STUDYING abroad

I am (finally) here to talk about 'study' part of my study abroad experience and not just the 'abroad' part.

I recently got my graded papers back and I am a bit frustrated and annoyed and mad but the rest of the academic life here is was satisfying. It is scary how much my mood depends on school grades. Hate to think that my (and everyone else's in the school system) intelligence is boiled down to a single letter that holds so much value.

My life right now in a single picture.

Update (2 Dec 2013):
I am so bad at finishing my blog posts. It is already the last week of classes! Well, technically classes go on for two more weeks but none of my classes are meeting for the final week because the professors want us to finish our essays.

Still a bit frustrated about the grades I got back. I went to go talk to my professors but everything works so differently here :( This was the first time I wanted to go back to studying at Middlebury...but just for how the academic system works. I don't mind staying at UEA when I think about the workload because I am doing SIGNIFICANTLY LESS amount of work here. I was so surprised at how much free time I have. Of course, I am in my room watching useless shows and scrolling through Tumblr during that free time, but it is very nice to not stress and worry about school so much...until I got back my grades...ahh! I guess the only thing I can do is to focus on my next essay and do so well on it that it cancels out my previous bad grade. 

Anyways...

I am going to highlight the main (academic) differences between UK and US that I noticed during my time here. 

• I don't know if this is just a characteristic of my school (UEA) but I didn't expect my classes to be so small in size. UEA has about 14,000 students so I thought my classes were going to be bigger. I was excited to experience lectures and seminars at a big public university class where I can take my computer to class and go on Facebook hehe. But all three of my classes have about 18 people, or more like 10-12 because almost half of the people stopped showing up after the sixth week of school or so. My flatmates who are first years did say that their classes are big lectures rather than seminars (which all three of mine are), so I guess it is because I am taking courses in the upper division! 

• First year of college (they call it Uni, short for university. College is actually the two-year period of schooling before they enter university) doesn't count. Let me repeat that for all of you. The entire first year of college does. not. count. (towards their GPA) I am still not sure how I feel about that. I guess I can maybe understand a semester but a whole year?!?!?!?! I feel like it would be harder to work and keep up the grades in the second year. 

• Financially, everything is so much better in the UK. I am still so frustrated at how a year of Middlebury cost over 60K. I am thankful for my amazing financial aid package but so many people (including my own sister, cousin and close friends) are in serious debt because of school. I think we have about trillions of dollars in student debt. Money that most students cannot pay back because jobs they seek after graduation doesn't even exist. From what I remember, every single public university in the UK costs 9,000 pounds (little less than 15K) a year. But everyone, regardless of household income, get a loan from the government. Students that come from a low(er) income get extra loans or stipends for housing and other uses. Students don't have to pay back the loans till a few years after they graduate and students that get post-grad jobs that are lower than 27,000 pounds (about 44K dollars) don't have to pay back the school loans, period. 

• I think everything is a lot more organized at Middlebury, especially when it comes to registering for classes. There are no waitlists for classes. So...if you cannot register for a class because it is full during registration, you have to check every single day until a space opens up in that class. Usually at Middlebury, very rarely you get denied a seat in class but it doesn't work the same way here. So it might be frustrating for a student who cannot get into their wanted or even needed class(es). 

Last but definitely not the least...

I am going to talk about my Do It Yourself: Punk in America class. 

I was super disappointed and frustrated that I was enrolled in this class and I tried really hard to get out of this class. However, I ended up staying...everything happens for a reason, right?! Right.

I didn't know anything about punk and the only thing I knew (or assumed) about punk was all the screaming and the not very musically talented sounds that people go nuts for. Some of that is true but the screaming and the shouting usually only applies to a subculture of punk known as hardcore punk. 

I learned a lot about punk, not only as a genre but also as an ethos. A lot of punk and its subcultures were invested in social movements like the feminist movement, anti-capitalist movement and more. It was a really cool and an eye-opening experience to learn and talk about issues I am so passionate about (sex, gender, race, class, sexuality, nationality and etc) within the world of punk. 

Props to my flatmate Klara for being an avid punk fan and helping me throughout the class! She even let me borrow her Bikini Kill t-shirt for my presentation on Riot Grrrl, a feminist punk movement.

Do it Yourself, or now widely known was DIY, is a hugely important ethic in punk because punk movement was and is still about going against capitalism and big label records. They wanted to show that anyone can be a (punk) musician, regardless of money or status. Therefore, a lot of the outfits punk bands wore during gigs were handmade or simply found in their's or other people's closets!

One disappointing thing about this class / punk culture in general is the lack of academic work on punk bands made up of people of color. There were a good amount of punks who used zines and music to raise issues about race and racism, so I wanted to write about it for my essay. However, there was almost no academic work or even blogs or articles that really highlighted issues of race/racism/ethnicity in punk (sub)cultures. Although punk, for the most part, were not explicitly racist...it is still a pretty white washed movement/culture, much like the rest of the United States of Amurikkka. 

Well, that's it for now! 

So glad I was finally able to make a post of my academic life. Although I spend a lot of time watching television shows and eating ice cream in my room with friends, I have been learning and studying! 

Off to (not) writing my two 3,000 word essays!

I am headed to Budapest, Hungary in 2 days so I need to finish everything before I leave!
And...guess how much I have written?! One sentence... :) go me!