Well here I am, sitting in my room trying to ignore the ever climbing pile of books that sits at my right, you’re left. It is a hopeless battle that I know I will lose eventually, but now is that time. So here is a bit of an update on my life, my plans, and the insurmountable work load that it all entails. So I am in three classes this semester at Uni (which is what they call all the universities over here, by the way) a Using economic data course, a post-colonialism and religion course, and a global cinema course. The first two are third year level courses while the latter is a first year course. All my courses are really interesting and should provide a bit of a challenging for me that I am not used to back at Luther.
Economic data is weird in the sense that everything they do here is different from the way I have learned it in the past so I feel like I am translating all of the homework into something that makes sense and is reasonable to actually read. My professor is an incredibly smart man and talks with a thick Scottish accent that makes me really pay attention so i actually understand what he is saying. We only have to read one text book for this class (YES!) so it’s been pretty good trying to keep up with what is actually going on in the class.
Religion, ahhhh, religion. Let’s just say for class #1 we had 3 required readings totaling 145 pages, and the recommended readings consisted of an additional 23 readings (one of which was a video). Now I understand that recommended, as defined by Marion Webster’s Dictionary means:
a : to present as worthy of acceptance or trial<recommended the medicine>
b : to endorse as fit, worthy, or competent <recommends her for the position>
But this, in student terms, means you should probably read as many as possible before you come to class so that you don't look like an idiot when the professor makes a statement that you don't understand. It’s a vicious cycle that is quite possibly going to be the death of me. I try, really I try to get all the reading done but often you can only read about 'Orientalism' so much before you want to poke your eyes out. My next week reading list looks about the same but could possibly be worse then I imagine, frankly I'm scared to look at it. The class should be fascinating and I am really looking forward to the discussions we could be having relating the two subjects; I just need to get over my fear of not knowing I guess.
Anyway, my last class is a Global Cinema class which looks like a lot of fun actually. It is a class where we watch 4 global movies and discuss the framing and the differences and stuff... I think. We actually start to watch these movies tomorrow and class discussion is tomorrow as well. I have 4 professors in that class, one for each movie. It's a cool way to split the class up and hopefully I can see some different perspectives on whats going on in global cinema. The four movies are;
Amores Perros (A Mexican Film),
Moolaade (an African film),
The Barbarian Invasions (A French/Canadian Film),
And Tears of the Black Tiger (A Thai Film).
Now from what I hear these movies can be very violent and very graphic so if you decide to watch one and get scared for life, not my fault.
Well I should get back to actually reading from my book list again. One day I will finish all of these... one day. Then again probably not, but at least I will go down trying.
Till next time, this is Nick signing off.
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