Final Days Before Finals

After landing back in Istanbul, I woke up the morning after Krakow exhausted, and a little overwhelmed. I was entering the final days - the end times, if you will (oh, you will? How kind of you!).

It was Tuesday. I had my final paper due in my Alexander the Great class. 8-12 pages. Fortunately for me (and with a rare amount of forethought), I had written it just prior to going to Krakow, well aware that I would have about 10 hours between arriving at the Superdorm and handing in my paper the next morning.

Before Alexander the Great I had Turkish. I was a little late (an hour late to the two hour class), but I figured I could, as I've done a few times before, slip in during the 15 minute break in the middle, unnoticed by our incompetent teacher. As I approached, though, Sean from my program was leaving class, saying it had been let out early. Oh, and our class tomorrow, instead of being review for the Final on our last day, was cancelled. No reason as to why.

My final Alexander class was a good one. We talked for a bit, but then we all presented on our topics, which I found particularly interesting. I looked at how Alexander was influenced by mythology and memory and, in turn, the extent to which those influenced by Alexander for the following millennia were influenced by myth and memory over factual history. It was interesting, but 8-12 pages is not enough space to put everything I wanted to write. Which is good, because I spent about 4 hours on the paper itself.

The next day was Wednesday. I tried to meet up with my professor from Wash U, Professor Konig, but to no avail. He had been in town from the 15th to the 17th the previous week, and came back on the 23rd before heading home. But the first three days he was in town, I was very busy, and the last day he was around, he had gotten sick. Instead I passed time until...

Thursday. May 24. Last day of classes. I had no class. Only Historiography meets on Thursdays, and it, like Turkish, was cancelled on the last day. Classic Boğaziçi! I still don't entirely understand their conception of education, but I have never appreciated the American schooling system more than spending the last few months in a place that cancels class regularly, students don't show up (my Alexander professor recently informed us that 33 students are enrolled in our class, and only 12 of us show up regularly. 10 of those are 100% of the foreign students), and students leave halfway through class without rhyme or reason. I think it's because the Turks don't pay for their school. Well, they pay a few hundred TL per year. I bet if Turks were made to pay anything close to what we pay in the states, even just a few thousand dollars like at state schools, you'd see attendance skyrocket across the board.