Online. Again. About the semester at the ETH

It was a reasonable thing to do, since 90 % of nearly 20.000 students not including the external workers, professors and other staff is relatively big number. An exception goes to people working in labs and doing research, whose work is essential for the ETH a cannot be done online. Being a freshman, this exception does not include me, which means that since the end of October I have spent most of the time in my student house.

The online lectures and exercises are much more demanding, so I always try to use the experience I gained during the first online-learning period, when I was finishing the grammar school in spring of this year.

I would like to take a moment to describe how the two semesters of the first-year students at the ETH work, since I find them pretty uncommon. Both consist of 14 weeks and during this period there are no exams or written tests. There are only weekly assignments in each of the subject, for which the student can get additional points for his exams. If one can get at least 80 % of the maximum from the bonus tasks, he or she will get extra 0.25 points on 1-6 scale of the exam (6 being the best). Uncommon and for many also inconvenient is the date of the exam-session. It doesn’t start straight after the end of the semester, it is, however, a session starting 4 weeks before the next semester starts, which means there are no holiday, only learning phase. In order to pass the first year, one has to pass both winter and summer exam session.