February 27th and 28th
First Official Day of ClassesI can't recall if I remembered to write it here, but last Friday the Uni has something called 'preliminary lectures'. This basically means that you get to run around campus trying to figure out where your lecture is being held, only to be informed at the preliminary lecture that you'll never have to set foot in that room again because the -official- room for the class is over in Building XYZ. You also learn about any required textbooks, and get to figure out who your lecturer (I was told they don't use the word 'professor' here unless the person is at the top of their department) is, so that when you're wandernig around lost next Monday you can hopefully recognize at least that much. Oh, and each lecture lasts for 15-30 minutes.
It was quite hectic for me...I had to wake up at 9am, go to the Geo preliminary lecture...which was a snore. Then I had a long wait, where I figured out that my Chinese Cinema class didn't even have a preliminary lecture. Off to Anthro, which was a much smaller class than Geo. Then it was off to Maori, which was at least vaguely interesting. With Anthro and Maori, the prelinary lecture was for all of the 200 or 100 level courses in those respective departments, so it was hard to get a good idea of who was in the class. Maori's class was so huge that it had to be divided up by the first letter of your surname...one half of the alphabet at one time.
But Monday was the official first day of classes. I had only Geography and Anthro on monday, and there's a big time gap between them. It's interesting to see how the demographics of the two classes are different -- I think I'm one of a handful of international students who are in the Geography class, whereas my Contemporary Pacific Cultures Class (Anthro) is mostly international students. Geography has mostly male students enrolled in it, and the class is well over 100, maybe even 200 students. I'm not used to classes being that large, and I'm not used to having to sit in the nosebleed section. Anthro, on the other hand, is about the size of the 'large lecture classes' I'm used to at Bryn Mawr -- about 30 to 40 students. Both of these classes were yet another 'welcome to course' introduction type lesson.
I spent most of my freetime yesterday attending class or catching up on my blog, so, well, no stunning pictures. Hence the picture I borrowed from the library's website. This library is absolutely amazing.
Tuesday's Geography class was our actual first lesson. The room was so insanely hot...I hope it's not always going to be like that. It's most likely from all of the warm bodies, though, so when people start skipping class I should be able to breathe easier. But what I found interesting was that the professor had taught in California for nearly a decade before coming back home to New Zealand. There was one instance where she was giving an example of a fox and a rabbit, trying to relate it to who knows what, and she stopped herself to apologize. New Zealand doesn't have foxes. It was interesting that she was apologizing for having lived and taught in the US.
Tuesday is my busiest day -- after Geography, I had another brief break which I spent in front of a computer, before I hustled to the top floor of the library to my Chinese Cinema class. This really was the first class for me in this particular subject, and I was excited. The room has no desks, it's just a video viewing room, and I'm a little scared because the professor wants to teach this as less of a 'Chinese culture' course and more of a film studies course. She was also having a hard time trying to get us to talk today...hopefully that will change. But I noticed another pattern -- she was explaining her background, how she was born in Italy but she went to college in China for several years, and then how she taught at the University of Chicago and got her PhD there. Then, much later in the lecture, she was talking about exams and she went on to apologize about her spelling. In New Zealand, they use British-based English, so 'realized' becomes 'realised' and so forth. She had apparently done something like that on an exam, and a student had circled it and wrote a nastey note about how she was in New Zealand, and they speak properly down here...and she asked us not to do the same. Now me, being the only American in the class (for once), I was vaguely amused. But the reaction of the students wasn't really one of amusement....the air in the room felt more like a 'damn right you better try to spell properly'.
We had to go around the room and introduce ourselves in that class. This is where I realized I'm the only American in the class...and the moment I opened my mouth to introduce myself people turned around in their chairs to have a look at me. It was an interesting feeling to be, even momentarily, the center of attention. It's also a good thing because I was beginning to get worried that I was only going to meet international students; hopefully I'll get to meet a bunch of Kiwis in this class.
After that there was the Maori class, but this was basically an opportunity for her to pass out a handout and tell us to check Blackboard. The class lasted about 15 minutes. Like the geography class, it's a huge class. Unlike the geography class, it's almost entirely international students.
Soon I'll be off for my last class of the day, Anthro. We'll see how that goes.
posted by Hoot @ 2:24 PM
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