Final Exams: Poland vs. America

I haven’t written in a while, but I have a number of reasons, or maybe excuses, for that.

December was pretty dense. I survived my first period of final exams in America. I had four of them, so the reading period was barely enough to fit all the reviewing/fixing holes in my knowledge. Exams were pretty fun to write (especially intro to economics with its charming examples based on, for example, our professor’s familial anecdotes). What makes American finals probably more relaxed than Polish ones is that they usually make up only up to 30% of the final grade, whereas final exams in Poland and, from what I know, some other European countries are the sole base for grading. On the other hand, the European model allows for a number of attempts to pass an exam with only the best grade taken into account at the end of the day.

Leaving the classroom having successfully finished my last exam with the prospect of travelling home for a month was a truly ecstatic, liberating experience. Here we get to a really comfortable feature of the academic year at the U of R: compactness. Each semester is pretty intensive and doesn’t allow for much free time (let’s face it, five days of Thanksgiving break isn’t enough) but is balanced by longer vacation periods in the end. It seems sensible in a situation when many students have to travel long distances to get home. In my case, it was 20-something hours spent travelling followed by almost thirty days of winter nirvana in my hometown.