UPEI students unable to finish exams until June

by Rodney Baglole ellow UPEI students, are you studying frantically for your imminent final ex ams? Don’t feel too bad, there are some of you who won’t be allowed to finish your exams until late in June. ‘Impossible’, you may say. ‘Why didn’t someone tell us’, you may moan. Well as unlikely as it may

each year, and in later years perhaps only one or two. Also, we can’t choose when our lectures will be or who’s class we will be in - there is only the one.

The student union building here is way more happening than any old ‘barn’ could ever be (shot!). It has a ‘disco’ (I know, I know),

having an intelligent discussion in Marian Hall. Come to think of it, we'll probably never see anyone from Marian Hall able to form sen- tences (shot!)

Scotland itself is a very nice place to be, castles everywhere (families still live in them), the dramatic highland scenery, interesting is- lands, Gaelic cartoons on TV,

sound, this shocking development has definitely been confirmed by reliable sources within the UPEI community.

What’s even more outra- geous is the fact that none of the students affected seem to mind the two month delay. And, in what will likely be the X-Press’s only exclusive investigation finding ever, the names of the above-men- tioned students will now be re-

"The student union building

here is way more happening than any old ‘barn’ could ever be (shot!)."

hundreds of different beers (and whiskies - for non-students budg- ets), semi-ancient historical sites, over 600 golf courses, and two worldcalss cities: Edinburgh (sce- nic, historical, but a bit English), and Glasgow (very alive, wild, and vibrant). Glasgow is only 1.5 hours away and they have some great concerts there (eg. Bruce Springsteen and Jeff Healey last week, Ice Cube the week before,

vealed. They are: myself, Ian ‘Which Pub Next’ Ross, and Peter ‘Marlboro Man’ Trueman.

As all you sweating, nail-biting, Nescafe-fuelled, insomniacs gear up for an- other round of brutal, mercilessly-designed exams we are in the middle of our four-week vacation from intense, um, activities in and around the University of Dundee, Scotland. We’ ve been here, um, ‘drinking in’ the way-of- life of university students in Scotland since October.

Student-life can be seen as being basi- cally the same everywhere you go, but there are big differences between the ‘system’ at UPEI and the Scottish ‘system’. U Dundee, like most British Universities, doesn’t use our familiar ‘semester’ setup. Here, typically, students are examined at the end of the year on all the material covered since October. These final examinations (up to six hours per course) are often worth as much as 75%-85% of your final mark. Grading here is way different from in Canada - if you get a 60 here you’ re doing pretty well and may even be exempted from the finals in some courses. In Charlottetown, anything less than 60 puts you at risk of getting ‘the letter’ from the Dean’s office!

Wehave quitea lmited choice of courses, since a degree here can’t be obtained by collect- ing little bits of semester hours. First -(and second-) year students usually take threecourses

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three bars, a big games room, a canteen, student travel centre, plus a pool and sauna. Mind you, the sports centre here sucks (big time) - we’re really lucky to have that shiny new fieldhouse at home (even though we don’t have a pool. Yet, Eh?).

The city of Dundee is not one of the world’s great cities, or even one of Scotland’s better cities. The economy here is pretty weak, and it’s showing - the people here are nice, but there does seem to be alot ofcrime. The biggest ‘attractions’ in Dundee are two long bridges, and a couple of old ships. Famous people from Dundee include: a dead Canadian prime minis- ter, the world’s worst poet (also dead), and currently the world’s fastest living women’s 10k runner. The amount of pubs here is amaz- ing (at least our heads have been spinning) and some of them are very nice places indeed. Besides drinking, dancing, fucking and fighting there wouldn’t appear to be much else to do hereabouts - just like Charlottetown, eh?

I think the best thing about being here, compared to UPEI, (besides the warm weather) is the number and variety of foreign students (read: French women) (or, alternatively: French men). there are students here from really all over the world; and it’s not even a big, or well- known, university. President Eliot will lambada all the way down to K-Mart long before you’ ll ever see a German, an Indonesian and a Greek

Bon Jovi and Iron Maiden next month, and U2 in the summer - to name only a few).

So there’s lots here to see and do; also ‘Europe’’ (most Brits don’t see themselves as Europeans - yet) is very close, so there are many options to choose from for holiday travelling. Peter did the ‘European thing’ at Christmas, | plan to ‘do it’ in July, and Ian may even be ‘doing it’ as you read this. In the unlikely event that we should long to speak to someone ‘with- out an accent’, there are about a dozen other ‘Canucks’ here plus six or seven ‘Yanks’.

It was a bit of a shock dealing with the new things here at first (e.g. crossing the street, the first floor is the second floor, no one in the supermarket knew what molasses was, over $7 for a “Big Mac, fries and a shake’, taking at least three business days for a cheque to clear, re- membering to ask for the ‘loo’ and not the ‘washroom’, and hearing ABBA on the radio without warning); but there aren’t many new surprises for us now, and I think we all regret having to leave ‘so soon’.

That’s all from Dundee. May the ‘Ex- ams ,Gods’ smile on all of you, and have 4 wicked (and loooooong) summer vacation. And remember -if you see a shadowy figure lurking around UPEI some evening ... fear not - it’s probably just Peter Trueman. @