Too much work. Or too little?

I was repeatedly told that I would have no work during my year abroad. However I was actually kept pretty busy for at least a good chunk of my time in Leiden. And it's only today that I've realised why.

It's not so much that Oxford's workload is so heavy that compared to it my year abroad workload is nothing. At the end of the day across this year I managed to do 11 courses, for all of which I had to read textbooks, cases, articles, write an odd assignment, and pass an exam at the end.

The real issue here is that Oxford workload is crammed into three eight-week long terms and here there are two semesters spanning over eight-nine months. So there's simply more time and the work can be distributed. This year, instead of panicking if I can get through all the assigned reading AND produce some sensible work, I could just plan ahead giving myself enough time for each task, not rushing through it. I simply don't have this comfort at Oxford at all. I need to meet all the deadlines, rush through excessive reading lists and somehow fit in attending lectures and tutorials around all this work. It's no fun quite frankly.

This has probably been the best part of my year abroad. Having time to do work. And other things beside it. I'll miss it in October for sure.