More About My School

This entry is about my new school. I seem to have settled into a routine. This is a picture of Old College, the oldest building on campus. Construction began in the late 18th century, and the building was finished in the early 19th. The dome was always supposed to be there, but didn't get added until the late 19th century. Here's more about Old College if you're curious:

http://www.ed.ac.uk/buildings/oldcollege.html







Here's my schedule:

Monday is my busiest day. At 2 pm I have Celtic Literature, a small lecture of about 17 students. On Mondays we hear a lecture about Welsh literature. At 3 pm, I head over to French literature, a 200 person lecture that is actually in French. I get about 75% of what she says. But it's a good class. At 4pm, I go to Celtic Revivals, a seminar of about 15 students. Half our class is American visiting students. But my "Autonomous Learning Group" is a group of 5 students who meets each week independently, and they other 4 are British. Anyway, Celtic Revivals is fantastic. It's taught by Aaron Kelly, a lovely Irish man who brings us tea and biscuits each week.

On Tuesdays, I go across the street at 11 am to the Geography Building (no one knows why) to my French tutorial. We have a lecture on Mondays and tutorials for an hour 3 times a week. Tutorials are very small. Tuesday is for language. We do grammar excercises and work on writing in French. This is the beautiful Geography Building:














At 2 pm, I go to Celtic Literature. Tuesdays are devoted to a lecture on Irish literature.

I have no schedules courses or tutorials on Wednesday. I loooove Wednesdays!

On Thursday, I have a French "practical tutorial" (oral skills) at 11 am. Celtic Literature is at 2 pm, and on Thursdays we have a seminar-style class discussion about the Welsh literature that was introduced on Monday.

I have another French tutorial on Friday, this time about literature. I have Celtic lit again at 2:00--a discussion about Irish literature.

There you have it, my course schedule. I don't spend very much time in class. But I have a lot more reading here than I did in the states, and life just moves at a slower pace. I enjoy the work very much, and I find myself wanting to go to all of my classes every day. When I was taking 5 courses a semester at Barnard and each course was meeting twice a week, there was often one class I didn't enjoy. Statistics, for example. On the other hand, I'm not completing very many requirements here. At any rate, we're only in week 3, so I'm sure I'll have more to say about my courses in the future!