Thursday, January 15
Results
Speaking of essays in the last post, I should mention that I got back an essay and an exam result this week. Good news or Indifferent news first?
I'll go with the indifferent news. Earlier today I got my Advanced Criminal Law essay back from my tutor. This was a 3000+ word essay that I wrote before Christmas on the subject of intention within the criminal law. I was very pleased with it when I handed it in, and it seems that I was somewhat justified in feeling that way. I got a 58 for it, which is a high 2:2. I should mention here that it is nigh-on impossible to score over 75 at my uni, even though it is marked out of 100. From what I've heard, a mark of 80 or more has to be accompanied by a letter to the overall Governing Board from the marker explaining the reasons why such a high score has been given. Stupid bloody system.
I was pretty pleased with the 58, especially when the tutor told me that I had got the method and structure of writing an essay down to a tee, and that it was a few errors / problems in the arguments themselves which cost me a few marks. That's good news because it means I don't really have to revise essay technique itself too much, and can concentrate on the matter of the subject itself. Very good news, because I really, really enjoy Advanced Criminal. It gets you thinking in a way that my other subjects don't seem to.
The second bit of news is the result of a "Progress Test" that I did for my German class just before Christmas. You know, the German class that I'm paying ?310 for the pleasure of doing. This Progress Test was kinda thrown upon us all when we sat it, and we were unaware until 5 minutes before it began that it was in fact counting for 25% of our final mark for the year. Oh joy.
I remember walking out of the exam thinking that I'd really, really fucked it up. The written section at the end of the paper was a bastard, because it was such a random subject to write about, and I didn't have an opinion on it anyway. I was running out of time, and I thought that it was the worst piece of German that I'd written in the last 3 years.
Turns out it wasn't. It was actually pretty good, if a little short. The whole exam was pretty good, to be honest. A 64, which I was / am well happy with. I'm not even taking the course to get a grade, I'm just doing it in order to better my German overall before I go over there to live in September. And it was my grammar that let me down overall in the exam, which is odd because grammar has always been my strong point. Meh.
And that about sums up the highlights for this week. Boring, I know. But don't say that I've never warned you about that!!!
