Hard times of studying

After enjoying a whole semester hard times came (haha). I almost forgot how horrible it is to study! It is just awful. I did not realize how much time I have to devote studying for my state exams. It is endless and boring. The thing is that I did not manage to study according to my plan so I am in a rush and this week I can do anything else except for studying, breaks for breakfast, lunch or dinner and exceptionally running or writing a blog. It is just crazy. It seems to me that I am not able to remember everything even if I tried my hardest.

Our state exams includes Microeconomics, Macroeconomics and European Economic Integration. Actually, Integration is the best one because I studied it whole just 6 months ago to pass my exam. On the contrary, Microeconomics and Macroeconomics is terrible. I kind of regret being lazy in the first and second year as I found out I did not really study much and I see a lot of things for the first time. But you know, it should not be like this. I would really prefer learning mathematics (but without stress). I might consider studying more from September when I start from the beginning at the new university.

Besides this studying, I had to solve my problem with accommodation in Amsterdam. You know, as it happens, when you are busy the most and there is no time to lose you have to decide many things at the same time. That´s exactly what happened. The beginning of my new semester is in September but Amsterdam University just decided to make me angry and they sent us information about accommodation. I could not believe it! They offered to help us with accommodation just for a small fee – 500 euros for one year. Can you understand? 500 euros just like a fee? In the beginning I was convinced not to pay this. It is one and half of the rent! Are they crazy? They really did not make me happy about this. Not only I had to make a decision about single or share room and about my potential roommate, I also had to decide if I wanna help from my university or not until 6th of June.

Firstly, I really did not want to pay this fee and I wanted to find accommodation on my own. I started to do a small research. According to all opinions it looked like finding your accommodation on your own is impossible. Few people wrote into the group that it is really hard. Besides the fact that there are a lot of problems with special registration we really need to do, the prices of flats are the way more expensive. Moreover, normally you have to find a flat through some agency which sometimes have even higher fees for arrangement than the university housing organization. After David told me he already met few people living in student hostels because they were not able to find normal accommodation and they were paying a lot I decided to opt for the university help.

I filled their form and I unwillingly paid their fee. After I found out it was not even the only fee – there are also another ones like administration fee, key fee and deposit fee. Why is it so difficult? I did not feel happy about it at all. When I went to France, I arranged my accommodation less than one month before coming there without agency, without any fee and for better price with single room. When I heard about prices I also did not like it at all. In general, France is more expensive than the Netherlands, but, the accommodation in Amsterdam for share room can be normally higher than accommodation for single room in France. I was already used to having my single room and I could not praise it enough. I quickly changed my mind because the difference between single and share room is about 200 euros each month. Therefore, I would prefer having shared room and travel or do whatever else for saved 200 euro every month. In addition, we agreed with Romca – my friend from the Charles University to live together.

The whole beginning of the accommodation procedure is done! Now I have to wait until 15 of June until the university sends us the exact offer with rooms we can choose from. I am so unhappy with this procedure! We did not even have possibility to see the rooms, we did not even see the buildings. So I guess that 15 of June will be just a big mess as we have to choose really fast (they warned us) and we have to check the location, the appearance, the size and the price of our room. They also tried to scare us as much possible as they could because everywhere in the letter there was written: “If you decide to find your accommodation on your own there is a high probability you will pay higher price and sometimes you do not have to find any room for you. Moreover, even if you decide to accept our help we do not guarantee we will find the place for your room. Please be aware of it. ” It did not help to calm me down. Nevertheless, I already decided to accept their help and I talked to another girl from the university. In fact, she does not pay much for her room, she lives directly next to the university and she seemed happy. Hopefully, I will be happy with my selection too.

To sum up my first days at home – we already went for a children march. We were not really walking much but it was fun to see my sister happy as she had to accomplish a lot of tasks such as throwing the ball, guessing the fairy tales or hang laundry. I had an amazing experience at the concert of Muse and I wrote a whole article about it. To celebrate I passed all my exams in Lille we went for our favourite lunch in small city where I was living my whole childhood. We had a pork steak grilled on lava grill. It was delicious.

During the weekend I also experienced a trip with motorbikes. In the beginning it was amazing but I totally forgot how uncomfortable it is to travel by motorcycle for more than one hour. Anyway, the whole trip was a lot of fun. I was laughing the whole day until again I realized I should study. (How many times do I have to remind myself? ).

Today I managed to go running and I went to our swimming pool for the first time this year. I am enjoying being at home a lot. Finally I can cook, eat healthy, have our coffee or make home-made strawberry ice-cream!

On the other side, I have to postpone many things because of studying. That´s why I started to write a list again what everything I will do after my state exams.

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