Finals

       All of June and part of July was taken up by a blur of studying, tests, and sleeplessly warm nights. I decided I wasn´t eager to repeat last semester´s experience of failing my final exam, so I overcompensated this time around, and studied possibly more than I even would at UCSB. The library became a sort of social watering hole, to the point where I would take the bus to campus, spend two meager hours divided between sporadic studying and watching Youtube clips; then an hour at the dining halls for lunch followed by a Javi-mandated 45 minute coffee break. Around 3 o´clock we would return to a few hours of studying before the library closed, where about half the time I spent digesting a food coma. In the evenings we would usually have the brilliant idea of cracking open a bottle of wine on my terrace in order to study more, but how much are you really taking in after three glasses? With a daily schedule more or less like this, it´s no wonder it took six weeks to adequately prepare for four finals. It was the most studying without studying that I´ve ever done in my life, but I guess that goes in keeping with this whole year. Anyway, I´m very pleased with the end results, and maybe I could go as far as to say that tipsy studying on the terrace leads to excellence.
      Scattered in between my exams were a number of other social breaks--Javi´s band´s concert, BBQs, birthdays, tapas, midnight ice creams at the foot of the Alhambra, and a visit to the beach to say goodbye to some friends just two days before my hardest final. Although the coast was great, the stomach flu/food poisoning I developed afterwards was not, and between spending all Saturday at the beach and all Sunday in bed with a fever, I walked pale and nauseous into my Monday morning exam feeling somewhat less than prepared. Luckily the class was Contrastive Linguistics between English and Spanish, so I already had a 50% chance of passing merely thanks to growing up speaking English.
       However, coming down with the flu two days before leaving Granada for a month-long trip meant that I couldn´t visit my favorite places or say as many goodbyes as I would have liked. I´ll be back for one afternoon in August so I´ll have to cram in all my ´´lasts´´ then!