GoneWacko’s Blog

Semester’s end

January 18, 2008 on 6:44 pm | In School, Work placement |

Yesterday was what everyone in my school calls Portfolio Day or Oh-God-Not-This-Shit-Again Day. It’s the day on which everybody has their deadlines for proving that they are competent on whatever they’re studying during that semester.
This semester I’ve been learning about Object Oriented Programming and Design, as well as writing Distributed Applications.
After learning about these subjects for 3 months I’ve now spent about 3 months (9 weeks + christmas holiday) applying these topics in a web-based application for a real company.

So traditionally the night before the day on which we have to submit our portfolios is subject to half the school pulling all-nighters to get their work done. This semester it was no different, and I was up for a good 38 hours. ‘Tis times like these where a mild form of ADHD and a condition where I don’t produce enough Melatonin, the hormone which causes drowsiness, really help. I’m able to stay up for 40 hours or more without too much of a problem.

Unfortunately I’m not feeling very secure about how my portfolio will hold up under the scrutiny of my assessors, but I should get plenty of chances to fix what’s wrong with it, luckily. At least the fact that the portfolio’s have been handed in means there’s less stress. Normally this also means that I now have a few days off, but no such luck: I still have another week in which to deploy the product we’ve produced and fix the last couple of issues we may stumble upon.

After next week however, I should have about 3 weeks of free time before I travel north-east to Finland! Exciting times are ahead and I’ll have tonnes of stuff to take care of. I have to buy a ticket, new shoes and perhaps somewhat warm clothes (although so far the temperatures in Salo, Finland are pretty much comparable to the temperatures in the Netherlands). I also need to figure out if Finland has different wall sockets from us and such.
Yesterday I’ve received word that they’ve made housing arrangements for us, very close to the university campus, in a residence where all the university’s international students are placed. So I think it’s going to be quite good, with people from all over the world in very similar situations as us. Should be a lot of fun!