Because I finish the week smelling like embalmment...


Advertisement
Published: October 8th 2011
Edit Blog Post

...and that's funny.

**NOTE. I will be visiting Tynemouth (small coastal village with a priory from a year that is a 3-digit number) this afternoon with a girl from my course. I decided to separate the entries so people only interested in pictures don't have to drudge through all these annoying words.**

Two things I did since my last post:

1. Joined a choir.
2. Survived my first week of classes.

(1.) It's a student choir (including the officers and the director, I'm pretty sure), with a mix of ages, levels and International/UK students.

Note that "genders" is not included on that list; we have four Tenors. I did not count the Basses but would comfortably bet that there are less than 15. Meanwhile about half the women had to get chairs from another part of the practice room as there were not nearly enough of them set up in the Soprano and Alto sections. It being a classical choir, none of this comes as a huge surprise.

We're doing "Mozart's Requiem," and our concert is the 3rd of December in a church somewhere in Newcastle, which to a dorky American is All Different Kinds of Exciting. I of course expect every last one of you to be there.

Kidding. Obviously.

(2.) British education is different from American education in just about every way, including the setup of Undergraduate and Graduate (sometimes called "Postgraduate") study. Colleges/Universities in the states tend to be very specific with the amount of work students are expected to do. A professor or syllabus will tell students to read This Exact Passage/Chapter/Article by This Particular Day and (depending on the school and/or size of the class) will hold students to having done that. There may even be written or problem work due on a regular basis.

British University is a lot more independent, placing the majority of the burden on the students to take charge of their own studies. Professors will provide reading lists with "Required Texts" (often a choice of three or four works, expecting students to try them out and buy the ones they prefer) and longer lists of potential "Additional Reading," for students to pick and choose from over the course of the semester. Although students are not held immediately responsible for any of this, come essay and/or exam time, those who haven't done any additional reading will seriously regret it and grades ("marks") will reflect that.

My course ("course" in British Universities means "major" or "program", not "class") is a bit different, because Speech-Language Therapists need to have a very specific set of knowledge and skills in order to be certified. So it's a sort of combination of the two. We are in lectures approximately 24 hours per week (not including the addition of clinical placement hours next semester) and in the library the rest of the time that we are not eating, sleeping or congratulating each other on Not Being Mush Yet.

Okay so it's not that bad. Yet. It's only week one, after all.

My favorite thing about my schedule ("timetable") is that our Anatomy Practical (exactly what the name implies) takes place on Friday mornings. So those of us who go out on Friday nights will do so smelling like formaldehyde.

Which, admittedly, is better than smelling like the other thing.



Advertisement



8th October 2011

Just watch, if you and your classmates go to the library on Friday afternoons the place will clear out. I\'ve seen it happen....

Tot: 0.167s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 9; qc: 55; dbt: 0.0883s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1; ; mem: 1.1mb