After going through the registration process from hell, where 400-level means graduate level courses, half the classes don’t have timetables and no one but the professor knows the answers to your questions and they don’t check email, I finally have the majority of a schedule. Half my classes are in the South campus by my living accommodation and half are in the 2nd Ave campus by the Boardwalk – too far to walk.
My first class was Tourism Development III. Walking around the 2nd Ave campus, it was blatantly obvious that I was the severe minority. Roughly 90% of the students here are black. Being such a severe minority is obviously a position that I’m very unused to being in. I wondered if everyone else noticed me as much as I felt I was being noticed. I got to my classroom just fine, surprisingly enough, and just in time to sign the attendance and get a syllabus. The layout of the class was very similar to that in the US: I will have one assignment (paper of 5-10 pages – the lecturer said absolutely no more since her eyes are already tired of reading), one essay (think 5th grade 5 paragraph format), two tests, two pop quizzes and a final exam. At NMMU, you will “write an exam” (I have yet to figure out what that means exactly) for every class you take. All exams are written in November and classes end in October. So the entire month of November is set aside for exams. Since I only have to take 4 exams, I’m hoping to travel quite a bit that month. The NMMU teachers seem to expect similar levels of work and interaction as teachers from the States.
After that, I went back to the International Office to try to figure out my final schedule just to find out that the days of my first class are now Mon and Wed, which kicked out my other class on Wed. Basically I’m back to square one again with scheduling. And my second class of the day wasn’t in the room at the time it was supposed to be. Once again reminding me I am in Africa, not America.
Whatever, it will all work out tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment