meal per week. Even in the evening, when we went to the Captain Americas with the InCuSo and everyone ate as if he hadn’t seen any food for a whole week, I was still saturated. Yummi.

On Thursday we got all our exam results from the winter semester. Although my exam results were very much okay, I was a bit disappointed about some of them. In particular HRM, where I really wanted to get an A after all the effort I had put in the project. I asked my lecturer if he could give me some feedback on my exam to find out what went wrong.

Less than 24 hours later I met him in person. That’s really great service! He was extremely punctual („I don’t want to let a German wait.“), well-prepared and explained to me what he expected from his students (a lot) and made clear that most of my answers were rather good, but lacked details. I know exactly that I would have performed better in this respect if there was not the lack of preparation time due to the extraordinary circumstances. At least my English met his high standards. Still, I’m not too happy about the results. I really hope this semester’s exam timetable will be better.

Nevertheless, the weekend was great. Thibaut invited everyone to have a party in his house on Friday and I went to the Lemon with some friends on Saturday. Afterwards we said hello at Natalia and Manu’s birthday party in Tramway Court. Here’s a bunch of last week’s photos:

Last weekend was great! Yoann asked everyone to come to the Metro on Saturday, his birthday. Although one could already hear the bad 90s music from hundreds of metres distance, it was pretty cool. Almost everyone, who was already back in Tallaght, showed up and we really had a great time together. I haven’t had so much fun while going out in months.
The day after, Thomas, Chris and I were invited to come to Anna for dinner (yummi wraps!) and I helped her migrating all her data from her old laptop to her red, new Dell. Did I already mention that I could possibly start working right away as a customer service representative for them right away? I already helped and gave advice to so many people that configured and ordered Dell laptops over here that I would like to ask: „Where is my bonus, Mister Dell?“

Enter Examinations:
Wed, 12:30-14:30 Corporate Social Responsibility
Thu, 15:30-17:30 Management and Organisational Behaviour
Fri, 09:30-11:30 Human Resource Management
Fri, 12:30-14:30 Economics 1
Fri, 15:30-17:30 Software Development 5

„O horror, horror, horror! Tongue nor heart
Cannot conceive nor name thee!“
Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3

Fortunately, this is last week’s exam time-table and not this week’s. This means: it’s already part of the past. Yay! Despite the circumstances, the exams went pretty well. Of course, I was not able to learn and prepare everything to the extent that I originally wanted to, but my instincts did not let me down and I correctly identified the most important aspects and learned them.

However, I am not very happy with the exam as well as my performance in Software Development. I do not know if it was just me, but there were way to many small syntax questions, where you could write everything in between two short sentences and a full-fledged thesis. Thus, time became an issue.
In my opinion, some of the questions were a bit stupid. If there are more searches than inserts, why would you keep things sorted by regularly sorting them instead of inserting at the right spot in the first place? And why the hell would you want to use a Bubblesort? Moreover, as often in class, there was a lack of sound object-orientation in the interfaces that had to be implemented as specified.
Of course, fatigue reared its ugly head after all these hours of examination and my performance (as well as my handwriting) went dooown. But I am not too worried: the examination only makes about half of the grade and the CAs and lab work hand-ups that make up the other one were almost perfect. More than 95% I think.

After this examination marathon, there is one more exam next Friday: Innovation and Entrepreneurship. I thought I deserve one or two days off now to recharge my batteries. So yesterday evening, Herr Doktor and I went to meet Tom at his place, where we chilled and played some games on the Xbox 360. Boy, it was good to see him again and I’m looking forward to tonight, because we’ll probably go out with some other guys that I haven’t really seen in a while (Chris!).