The Academic World

Just so you know, I've only been to my classes once so far and I have one class left to go to tomorrow, so these are my initial reactions to the English university system.

First off, classes only meet once a week. This is a good thing because I don't have to go to campus all the time, but if I'm sick and miss a class it will carry more weight on my course work than it would at Manchester. Strange enough, attendance is not a factor of your grade in classes, but you need to use information from lectures in papers or on exams, so it's just going to be a good idea for me to go to class. It won't be bad for me because....(drumrole please)....I don't have any of my classes before noon! HOORAY! It really wasn't too hard to schedule things that way.

Secondly, I only have one class a day. This is a really nice thing because I don't have to worry about getting from one class to another or rushing lunch or anything. I'm also hoping that this will keep me from procrastinating too much. This is all prone to change, but I'm really hoping that I can stay somewhat motivated.

Third, I am in three 200 level classes and one 100 level class. This doesn't translate appropriately at all. My 100 level class is social psychology, and two of my 200 levels are fairly closely related to social psychology. My final class is a 200 level class which I can best describe as a feminist English class. My 100 level class is the only one that I have not been to yet, so I can't tell you about the difficulty of that one yet. My 200 level classes are going to be quite a bit of work, and they are definitely at about 300 or 400 level back home, so don't worry, I'll be working my tail off even if it doesn't always seem that way.

Last of all, there are four campuses of the university in the area. It's not like IU with their campuses at Bloomington, Fort Wayne, Kokomo, South Bend, etc. The campuses are all connected by bus, so you can hop on a bus to class, but one of the campuses is a good 40 minute bus ride from the campus that is closest to our house. Luckily, I only have classes at the Francis Close Hall campus (lovingly called FCH) and that just happens to be the campus that is only four blocks from our house. So lucky for me I get to walk to class everyday and don't have to worry about catching the bus to get to class.

I am adjusting to the English system for the most part. I'm actually impressed at how well I've been doing here. It will take me a while to get used to everything, but so far I'm doing fairly well.