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In high school, I never really bothered doing any of the extra credit my teachers sometimes offered. My grades were always excellent and most of the time, I just couldn’t really be bothered to do it. However, in college, that has changed dramatically.

If my professors offer an extra credit option, I do it. If my professors allow students to edit/revise work and hand in an updated version of the original assignment for an improved grade, I do it. If my professors provide an option that involves anything with boosting a grade, I do it. (This might sound like there are a lot of extra credit options in my classes, but there actually are very few extra credit opportunities. When they do happen, they come in all different shapes and sizes!)

It’s not that my grades are worse in college than they were in high school. On the contrary, my college GPA is higher than my high school GPA. It’s just the fact that there aren’t as many overall points that make up a course grade in college, particularly as classes are run on a semester-based system rather than a year-long one. If, over the course of 15 weeks, a class only has three 60-point tests that comprise your overall grade (so, 180 points total for a college class compared to the hundreds of points for a high school class), extra credit does wonders if one of those three tests has a poor result.

Take what happened in one of my classes today, for example. We received our midterm exams back, and the overall class results were all over the grading scale. There were several 100’s but there were also a handful of failing grades (the lowest score was 25%!). However, my professor had offered an extra-credit option of writing a short essay over break, which I completed. Thank goodness that I did, as the extra credit points saved my current overall class grade from getting walloped by the midterm exam!¹

For the tl;dr crowd: always do the extra credit. It never hurts and it just might save your grade!

1. I did not do poorly on the exam, but my exam grade was lower than my current grade in the class, so the extra credit saved my class grade from dropping any further. [↩]

While many of the guesses as to what happened were very creative, none of them were actually close to the mark. But a common theme was the language ability of myself and the three boys, so I should say that I, as well as the boys, all have an intermediate working knowledge of Mandarin.

I’m not sure how well I will tell this story seeing as there’s a bit of a backstory to explain, but I’ll do my best. It’s also quite convoluted and bizarre!

Next year, I want to study abroad in Beijing on a year-long program. I have three guy friends that, as of now, are also planning on participating in the program. Two of the three (Boy 1 and Boy 2) will only be studying abroad in Beijing in the fall, while the other (Boy 3) is also going to be there for a year. Boy 1 and Boy 2 are friends and I have known them since the first day of Chinese class freshman year. Boy 3 does not know the other boys and I have only known him since the beginning of this semester.

In the Beijing study abroad program, there are two options for study: a regular track or a language immersion track. In the regular track, you take classes taught in English about Chinese history, politics, economics, etc. In addition, you can take a Chinese language course on top of the English-taught classes. In the language immersion track, you only study Chinese. It’s an intensive program that really focuses on learning and using the language; students in the program usually are housed together and pledge to speak only Chinese during the course of the immersion. This pledge might interfere with how social immersion students are with the regular students as it has the potential to create a language barrier depending on the individuals’ level of spoken Chinese.

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As I begin to prep for the start of the 2010 spring semester tomorrow, I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s in store for me for the next five months or so. I have a lot lined up and while I actually am excited for all of it, it’s a little overwhelming. Krissy recently told me that she didn’t know how I found the time to sit down. While it was a joke, I think she might have a point…

Classes-wise, I am taking a full course load of five classes. Three are for my major/minor¹, one for a General Education requirement and one as an elective. It’s not going to be a particularly easy semester, especially as I’m starting to get into the heart of both my major and minor, but every single class is one that I want to take. I’m actually interested in all of these subjects, which will make a huge difference when it comes to my motivation towards academics this semester².

In addition to my classes, I am also working this semester. I have an on-campus job as a peer advisor (there are six of us total) in my school’s career center where I hold drop-in hours for students to get their resumes and cover letters critiqued, present in classrooms to promote the career center’s resources and facilitate workshops about all things job search related. It’s an amazing job; I love it. I’m incredibly lucky to be able to work in such a professional environment where I can establish contacts and network with experts while getting paid!

I also landed an internship this semester as the public relations intern for an international news broadcasting agency. I was interviewed for the position last month and was offered the job not even five minutes into my interview, which was a pretty big boost to my self-esteem! I’ll be drafting press releases, communicating with outside media, assisting with event planning and promoting different projects. This internship is what I am most excited for this semester as I want to work in the field of PR on an international scale and I’ll be able to experience just that as an intern at this agency. I’m even hoping I’ll even be able to assist in the Mandarin Chinese or Cantonese programs as I have the language skills to do so, although really, just being able to intern there is a huge boost to my career experience and resume.

I still maintain my web editor position of my school’s literary magazine³ but I’ve quit my museum job. I didn’t have the time for that as well as my internship, and I valued my internship more than my museum gig. I figure I’ve enough on my plate already without working at the museum, as I still have to fit in time to eat, sleep and oh, have a social life…

If I disappear from the blogosphere, you’ll know it’s because I’m insanely busy⁴. It’s going to be an absolutely crazy semester… but I’m hoping it’ll be the best one yet.

1. I’m a Public Communication student with a minor in the Chinese Language. [↩]
2. Last semester I had to take micro for a GenEd requirement, and I just about died because I discovered that my brain is most certainly not wired for econ. [↩]
3. I’ve been bumped up to Web Editor fromn Assistant Web Editor. [↩]
4. I’m really hoping it won’t come to that, though. That’s part of the reason why the blogging schedule is no more! [↩]