Update: Sunday 15 Jun

Sometimes I wish I had the time, money and patience to just go to school forever. The time and patience thing are tied together; I don't want to spend the rest of my life going to school, and I don't have the patience to keep going to school forever without any breaks. The money part, I believe, is pretty self-explanatory. It's not that I want to keep going to school just to avoid having a real life… Actually, I can't wait until I've graduated so that I can get a job and start really living… But I want to learn more. I want to finish my European Studies degree, but I also want a degree in linguistics, and a degree in marketing; I just want to study everything. I'm thinking that maybe I will, but not any time soon.

I don't know if you think that I don't write because I forget to write, or because I forget I have a blog, or maybe because I forget you guys are looking out for updates. It's not any of that. I think about it quite often. I just struggle sometimes to come up with something with which to fill these pages. I would rather write to you guys about something than give you 5 paragraphs of nothing, and I think I've been going the "nothing" route too much these last few months.

I've been thinking about things lately… Making backup plans. I hate to both acknowledge and admit that I'm making backup plans. I don't want a backup plan. I want my current plan to work. I'm not saying that it's not going to work; I'm still doing everything I can to pass all of my classes. It's just that I would hate for it to end up not working, and then I end up with no plan.  See, the IND (Immigration and Naturalisation Service) here in the Netherlands decided that there were going to be new rules this year; initially, in order to continue my program, I only needed to be sure I get my first year diploma within two years, and then make sufficient progress the following years. Now they've put a stricter guideline on it. They say I have to have earned half of my credits each year in order to retain my residence permit. The part that makes this difficult is that even if I pass half of my exams, it doesn't mean I earn half of my credits. Some modules have multiple exams, and I have to pass every exam within the module to earn any credits; even though those exams count as separate courses. It's really complicated to explain, but for example one of my minors this term, American Business and Politics, has three parts. There's an American Business class (5 credits), an American Politics class (4 credits) and an American Culture class (6 credits). In order to earn all 15 credits, I have to pass all three exams. I already passed the Business and Politics classes, but I think the American Culture exam is going to kick my butt. On the exam, they will give us 20 quotes from 20 different literary texts that are "important to American culture" and we have to identify the name of the text and the author. The remarkable thing is that I'm not familiar with a lot of these texts. This course was supposed to give us knowledge that would help us relate to Americans culturally, and I don't even know most of the reading material. They're all historical texts, quite a few dating back to colonial days. You would think that as an American, I should be able to find relevancy in the study material. Of all the things I should have to worry about…

Anyway, this means I have to pass at least 40 credits this year, and I'm sure I have passed the equivalent of that much, but I haven't actually been credited with them because I didn't pass all exams in the module. Heaps of frustration and stress involved in that. The lovely part is that we have to have passed these before July 1 apparently, and they only informed us of this at the end of March. Which, by the way, we had 40 credits worth of exams in January, and another 15 credits of exams in March. We can't resit any of those until August. I am supposed to go talk to someone about it, the dean of my academy, but he's never in office when I go by (even though it's during his listed office hours). If they really expect us to have gotten that done by July 1, they should have told us sooner…

The thing is, I have 11 credits from my first semester (I know, 11 is really lame) and my minors should give me 30 credits this semester, so I should be fine, but if I can't pass that American Culture class, or if I mess up with one of my other courses? Maybe I have no reason to worry, but I worry anyway. Worry, worry, worry.

And backup plans.