Thursday, December 21, 2006

No place like home for the holidays...

Alas, exams are over and the break from school is here. Three whole weeks to spend in the Fraser Valley working at the old employer, opening gifts, drinking eggnog, and spending time in the company of friends and family. Certainly good times shall follow...

As for school, now that I'm a little bit removed from writing exams and have spent two days gaining perspective while hauling dressers and sofas around, I'd have to say that the past three-and-a-half months were the most enjoyable educational experience that I have had. There was a time, albeit brief, where I was actually enjoying studying for and writing law school exams. Don't expect to read about the same kinds of feelings come April.

The biggest challenge for me has been essay writing, which is somewhat odd since I've spent most of my post-secondary life writing essays. However, one tends to become a tad verbose writing history papers for seven years (not that this is evident from reading these posts) and having to cut law school papers down to size has been a particular challenge. UBC has incorporated a strong writing component into its classes this year, which resulted in nine written assignments, three of which were fairly substantial. The final paper for Transnational consisted of two essay questions (each divided into two parts), with a 1500 word limit for each. Oh, and about 10% of the mark came from discussing how you would have researched had this been a research exam. After much editing, I ended up with totals of 1498 and 1491 words, give or take a 'the'. By the end, I probably took out as much as I put in...I can only hope that the mark justifies the work (we'll see come January).

But, for these three weeks I will push aside the books and focus on quality warehousemanship, poor gift-wrapping, and much too much Christmas baking!

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