Pavlína Havránková

Although it is a relatively long time ago, we can certainly remember a time when students begged for the school to close, for the holidays to be longer, or for the afternoon classes to be canceled. The current situation is a historic moment when all students want the exact opposite.

It is the first time since my university studies that I am sitting down writing this blog post and I am not sure what to write. It seems to me that not much has changed since my last post. Unfortunately, the University of New York in Prague has its doors still locked and it is not certain when the halls will be filled with students again. However, I am not bored, on the contrary, the professors are giving us a hard time. I have five weeks left until the end of the autumn semester and the work to do is still increasing and increasing. The positive thing is that I have already passed midterm exams with grades beyond my expectations.

Sometimes I think to myself that there is nothing more that can surprise me at my university. However, each semester I am wrong and there is always something that amazes me. What surprised me this semester? I enjoy statistics!

In today's post, I will not spend much time writing about how fast the holidays have passed and how difficult the adjustment to the new semester was. I think everyone can imagine. Instead, I will focus straight away on how I am so far managing this semester.

And it is done! After exams in my spring semester, I walked out of school and expected to see something that I have never seen before. I expected something special will happen. In short, I thought it will be an exceptional and unique feeling. In reality, I felt great but not as much as I expected. At that time, I did not know the results yet and that might have been the reason why I still felt a little distress. “What if I didn’t succeed?”, “Did I fill in everything?”, or “Please let all my efforts be worth it.” is a classic example of my student thoughts during the finals week. Although, I was much less nervous than I was in the previous semester. I think I better organized my time so that I had also time for myself which positively influenced my grades and my overall state of mind.

The first semester is over! Holidays passed very quickly and the spring semester is in full swing. First of all, I would like to look back at the past semester which I ended, I would say, with good results. However, I don’t only see my academic achievements as a success, but also the fact that I have managed to adapt to a new university life which is full of responsibility and own initiative. Exams, as we call it at our school “finals week" were both time-consuming and psychologically challenging. However, I made it easier for myself by studying already during the school year. After all, my efforts were worth it and I was pleasantly surprised by my results. I achieved all attempted credits and went for one month long holidays which I spent partly at work and partly outside the city to relax.

While most of my former classmates had still one month of holidays, my new university did not waste time and started right from the beginning of September. I started attending the University of New York in Prague, a one-branch study of psychology.