Daß ich nicht mehr, mit sauerm Schweiß, / Zu sagen brauche, was ich nicht weiß; Daß ich erkenne, was die Welt / Im Innersten zusammenhält.

I'm getting there. And the more I learn, the more I am convinced that by understanding economics I actually get a better understanding of the world. I already spent a long time studying for my two 4-hour-exams on wednesday and thursday. It actually feels quite good to have study as my first and only priority.

And even though thinking like an economist is a weird thing for a social scientist like me, I can see progress. Still these models are quite weird sometimes. Where I would always be looking for other variables which might influence what is going on, right now I am to assume that only the factors I am looking at have an effect. Validity and generalizability...go to hell! Luckily I have a lot of people around me who are used to the economic way of thinking to get inspiration from.

Doing sample questions for my microeconomics exam today I had a basic idea what was going on and I knew where to look for the answers...now I only have to get all the stuff into my head. Unfortunately the way of answering exam questions for my courses here differ substantially from the way I am used to do it: We are supposed to answer comprehensively, basically writing down everything we know related to the subject, of course in a prioritized order. And we have ten minutes per question. I am not sure I can do that, but I will try. And I will try very hard.
So I will probably spend the next days without any of the trivial pleasures which I have enjoyed so much in the past weeks and just focus. Which is a pity because there is so much more I want to do here, so many people I want to talk to...but these opportunities will return I hope. Retaking these exams...not an option. Just passing and not trying to do my best...not an option. I am really glad to experience this striving for perfection, I almost thought I lost it during the last year. I have to find out how Danish grades transfer to Dutch grades. In the Danish system grades range from 12 to -3, but it's not equal steps from one end of the scale to the other. And then putting that next to the Dutch scale from 1 to 10 where 10 is something you normally never get...maybe I can leave that to someone else.

In between all the studymania I had another visitor from friday night to sunday afternoon. Mariya, my Russian friend who was an AIESEC trainee in Enschede for the last year and now works in Finland came over for the weekend. Needless to say we had a lot of fun, took another Canal Tour, we walked the city, went shopping, did a Ghost Tour of Copenhagen, partied, visited Christiania again and shared funny memories. Especially comparing her visit with Helen's is something very interesting. Having a really long-term friend and former roommate from your hometown over or a close, but more recent friend from a totally different culture makes very interesting contrasts in what you do and what you talk about. I wouldn't want to miss any of it!

Right now it's time to further work on my profound understanding of what holds the world together and makes it go round, so I can show it on wednesday and thursday.