15.2.10 – First Paper, First Grade

I had my first written paper due today at 8:30 in the morning for my European Business class. There are the usual “first paper of the semester” nerves in addition to the fact that I have NO idea how my Danish instructors grade papers. My instructor did give us a grading rubric to try to follow, however it is rather generic and leaves plenty of room for subjectivity. Anyways, since I had to print off my paper before class, I left about 20 minutes early just to make sure that I would have time to print, since I assumed other students would be doing the same as well. However the process of printing my paper turned out to the most stressful part of the whole process. I got to school with about 30 minutes before my class started. Since employees are not in quite that early, we only had access to the library to print. Of the approximately 15 computed in that lab, we were only able to log onto about 6 of them. Once I finally got to a computer, it wouldn’t recognize the word document file that I sent to myself through my email, nor could I find a place to plug in my flash drive. Luckily, a fellow student let me use his laptop to resave my document as a PDF and I sent it to myself again. This time I could open it on the computer, however at that point the printer had jammed up because everyone was trying to print at the same time. (Did I mention that there were students from other classes too who were also trying to print their papers?) The whole process was ridiculous, however I did finally get my paper printed with about 5 minutes to climb up the five flights of stairs up to my fourth floor classroom. It was definitely a stressful start to the morning, but that meant the day could only get better from there.

My two classes were rather uneventful, but I did get my test back in my history class today. I did rather well, which is a nice boost of confidence for the rest of the semester. Afters those two classes, I was actually done for the day. Usually I would have had to wait around for five hours until my last class, but that class has been cancelled for the entirety of the week because it is ‘Week 7’ in Copenhagen, which is a weeklong break for students in the school system and a lot of families take ski vacations. My instructor for my marketing class was taking his family skiing, which means NO CLASS for us! It was kind of weird being done so early in the day though. Especially, since I completed most of my work for the start of the week, so I didn’t really have any work to do either. I decided to stay around DIS though and wrote a blog for the weekend, checked email, and did some other random tasks.


At about 1:00 I decided to try to make my way home. However, on the way to the station I decided that I would walk around the outer part of the city a little bit. I had traveled through that area via bus but had yet to walk there. I eventually ended up walking to the train station a stop down from where I usually get on. On my way, I walked past what I think are the botanical gardens (it was all dormant, so it wasn’t that pretty yet), down to the end of the lake area, which seperates the inner part of the city and the surrounding neighborhoods, and then I walked past what I believe to be the ugliest building I have seen in Copenhagen thus far. I am ashamed to admit that this building is the home of the United States Embassy in Denmark. (I attached a picture, you can see for yourself.)


I then made my way to the nearest train station and got on my train to head home. Since it was still light outside and I wanted to stop and get a few things at the store, I decided to walk home from the station. It wasn’t too bad, however I am a little sore from my running this weekend, so that made things slightly more cumbersome. Once I finally got home, I had a very relaxing afternoon and evening consisting of snacking, watching Bones episodes online, making dinner, watching the men downhill skiing event of the Olympics, taking a shower, and heading to bed. I am also starting to get used to being in my host home all by myself. While it is a little strange, I am oddly becoming more comfortable with it now that I am home alone. I think this is partially due to the fact that I taking care of myself again, like I am used to, and not constantly feeling like a guest in someone else’s home.