An Education
I’ve been in London for about a week now! My first week here was filled with orientations, tours, and immersing myself in British culture (which was the best part). After a week of basically having fun, classes have finally started class. When I first signed up for my first class of the semester, Art in Context, I figured it would be a pretty easy class. Basically, the class is spent focusing and discussing various forms of art. Every Wednesday, we’ll make visits to different galleries and museums around London and check out exhibits our instructor selects for us. From there, we keep a journal of the exhibits we attended and essentially describe to her what we saw. Sounds fun right? Well I think it will be! But like the majority of the American students in my class, we weren’t really expecting the class to start this week.
In America, we are used to the first week of school not really being too serious. The first day of class is usually “syllabus day” (basically reviewing the syllabus and then leaving). However, here in England, the first day of class is the complete opposite. We went over the syllabus…..and then signed up for group presentations. Yes, group presentations already!! The professor (who seems really nice) gave us no time to digest the information presented and figure out what we wanted to do. And on top of that, we have our first gallery visit Wednesday, and our first journal entry due/ a group is going to present next Monday. I think this is the first time I’m experiencing culture shock since being here. The difference between British curriculum and American curriculum is pretty vast. For example, England doesn’t tolerant skipping classes. You are allowed to skip 4 classes that meet twice a week and 2 classes that meet once a week, and if you go over that limit you are withdrawn from the university. At my university back in the US, I’ve had classmates who wouldn’t show up to class for weeks at a time and would somehow end the course with an A! In Britain, an A is seen as “complete excellency.” If you get an A here, they’ll basically label you as exceptionally smart. In America, our equivalent of an A is actually their equivalent of B. Wow. I’m always up for a challenge, so let’s see how this semester will go…
