Hello everyone,

well I hate to admit, but I am overloaded by school. The thing is, that I have never experienced this kind of attitude before. This higher education system is totally different from what I was used to during my bachelor in Hungary. To give you an idea why, I will show you this nice summary about one of my courses. The following table discusses how the study load comes together in the case of this seminar.

As you can see, there are overall 140 hours accounted for this studyload - that equals 5 ECTS. Thats fine, nothing wrong with that. If you wonder what that magical number 7 is doing in the calculations: the official speed for reading academic text is 7pages/hour. (Dont you dare think that thats ridiculous: my personal record is around 11, talking about not really big pages.)

But if you take a closer look at the components, you will understand my concerns: the actual attendance of the class is only 24 hours, which is 17% of the studyload. The rest 116 hours, 83% of the time spent on this course is be self-study: by reading and preparing assignments.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, I do understand that this is master level, but still, just to give you a comparison: back in Hungary I had a few courses, where I just had to sit in class, and hand in ONE paper at the end of term. So 80% of the time spent on one course was by attending a class.

Dont get me wrong, I am not complaining, I am just overloaded: next to my work, I am constantly reading and writing assignment for a week now, and it just never seems to stop. I love it :) Except for the part when I started crying yesterday at 1 AM: I had to conduct an interview for a research and I had to transcribe it and the software didnt work, so I was doing it until 2 AM in the morning. The class today started at 10, so to get from Utrecht to the university, I got up at 7.45. I wasnt happy in the morning. AT ALL.

So, if I am not reacting to mails, posts or anything, it is because I am drowning in schoolbooks.

Keep fingers crossed that I survive. Without losing my job. I want to go on holidaaaaaaaaay.....