Do you ever feel like you had absolutely enough? This was definitely me yesterday.
This year abroad has drained me a bit: it hasn't been intellectually challenging and I struggled to find some stimuli to avoid going mad, I still cannot comprehend the culture here, including terrible smoking habits, a lack of any sensitivity toward fellow human beings and an annoying assumption that you know ins and outs of everything, so no explanation of anything is ever given. Also, what sort of a person starts working outside your window (on the second floor I need to point out) at 8:20am? In any civilised country you are simply not allowed to start any noisy activity before 9am (or 10am, to be on the safe side). Here there's no sense of people simply wanting to sleep in the morning or to have a peaceful morning.
On the other hand, expect for those moments of complete frustration, I'm having such a good time here. Even the Dutch crudeness has it's good sides, since I can get away with saying things rather bluntly. The advantage is that taking a very direct approach ensures you are understood. If you say 'I think this is rather unpleasant to have you singing right outside my window when I'm trying to study', the message won't get through. It's another matter if instead you say 'Be quiet, your singing is awfully annoying.' In this case there's no doubt as to what message you try to convey. No linguistic complications. A clear message (which does sound a bit rude to me who is used to very polite manner, but here in NL it's a safer option).
***
It's only just over two months of classes! And even during these two months it's about 4 hours a week anyway, so I'll have plenty of time in between to have some fun (and revise, of course). After a bit of finals panic, I think I managed to calm myself down: it's over a year until I have to sit these exams so I'll just take my time and do whatever I can to sort myself out. Coming back to intellectually unchallenging courses here, being thrown out of the Oxford system was not pleasant, so I guess being thrown back into it will be a bit painful too, but apparently people after a year abroad get better results in finals, so...
On the other hand, expect for those moments of complete frustration, I'm having such a good time here. Even the Dutch crudeness has it's good sides, since I can get away with saying things rather bluntly. The advantage is that taking a very direct approach ensures you are understood. If you say 'I think this is rather unpleasant to have you singing right outside my window when I'm trying to study', the message won't get through. It's another matter if instead you say 'Be quiet, your singing is awfully annoying.' In this case there's no doubt as to what message you try to convey. No linguistic complications. A clear message (which does sound a bit rude to me who is used to very polite manner, but here in NL it's a safer option).
***
It's only just over two months of classes! And even during these two months it's about 4 hours a week anyway, so I'll have plenty of time in between to have some fun (and revise, of course). After a bit of finals panic, I think I managed to calm myself down: it's over a year until I have to sit these exams so I'll just take my time and do whatever I can to sort myself out. Coming back to intellectually unchallenging courses here, being thrown out of the Oxford system was not pleasant, so I guess being thrown back into it will be a bit painful too, but apparently people after a year abroad get better results in finals, so...
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