29 Credits in One Semester

My transcript finally came in. And it credits me with one hell of a semester in Germany. Other than a C- in Latin American Literature, the exam I majorly screwed up on, I got B+ or better in all of my courses. Not that it even matters, because all I had to do was clear the C- threshold in order to have all the courses listed on my Mizzou transcript as 'pass'. Pretty cool.

I'm especially shocked and secretly pleased by my 1.0 (A+/more or less 100%) in, of all things, Culture Studies Spain and Morocco. I paid attention to the first month of that class, when we were talking about Al-Andalus, but once we got into the more modern, war-torn relationship between Spain and Morocco, I started dozing off. And um, you can't do that in a class taught in a foreign language. :) The latter 2/3 of my 'notes' are mostly scribbles with an occasional reminder that something called "Rifkrieg" is important and I should look it up. I finally did so the night before the exam, and spent a few hours reading all the cross-referenced Wikipedia pages. Until 7 p.m. the night before, I wasn't even sure I wanted to take the exam, I was that sure I was going to fail. But my friends asked what I had to lose, and the truth was, nothing. And then I went in to the exam room and destroyed it. Still, a German 1? Yikes!

But the grades weren't the interesting part of the transcript. What was interesting was the credit hours. 58 ECTS. The normal semester course-load is 30. In American/Mizzou terms, it comes down to this - I received 29 transfer credits - a full academic year's worth - in one semester abroad. Good stuff, too. Two upper level Spanish classes, two upper level German classes, an upper level Humanities, an upper level Social Sciences, and three upper level miscellaneous foreign language. Everything transferred better than I'd dared hope!

But it's just funny, thinking back. I knew I was taking more courses than average - and to be fair, only 8 during the normal semester and 1 during the orientation program. But I was hardly consumed by the coursework. I had time for cooking and random parties and movie-nights, for exploring NRW inch-by-inch, for editing and sorting photographs and keeping up the MU Study Abroad Blog. I spent every Wednesday volunteering in an elementary school. And of course, I travelled almost every weekend, near and far.

It shouldn't even be possible. It helped that I took one credit-heavy class during the pre-semester orientation program, but still. The only reason I got away with it is that international students don't register like normal students. Nothing in the computer to stop me. I had 3 classes from the international office, 3 from the Romance department, and 3 from Ansgar, almost as jokes. At no time did anyone notice that I was taking all of these classes at once, apparently.

One semester. Eighteen countries. Twenty-nine credits. Dozens of new friends and uncountable memories.

Yeah, I'm pleased as punch.