The Gombrich

I had my first exam here in Spain. It was for my Visual Culture class, and, as it covers The Story of Art by Gombrich it’s infamously called “El Gombrich” by current and former students. Now, I took an art history course in high school. I read the book in question. But the test swam in front of my eyes and both of the two choices always seemed right. Later, one of the students told me that they were both right, half the time, you had to pick the better one, and sometimes the difference hung on some minor point, some subtle linguistic shading. Lovely. And did I mention that it’s apparently common practice here for all the students to pass around the exams from the previous years? I’m glad they told me about that more than fifteen minutes before the exam’s were passed out…

But none of that really matters in the end. Either I passed, or I didn’t pass. That’s all that matters, because my grades here translate back as pass/fail. I didn’t really think about the possibility of failing anything, not before. I was actually shaking a little bit when I signed into ADI. The scale goes from 1-10, but it’s not exactly like our percentages. 5 or above is a passing grade. 5 or below is a failing grade. Either I passed, or I didn’t pass. Above 5, or under 5…

I got a 6,87. It’s nothing to be proud of. But I passed. And I did it in Spanish. 🙂 And some of the Spanish students didn’t, and I know because we all got an email informing us of the consequences for those students. And I passed. 🙂 I can do this.