First bit of exam strain

The highlight of my day: Autumnal comfort food of stewed
apples and pears with cinnamon toast <3

The last week's been quite a strain what with exams, deadlines, my mother leaving. I made an active decision to do absolutely nothing today. I was going to sleep until noon, not work on my room which has been scattered with books and papers, not get dressed... y'know. Oh, I succeeded in my plans, by the way. Admittedly, I did spend some time doing Cities and Cultures work but, without the pressure, it was almost fun!

I guess the real thing that was hanging over me was my first exam at university in Periods and Genres or, to put it simply, early art history. While I'm normally okay with exams I felt pitifully unprepared. I didn't feel I knew what to expect even though we'd had a practice test. It felt a bit like pot luck. I also felt that I didn't know the content. I'd been revising consistently for several weeks and felt as though I'd scraped the surface, certainly in terms of memorising it all. The exam itself went rather well, as it turns out. I haven't got the grades but I wasn't struck with the blind panic of knowing nothing which is what I had expected. I think that's something that I'm going to have to get used to though. I tend to push myself too far so the fact that this exam only required 50% to pass, and was only 20% of the subject, just didn't register. I guess I need to work on chilling out a little as far as grades and so on go.

I'll be honest with you though, I got up at four a.m. to revise, the morning of that test. I managed to blow up my toaster. The exam seemed rather tame in comparison ;-)

Post exam comfort eating.
Wait, I'm definitely sensing a pattern here... 

One thing that I am really happy about, with regard to last week, is I managed to start playing the whistles a bit again. I've not really played for three months now, not properly at least, and it does show with some of the octave switching and so on but hopefully, now I've lost my shyness about practicing where I can be heard, I'll get back to playing some more!

So, my week ahead looks really rather interesting. Bit of freedom, hopefully meeting with friends, practicing bike riding, taking a trip to a museum in Leiden (my first time out of Amsterdam since moving!), my first Dutch language class...

Oh and a trip to the tax office for which I'll have to leave at 6:30 am. Not so fun!