Papers

The first week of classes are over so I thought I’d give a couple things I’ve learned this week. First of all, classes are called “papers” and they run on a point based system. Usually, one paper is 15 points which is equivalent to 4 credits at Susquehanna. The grading system is pretty different here, above a 50% is technically passing with a C- and a D/F is considered a failing grade. The classes are in the main Block buildings, and most of my classes are in C Block. Me and a couple of my friends walked around campus before classes started to find where all of our classes are, and they all generally in the same area, so it wasn’t that confusing (even though it’s like 10x the size of Susky). Papers run for 50 minutes and if a paper is scheduled 9-10am, it actually gets out at 9:50 so you have time to catch your next paper. I am taking 4 papers right now, two classes that count for my environmental science major and two that count for generals. Something that I find really interesting here is that they record all of their lectures and post them on Moodle, their learning platform. So if you miss a lecture, it’s no big deal, even though they encourage you to attend lecture anyway. Here, there are lectures, labs, and tutorials. The tutorials are a separate part of class where there is a smaller group of students and the material learned in lecture is practiced. These are required for some classes, not all of them. Right now I’m in 4 lectures, one tutorial, and two labs. So far the work load isn’t too bad for what I’m used to and there is only a couple assignment through out the semester which is not what I was expecting. I’ve talked to a bunch of locals and they all said that the people who come from America think that the classes here are super easy, and I already get that impression. I have a feeling I’m going to have a lot of free time, which is scary for me because I like to be busy all the time or else I go crazy, so we'll see!