{"id":11245,"date":"2018-06-15T14:51:12","date_gmt":"2018-06-15T18:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/social.rollins.edu\/wpsites\/letters\/?p=11245"},"modified":"2019-07-09T16:21:37","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T16:21:37","slug":"finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/2018\/06\/15\/finals\/","title":{"rendered":"FINALS!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

This last time in Australia is bittersweet. On one hand, I\u2019ve made lasting friends here and this entire experience feels like a test that I\u2019ve passed. I\u2019ve seen a lot of the world and done so very much on all on my own. Better still, this semester has crystallized for me that I need to be working as soon as possible. More so than other semesters, I find myself in a constant state of concern moving from crisis to crisis.<\/p>\n

As the semester begins to build towards the crescendo of finals, I can feel the stress building up within me. It\u2019s a burning, choking feeling both within me and around me, and I sometimes catch myself panicking even when things appear to be going ok, because a crisis is assuredly just around the corner. It affects my sleep, my ability to interact with people, and my ability to enjoy periods of peace. There are parts of Sydney I would enjoy more if I didn\u2019t have the specter of finals hanging over it. I\u2019ve given serious consideration to extending my stay in Sydney by a few weeks just to alleviate the sense that in the midst of my academic tunnel vision, I\u2019m missing out on what this city has to offer.<\/p>\n

My academic focus, at least, has given me new ways of looking at the world. Two of my classes directly address non-North American views of the world; one from a pan-European perspective, and one from an Australian perspective. Both directly address the conception of identity. As a class, both native Australians and foreign students seemed to struggle with the notion of a pan-European identity that continues to change, and is made up of different, sometimes competing components. This difficult concept made perfect sense to me and I think its why I feel so at home in Sydney in particular. The patchwork cultural diversity and the people \u201cbetween\u201d identities, or identifying with two or more nationalities fits me perfectly.<\/p>\n

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This last time in Australia is bittersweet. On one hand, I\u2019ve made lasting friends here and this entire experience feels like a test that I\u2019ve passed. I\u2019ve seen a lot of the world and done so very much on all on my own. Better still, this semester has crystallized for me that I need to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":392,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sydney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/392"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13872,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11245\/revisions\/13872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}