I never liked it, gave me nothing but stress unfortunately. I'm not made for competition and peer pressure and there was a lot of that going on in my uni which resulted in some of my highest anxiety/panic attacks/black-out rates ever :'c

My professors all knew that the material was no problem for me, they could see that I understood and worked for my grades. But things like oral exams turned me into a wreck and they could see my stress and anxiety sabotage me half of the time and it was a real struggle to pull through it even with their help. They were really kind and understanding but in the end the school environment is just not for me and I'm glad I'm out of it!

Okay, it's not that competitive here, really. Except in the odd lecture, where they decide to pull some bullshit with ranking the students and making that part of the grade, but then the students usually do start to protest because that is really not the philosophy we subscribe to. It's more about learning together and helping each other come to the deepest understanding possible. That's not really working in a competitive setting.

But yeah, I'm not a big fan of oral exams either, they do make me super nervous. Somehow especially when I feel like I know the material well, because I'm more afraid I won't be able to show that because I'm nervous... So I get even more nervous. Not ideal :D

My uni was super competitive unfortunately, it was one of those 'we have a good reputation to uphold' environments X.X

I've thankfully haven't had any panic/anxiety attacks since, just being out of school and having all that glide off my shoulders was a huge relief

Whoa, that sounds like it was a really bad environment for you.

Yeah, my uni is like that, too - but not in the sense of pitting the students against each other :D A professor who I believe originally came from some american university once said in a panel discussion (that was about something else, study fees, I believe) that he really loved how different the mindset in regards to that is at our uni in comparison to the other ones he's been studying/teaching at. We tend to be all about fostering the best possible environment for students to turn out excellent, not so much about comparing them to each other. It's more like "any student we graduate will be great, we don't need to grade them in comparison to each other"! Or something like that :D

That sounds like a wonderful learning environment c:

Yeah I didn't have that haha but its in the past so s'all good ~

It really is :)
I mean, they do have high expectations in some things, and there's issues with individual lectures and some of them are quite annoying, but the overall spirit and goals of the university are great. And it's fun to throw the guidelines for grading in the face of stupid TAs who think competitive grading is a good idea :D :P There's some pretty explicit lines about how student's grades should be independent of each other and stuff :P

Yeah, some things are just good to have gotten through and past :) I'm glad that the anxiety didn't stick with you afterwards :)

How much longer do you have to go before you graduate? c:

Same haha, I'm much better now ~

If everything goes alright, I will just have my master thesis left after this exam session. That's 6 months, but I still need to find a prof/topic. So I should hopefully start soemtime in early spring and be done in early fall.

no classes then, only working on your chosen project?

what job are you hoping to score after that? :P

Exactly :)

If only I knew that :D I'm really not sure what exactly I want to do...