Classes

It is halfway through the first week of classes and I am surviving!

My schedule this semester includes: Early Modern European Philosophy, Shakespeare's London, Engaging Poetry, and UK & European Comparative Governance & Politics.

This is definitely a group of classes that is very far from my usual Real Estate & Finance classes. It has been a challenging week for that reason, along with the fact that it seems that we (the visiting students) are coming into classes that had already been together last year. The course structure is also very much different here than in the states.

At home a person may be in 4-6 classes that meet twice a week, with one professor, for and hourish, and have 2 or so exams/papers as well as a few assignments during the semester. Here, I am in four classes, but I only have one a day, so each class only happens once a week. During this time we have one session with an lecturer that simply talks at us for an hour. This lecture is followed by seminars. Seminars are lead by a different instructor and are attended by only 5-15 students for another hour. THEN, three times a semester we meet one-on-one with a tutor.

Another difference is the assignments. We have weekly readings that are expected to be done before the seminar, but besides discussions there is almost no assessment during the semester. At the end of the semester, each regularly enrolled student has to write one essay and sit one exam. Because I am a visiting international student I am only required to write one essay for each class and I don't have to sit any exams. Although this may sound painfully easy (and I hope it is!) it will be interesting to see how I will have understood and retained the information after 10 weeks of nothing but readings and discussions.

Something that I didn't realize, and the orientation staff warned us about was how resident students feel about tuition (or fees as it is called here). Up until about five years ago students didn't have to pay to go to University, and the government even gave them money for food, housing, etc.. That couldn't be sustained anymore and now students have to pay to attend school. I do not know for a fact, but one of the coordinators said that it is only a few thousand dollars, but because this is new to students here they tend to complain about it. If only they knew what we had to pay back in America! Anyway, like I said, interesting tidbit.

Tomorrow I don't have class, so my goal is to find the laundry facilities and start taking some pictures!

Until then! :)