First week of Academics over...and what do I think of the American system so far? Well it is far better than the English one. Maybe I am just biased but the American University system is so much more intense and structured than the education you receive in England. It is a lot harder, you are meant to read a lot more, and there isn't so much guidance as to what secondary readings you are meant to do for classes - that is something you have to figure out on your own. You are also meant to make connections between the set reading and the topic you are actually meant to be reading. For example, one of my professors has set one book written in 16th century Italy for us to read. It is the only book we must read in the next two weeks. It is for our class on 20th century dictatorship in Latin America. We are meant to make connections between the text and dictatorships within Latin America despite the fact we have just started the course and therefore, are not that clued up on the ins and outs of Dictatorships within Latin America. Furthermore, he has not indicated that we need to do any secondary reading. In England, some fellow students make take this literally and deem they do not need to do anything else. However, this is not the case. We need to read a lot to be able to make any kind of sense in our discussion classes when talking about the book's relation to Latin America - all of Latin America.


 Furthermore, instead of two hours of Spanish every week, packed into a full classroom where the teacher speak's English 80% of the time, I have Spanish for six hours a week. Everyday at 8am I have a Spanish class and yes, it may sound like hell, but having it first thing in the morning actually makes it go really quickly and I am really enjoying myself. The teacher speaks only in Spanish and if you are caught speaking in English you get a strike against you. My Grammar classes only contain four students so we are basically getting one on one teaching, and my speaking classes are arranged so that we are in a circle and cannot escape speaking Spanish at some point or another. This is the way languages are meant to be taught.


 My literature class is a bit wacky. The typical, out there, wacky English professor we all see in American chic-flick movies isn't just an incorrect stereotype. It is real. This professor is completely wacky. He comes out with sentences such as "Has anyone thought about the word analyse. I mean if we break it down into parts what are we actually doing to the text." Bizarre quotes like that along with when we were reading about a tree and he said "Wow, I can feel this sh*t is about to get real deep. We are diving in guys, can you feel it?" cannot help but keep me entertained. Hey, it's ten times better than reading 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' in a quiet room at the top of the humanities building in Warwick any day.


 Now editing classes. My pride and joy. I love them already. We get to work in an editing lab and use Final Cut Pro 7 and we get to individually make our own movies.It is just a dream. We were all asked to introduce ourselves and say a scene in a movie that we felt was superbly edited. That kind of question immediately makes you start to panic "Shall I say an arty film? Would that make me sound pretentious or clever? Or shall I say a film i really like? Will he (the professor) laugh at me? Will anyone laugh at me? What kind of films do I like again? Ah panic!" In the end, I concluded that the best thing to do was to be myself. My friends would have laughed as I nervously said "Hi, I'm Melissa....I don't know about movies but have you ever seen the British show 'Sherlock'?"


 What I have realised is that not my University but my Secondary School prepared me for this type of learning. You don't get lists of books to read, you have to find scholars by yourself, and that in the end, all subjects are somehow joined together. For example, my art history class has really helped me in the History of Latin American class as we were talking about Florence and tyrant rulers there such as the Medici family. I would not have known all about the Medici family and the idea of patronage if it had not been for my History of Art classes. My English classes in Secondary school really prepared me for debate and analysing texts too. Whereas I felt a lot more stunted at University and felt we were guided as to which passages to read and which places were particularly important to the professor and they therefore wanted us to simply focus on interpreting that piece.


 And finally, as many of my fellow Humanity students will love to hear, America appreciated humanities. They actually value them and are impressed whenever you say that your major is 'History'. The majority of people are working towards a major in science, engineering or economics. Most of them can skip classes easily without being caught (the halls and classes are so big that no register is ever taken and no one notices if you are not there, whereas you immediately loose a grade in my classes if you miss more than two lessons), and the amount of reading expected of you is admirable to all those taking science majors. It is nice and very different to England.


 So everything is going well. The Academics are incredible and the extra curricular activities are even cooler (I will do another blog soon on all that I am doing especially as they really start to start next week). Don't worry I am really not just dedicating my work to life. I just thought I'd write a bit about the academic system for those who were curious. :) x