Well, hello to the first day of my holiday! I just finished the final exam of my masters yesterday. It was...okay. We were really pushed for time but I guess we'll just have to wait and find out how it goes. I am not done with my masters yet though. It is a two years course so next year I will be doing my hospital placement and my thesis. I am not sure if I prefer that than studying for exam, but it's too early to decide.

Can you believe that they still haven't told us where our hospital placement will be? We have placement from Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Invercargill, Hamilton, Hawkes Bay, Palmerston North and Wellington. It could be anywhere and they still haven't told us!! I just hope that I can find a place to stay at wherever my placement going to be. My family is not here and it's not like I have friends in all parts of New Zealand. It's so hard!! Why are they so disorganised?

Because they are so disorganised (not just in arranging our placement), the whole course became really stressful. For example, in the first semester, we have classes from 8.00am - 5.00pm (sometimes goes up to 6.30pm) with only 1 hour break 12.00pm - 1.00pm, and two evening off for self-directed learning. Our timetable changes everyday. The challenge was that the timetable for the week was released on Sunday evening (the worst was 6.00am on Monday). Say you want to make appointment with Student Health, you have to call at least one week before. Also if you get sick (it's not like it is planned), just suck it up and go to class because you need to get letters from doctors for any missing class (even if you are late).

And then, we are "expected" to do preparation for each lecture. How is that possible? Sometimes the lecture wasn't up until right before the lecture or even after the lecture. It's crazy.

I hated the first semester of this year. Words just can't describe how stressful it was. It was not because the materials are hard. It was due to the course being disorganised and how they tried to crammed everything with the amount of time that we have. That pressure...I just can't. Due to that, I felt kinda like 'crashed and burn', so I stopped working as hard and looked for every opportunity to procrastinate. It also explains one of the reasons why I left New Zealand on the next day after my terms test during middle of the year. They told us that we are meant to spend 50 hours a week to do university work, but it was more than that! It wasn't just me. When the class complained, they told us that we should just suck it up because we are "masters student" now. You wouldn't believe how much work we had to do.

Sorry I just had to rant in my blog because I can't hold it to myself anymore. You know the feeling when you accumulated stress and you just want to release it all at once. Usually my "limits" are quite high, but this time, I just can't. There's something else happened but I might write in another post.

Since I am done now, I can say that I am a survivor. I never want to go back to first year again.