Yes, that’s my mark. When you think about Block Weeks, you’d think that they’d curve the marks lower since the pressure is way high. That, however, is not the case. It doesn’t really work that way. BWs are different and each one, like every single class in the University is marked differently. Angela says all of RMC (her school) has the same grade distribution for all classes. I didn’t luck out. I wish U of C had the same system.
For those not in the know, Block Weeks are courses that a student can take for a week. In essence, it’s a semester’s worth of work, lecture and studying crammed in just a week. 4 months = 1 week. I never actually thought that a course over a semester is only 40 hours in a week, 9 – 5 or something like that. My class was Entrepreneurship. It’s dubbed the Academic Apprentice and for good reason, it’s like the show.
On the first day, we had two hours to prepare for a interview that was assigned to us at 9:00am. We then had to make a video presentation after the interview and prepare it for class at 8:30 am the next day. Our other tasks include doing a marketing campaign for this non-profit conference and sell a product of our choosing at the Farmer’s Market for the weekend. I’m tired and I pretty much slept most of the day on Sunday. We were up for more than 18 hours and the work spanned more than the prescribed time. Did I have fun? The answer is yes, I did have fun.
Truth is: School in this sense can be just as tiring. It’s a shortcut for students who want to get one class out of the way. This is my second and hopefully last Block week course that I have to take. My advice for those taking Block Weeks is to prepare for it ahead of time. It’s a lot of work and those with papers required only have one week to do. I never expected group work in this one but it worked well in the end. I do not wish the pain and exhaustion of taking BWs on anyone, but it’s a necessary evil for a lot of people.
P.S. Sorry to bore people about an academic blog. I’ll get something insightful soon.
