This week was a little rough thanks to all my midterms, but now I have a whole week off for fall break. I’m leaving for Madrid today to spend some time in Spain with my dear friend Rebecca Weitzel who’s studying in Cordoba. I’m thinking maybe I’ll find out how much Spanish I remember too. Then I’m heading to Copenhagen after Spain to see Maddie again. And finally I come back to Budapest for a bit before taking a weekend trip to Berlin. After the break I am hoping to take more weekend trips to see cities close to Budapest. I’m planning to hit at least Prague and Vienna as well as a couple more places if I plan things properly.
I’ve managed to pack everything I’m taking over the break in a backpack and a large purse which probably won’t surprise too many people except my Aunt Kathy and my mother who’ve experience my over-packing all too often. I’m happy to have so few bags so I can wonder around without having to leave my stuff in hostels if they don’t seem very secure.
In other news, this week I enjoyed tons of kale and finally got my residence permit so I won’t get caught at a border trying to get back in to Budapest. Look forward to my next update full of tons of pictures and stories about all I explored in Western Europe.
On realizing what it feels like to be a bad student:
Guys, I may not pass all my classes this semester and I’m terrified and annoyed. I have a 59% in Graph theory which translates to a C+ but still feels like a failure. My other grades haven’t been so directly reported to me, but they don’t seem great. I’ve always enjoyed classes and generally done well in them, so I’m worried about what happened to me. I spend a lot of time wondering about how my emotional state and learning environment affect my success.
Being far from home has made me far less motivated and sadder than usual, but I still don’t understand how my classes have managed to overwhelm me so much. They aren’t really harder than classes at Wellesley. In fact, they may be technically easier. But, at Wellesley my classes aren’t in two hour blocks, school isn’t an hour commute away from home,professors have office hours, and I have many friends with which I work on my assignments with. I think my choice in classes and having two hour block classes draining my time and energy makes it difficult to find time to properly study and complete my assignments.
I’ve decided that since my grades won’t be on my transcript and since higher level math classes are hard in any context that I should just continue doing my best and hope that the C doesn’t drop any lower. Any time I got less than desirable grades before I always wanted to work ten times as hard. But, I don’t have the energy for that now or the desire since there are so many more things I’d rather do than study in Budapest.
Also, I went on a date this week. It was kinda fun, but felt a little strange since I still haven’t figured out what I want within the realm of actually dating. Maybe I won’t know for a while, but I ought to focus more on re-realizing who I am and what makes me happy.
My roommate and I have both talked about how we wonder why we came to Budapest and aren’t sure this study abroad program is the best place for us. I’m worried she and I both have what I can only describe as “study abroad depression”, but I’m working on just doing what makes me happy and not being so concerned with missing home. Sometimes I wish I could just choose to be happy and control my emotions so that I only feel sad when I choose do. That’s obviously such a flawed idea, but it sounds nice sometimes.
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