Back to Class

So far, if I'm honest my time here had felt a bit like a holiday. The sun was shining, events were going on.. and there was a lot of sitting around trying to watch British television (Top Gear and the football). Last Monday that came crashing to a halt, as classes began in earnest. My Leicester term normally wouldn't start until the end of September or even the start of October, so its a bit of a shock to be in the high 20s/low 30s in August and be sitting in a classroom. Also, whoever said American classes would be easier clearly didn't take Art History!

And when that Art History class comes on Monday, 9AM, its pretty intimidating! Art Now is the study of American art since 1945, and focusses more on ideas and debating how art has been categorised, what is contemporary and what is modern, and other conceptual issues. I have studied art history before during my degree and a little at A-Level, but never to this level. Part of the problem is the level of classes we are required to take. The classs here are broken into levels of 100, 200, 300, 400, and so on. Level 100 courses are generally foundation classes that are equivalent to A-Level (hence '101'), and 200 matches the first year of uni. So we take level 300 and 400 classes to match 2nd and 3rd year level of difficulty. This means that I'm essentially walking into the 3rd year of an Art history degree, so I have a fair bit of catching up to do.

My 2nd class is the History of Sport in the United States, which is another area I need to catch up in. While we will be covering some pretty interesting areas; Cassius Clay, the Moscow 1980 boycott and more, a lot of our studies will be around baseball and basketball, sports I have little to no fundamental grounding in. It should be really interesting, and our lecturer is quite funny- he's a former basketball player and loves to chat about his travels. I'm on a bit more comfortable ground with History of the Media, which will trace the history of media and communication from its European development to modern reporting in the United States. Our first lecture was about the Gutenberg Printing Press, so  English Language A-Level might come in handy now. Plus, our lecturer is an Australian who recognised our British accents and wondered if we were members of the 'Colonial Overlords', so  I think this class will go well.

More so than U.S Presidency at least, which is going to be a long slog. First things first, its an evening class which throws me off already. Second, its from 7:20-10:00pm, 2 Hours and 40 minutes! The longest back home is an hour, so this is way too long. And our lecturer, despite being a very intelligent academic who has written books on the subject, simply can't teach well. With no notes, powerpoint, or assistance (other than a dodgy video on John Adams), he literally stands and talks about Presidents for 2 hours and 40 minutes as if he was reading from a book. And often going off-topic, to talk about trivia or what they were wearing. Its incredibly hard to maintain interest and pick out relevant information, so I know for certain that this is going to be the hardest class this semester.

Thankfully there's also an extra class I have to do which seems like fun, the Global Leadership course that ties into my status as a Global Crossings student. I'm living on the international floor with fellow exchange students from 14 different countries, and each week we have an informal class that I'm not really sure of the purpose, but its pretty cool. And its great to meet lots of international students from across the world, which is definitely the best part of this experience so far.

A