Posts Tagged ‘Thames’

Well, my first week of “uni” (what the locals call college) is now over (as of Friday – I’m a little behind schedule with this one). I officially have 3-day weekends and every Thursday off. NICE! That should give me lots of time to travel and study.

From what I have gathered so far, there are a few similarities between studying here and studying in the US. Similar to studying at Tech, I attend faculty-lead lectures in classes of 30-100 students. I was worried all of my classes would be much larger because this is a larger school, but I am not having that problem.

In contrast to studying at Tech, I only attend these lectures once a week per class for about 1-2 hours. I also attend an hour-long “seminar” which is faculty-lead, but is primarily filled with class discussion over what we learned in class that week and what we got from the reading. Another difference is that we do not have actual text books that we need to buy. Instead, our professors give us a long reading list and expect us to read something from that list to help us further understand the topic. Also, the classes are

mostly filled with students majoring in that field. For example, I am in a class called “Themes in the History of Art” which is primarily filled with Art History, Design History, and Art Marketing students. Students here do not take “electives” or anything like that. They only take courses that have something to do with their field of study. Tip: I would not recommend taking courses higher than a first-year level. Students in their second year have already had a whole year of classes specifically geared towards whatever course you would be taking, so the professor might leave out things he/she thinks has already been taught.

Other than classes, the weather has been uncommonly beautiful. It has been in the 80’s and sunny pretty much all week. So, in my free time, I have been hanging out by the Thames in Richmond with Eric or spending time with the American friends I have made so far. This next week, the weather is supposed to go back to normal, so we had to enjoy it while we could.