And Christmas Is Around the Corner

In my previous one, I spoke about how nobody was messing around with us during the first exam period – 14 days, 11 examinations and that was that. For how fast the second half of the year passed by, the second exam period dragged on almost unbearably. In the first half of the year, we had 5-6 tests each week that were mostly in written form. And now, we were facing nearly four weeks of strangely scattered examinations, both oral and written, and a pile of seminar papers to go with them. You couldn’t get to the oral exam without taking the written one, you couldn’t get to the written exam without the seminar papers handed in, you had to correct your seminar paper three times, and so it went around and around. The work, stress and fatigue melted into one big smudge, and the information system showing the grades was still empty. I thought to myself that perhaps it was impossible to get it all done by the start of the summer! But once the system showed my first green A, everything started running smoothly once again.

I felt very well prepared for the examinations, especially the oral ones. I do like the fact that with written exams, I can take longer to think and nobody can butt in on my responses, but during oral exams I’ve found that it is always better to have some partner. Indeed, to my surprise, at AKCENT COLLEGE, most of the time students go to oral exams in pairs or even in groups! My best friend Tomáš became my examination partner almost without hesitation. Tom is a very well read and intelligent person. We always work together on presentations and group papers, we create lessons together for language course attendees and we work on exam questions together. We’re simply a kind of A-Team. It briefly occurred to me that perhaps he would set the bar too high for me at some exam, but it was clear from the start that we complement each other perfectly.

Our first joint presentation took place for an exam on pedagogical planning, led brilliantly yet quite strictly by Dr. Hánková, who became my role model already in the first semester, but also my slight concern and colossal authority. Tom and I decided to go first because we were, frankly speaking, afraid that one of our not so bright classmates would tick the professor off right up front (most likely by calling her “paničelka”). The plan was a good one, but right in the school doorway, we passed six classmates who hadn’t even been permitted to take the exam because even after a half year, they still had not carried out the required classroom observations, let alone written records of the classes they watched. So our mood fell to freezing temperature. And it didn’t get any better upon drawing the questions. Numbers ranged from one to ten, I didn’t want five but yet would draw from the middle. Great idea, a five it was. But luckily the only “five” was for the question! I drew ‘typologies of exercises in English textbooks for level B1’, and Tom drew ‘textbooks as a whole’. All of a sudden, it was like we were just having coffee somewhere, discussing how to correctly assemble our jointly produced textbook, what exercises were adequate for practicing grammar or listening, or how much the replacement of textbooks at our school would cost. We didn’t even have time to drink up our imaginary coffees before the doctor “chased” us out with two A’s, whoa! I would also like to mention my other best friend, who also constitutes a key part of our A-team, but due to practice sessions of his metal band, he always came in at the last possible moment. And he would draw the only question for which he had studied, or for example in this subject, he would draw something really banal like didactic aids. One way or another, we three propelled ourselves forward and left the rest of the class behind.

Here I got used to writing about something new, light and heavy (something wise too and I can wed). What’s there to tell, I was born with the gift to gab and studied IB psychology to boot. When you put these things together, you complete your exam period just like that! So that was the light part. Let’s refer back to my vocabulary, where as a synonym of the word ‘hard’ we can find the word ‘phonetics’. Well, in truth there are several of them, but those words need not be altogether appropriate. I was in no hurry with phonetics, I knew that I wasn’t properly prepared for the first examination date, so I went to the written test in the second week, and to my own surprise, I passed the exam on the first go. It was a great thing, but now I had the oral exam ahead of me, which was assessed by grading, not just course unit credited/not credited. Another important note for readers is that I’m a real bad luck individual. Seriously. I’ve never won anything, I’ve yet to draw a good card and mainly I can’t roll dice, which was only confirmed at the oral exam in phonetics. I rolled a 4 - consonants, and I knew it was bad. I tried with all my might to pull out of myself the terminology, the biology, to illustratively indicate and draw where all known and unknown sounds are formed, but the verdict was clear right from sitting down in the hot seat. Nothing could be done, the grade of C would not suffice, so I decided to retake the oral exam, and in the question of sentence and word accents, I was on much more stable footing.

Let’s break it down by numbers:

    Examinations written/oral: 9/9
    Seminar papers: 3/3
    Grades: 4x A, 1x B
    Course units credited: 4/4
    Study average for both semesters: 1.2
    Continuing classmates: 10/13
    Mental breakdowns: 0
    
In conclusion from the serious side. I have truly become reassured that AKCENT is not a school where they serve up an academic degree and will even make two copies of it for your friends. That only 10 of the 13 of us original students are continuing, and three of these have to repeat phonetics next year, confirms this after all. But I would certainly recommend this school to future graduates, because even its relatively few classrooms hide unseen possibilities within. Over the second exam period, I slightly modified my nighttime study habits, and even gave up work and cooking! All at once it was the real student life; I discovered the beauty of the silence and the numerous works at the municipal library, as well as frozen pizzas. I am getting ready to go back to work in the summer, to further develop my culinary talents and try to rest for a week or so. In the next blog, I’ll elaborate more on my professional life and my free time, but as I have indicated, my academic life is now my priority.