How are my classes, you ask?

Everyone keeps asking me how my classes are. Insanity is the only word I can think of to explain my classes. Everything here is so UNORGANIZED! The administrators here keep telling us that it’s just the way it is in England. But what I’ve heard on the street is that LSBU (my school) is particularly terrible at organization.

So in the US we have two very wonderful aspects to college that I never truly appreciated before. The first is class registration that takes place four months before classes begin. The second is the ten minute period between when your 10 AM class ends at 10:50 and your 11AM class begins.  Why you ask have I all of a sudden found a new love for these seemingly unimportant aspects to college life? BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE THEM HERE!!! That’s right. It’s pretty much just chaos. But I’ll start from the beginning.

Classes for us did not begin until the 27^th of September. My first class was on a Monday and it’s the class that all seven of the Americans here take together. It’s called London: City of Change. Essentially we read all about London, we read works by its writers, and watch films about London. We also get to go on a few excursions around the city. Basically, they walk us through everything because they know we all have no idea what we’re doing here. I wish all the classes were this way.

So after the first day of classes I was lulled into a false sense of security. I went into Tuesday thinking ‘No problem.’ I knew where I was going, when my class was going to start, and what I was going to be learning about. Walk in the park. Until I arrived at said class about five minutes early and was told that this course had nothing to do with EU Law but was in fact a course on how to make a proper resume. So after much running around and held back tears, I finally got in touch with my program director here only to be informed that there was a mistake. Here they study very differently and all the law courses were set out over a year period. I couldn’t actually take the class I had signed up for. After some searching, we were able to find me a class that sounded both interesting to me and was available. I was in the process of being lulled again until I realized that the class was occurring as I sat in the director’s office.

Running from his office to the building where the class was held, I found the room expecting to make the last twenty minutes of class. As I sat in the back of a classroom not quite understanding how the assignment tied into EU politics I started to think once again everything was settled. Wrong. After the class was dismissed a little early, I approached the professor to talk to him about the course only to be told that I wanted room 216A and that I was in just plain 216. Oh, right. OBVIOUSLY. So I stumbled out and found room 216A only to enter at what was the front of the classroom and awkwardly have to make my way to the back of the room. Thinking that at least I can catch the last ten minutes of classes I tried to do my best to just follow the conversation. It was at this point that I was literally biting my lip to keep from telling a guy next to me that the things he was saying about American government were just blatantly wrong. I didn’t want to be ‘that girl’. It wasn’t even opinion though. He was saying idiotic things about the structure of our government. Someday I’ll make sure he knows he’s an idiot. My professor (who looks JUST like Horace Slughorn from Harry Potter: picture below) was very nice and understanding and informed me I would be in his class tomorrow as well. Great. Horrible day over. Not yet.

So my third day of classes started out with that same sense of false security (you’d think I would learn). I went to my first lecture and everything was perfect. On time. Found it fine. Understood everything. It wasn’t until I got to my second class that I found out a slight hitch in my schedule. My second class of the day was set from 1-4 and my third class of the day was set from 3-5. Seriously, LSBU? So I talked to my professor for the second class (who shall from here on out be called Professor Slughorn) and he said not to worry. If I had to leave ‘a little’ early (one hour) that was fine. I could just come to his office to find out what I had missed. Problem solved. No more worries. False.

I left my second class knowing where my third was occurring until I actually arrived and found out there was a nursing course there instead. Great. After many frantic phone calling, I finally found the room and walked in, late once again. Everything worked out just fine for that class in the end. My professor even had an ex-sister-in-law from somewhere in southern Illinois. He didn’t remember where from because he said she was awful but he did say that apart from the horrible bride he found southern Illinois and its cooking quite enjoyable.

Now before you start feeling too terribly bad for me keep one thing in mind. I have no classes on Thursday or Friday which means I have a four day weekend to recover from the insanity that is the English University system.