First Day of Schoool

..and I feel like a kid again.

Ohh college, the four year interruption.
First off, I suppose I shouldn't call it college, but University. Kids here go from high school--> A-Levels-->college, then to University. As opposed to our straight from high school to University thing.

So I just finished my first week at University, and by week I mean classes on Mondays and Wednesdays (: Lets discuss the major differences...

Classes

I'm taking 4 "modules" this semester. 2 on Monday, 2 on Wednesday. Each class comes with a Lecture and a Seminar that are both 1 hour each. In the lecture as you can imagine, its a lot of talking and note-taking. For the seminar, they cut the class in half; each half goes to their assigned time slot and this is where you have discussions, ask all the questions, presentations, etc. It's a fairly good idea, but I'd rather get it all over with in one class.

First Day
The first day student introductions (ex- My name is ____, I'm from _____, I like to _____) are non existent here. It makes sense, they're so time consuming, and no one actually cares or will remember that you like to rockclimb or juggle. In my experience, the first day of classes is a bunch of bs where nothing important actually gets done. Here, they get right down to it. My notebook is already half full.

Grades

Its becoming apparent that Universitys here don't care about what your doing along the way, as long as the final output is what they want. All of the classes are comprised of 1 or 2 grades. (!!!) You either have one big project/paper that is meant to be worked on all semster and is due during the final week, OR you just have one final exam. (or both) and the entire module grade depends soley on what your able to produce from your brain at the end of the 12th week. No homework, no classwork, no quizzes, no midterms. (ugh!) I've had the rare 1 or 2 classes like this before at good ole GMU, and needless to say, they wern't on my top 10 list.

The majority of my classes are in the Tower Building. (brown) Which in actuality is like 5 buildings connected by those bridge/tunnel things. You can't see it in the picture, but once you go inside, there is a courtyard in the back and thats where all of the confusion starts. I spent the majority of my first day being so lost (which really isn't different from any other day) and I still couldn't tell you where my classes are at this moment. Next week should be fun!

This is completely random, but needs to be noted. Politics, a topic I stay away from in the presence of other people. Not the English. Oh no. This happens 3 out of the 5 times I meet someone new. As soon as someone hears my American accent, I get bombarded with questions. I've gotten "Why do Americans hate Bush?" 3 times so far, and couting. After that, comes the rants about McCain, Obama, our economy, Hurricane Katrina...This is responded with my smile and a nod as to avoid any disagreements.

"Fresher's Flu"
...I have it. It's not exactly the flu, its just the name they've given to the cold that goes around at the beginning of the year. I usually only get sick once or twice a year, but considering that this weather is usually what my winter is like, i don't know how I'm going to survive their winter. Thank God I have the besties visiting.

peace