Hello, everyone! :)

So let's start with a word of apology. 

I know, I haven't kept my word to update this blog biweekly, and I'm truly sorry for that. I am, really. And I know I can feel a little better by saying that I had tons of projects and exams coming down on me these past 2-3 weeks, but the fact is that  didn't manage my time well.

Anyway, let's get started. Today I'm gonna talk about my university and the weird quarter system it employs. Yeah, you heard it right - the quarter system. 

For starters, Northwestern University was founded in 1851 by a rich guy named Evans. He gathered with some of his friends and decided to establish a university, but he couldn't find a perfect place for it for some time. Then one day he realized the the lakeshore of Lake Michigan would be perfect, so he established the university here and basically built a city where the professors and students would live. The city was named Evanston for obvious reasons ;)

Northwestern is a typical "the best universities in the nation" type of university. It has a really good faculty, well built facilities as well as enormous resources and a really huge endowment of about $5 billion. It's pretty huge :)

However, one particular thing make it stand out from others, and it is its school year schedule. While many universities have 3 semesters (counting summer as well), Northwestern has 4 quarters. So, when normal students get normal 2-semester-a-year schedule, Northwestern Wildcats (that's what we like to call ourselves) have 3 crammed quarters of high intensity. No kidding: when most normal schools only start studying and learning something, here at Northwestern we are already having our first midterms; when normal students at normal university take their first midterm, here at Northwestern we are already studying for finals because it is that soon.

This weird quarter system was adopted because of Walter P. Murphy's gift of $6,735,000 for the creation of Northwestern's Technological Institute.

The one condition he had when giving this money was that the engineering programs would follow the quarter system, so that students had, in theory, one more quarter to practice their knowledge in the industry. Of course, to avoid the mess and headache of registering students for classes from different schools, Northwestern University as a whole adopted the quarter system. So yeah, engineers were responsible for what we have today :) and I am one.

 And I don't mean to complain or say that the quarter system is the worst. Yeah, it has its disadvantages as you are constantly studying and in the blink of an eye, you are already taking midterms and finals; but it also has advantages as you take more courses than your friends in other universities and this gives you a chance to take something that is not in your field of major, but something that might interest you. So I think of it as a love-hate relationship: you love it for the freedom it gives you, but you hate it because you have to work hard.

That's all for now.

Wish me luck on my last final this Friday.

Peace,

MK