Today was finally the first day of the summer semester. We only had one class today that didn't even last over an hour and a half. This particular class is about variances in governance and the decision-making process in Europe. It seems like it will be an interesting class, the only major hesitation I have is with our professor, which I will go more into in a bit. Tomorrow I am going to check out an elective course on immigration and citizenship. It's at 10 in the morning until 12, but what that really means in German speak is 10:15 until 11:45. Then on Wednesday I will check out yet another elective that's at 8:30 until 12 (every other week) and is about Islam in Europe. After that class I will have our second required course from 2-4 on the external relations of the EU. With any luck these will all be solid classes and I will be quite happy in them. But if it's like any other semester then I will just be super excited for about a week about classes and then quickly realize they aren't as great as they seemed and I don't truly like any of them.
Even though the semester is beginning today, let me assure you that I haven't been a complete bum these past few weeks. Two weeks ago, we started our mini-module course and had orientation. Orientation turned out to be pretty quick and simple and we just introduced ourselves and learned about the university. When I say we learned about the university, I mean we really learned about everything, including the history of the building orientation was being held in (they didn't have a lot of material to work with). The actual course wasn't too terrible, but I definitely wasn't a huge fan. We had three different professors and I only really liked the guy from France. He was very well organized, had things for us to do, and clearly explained what he expected of us and had planned for his three classes. Our first professor, who is now our professor for the class we have on Mondays, wasn't too bad, but she didn't seem overly organized and I couldn't read her handwriting to save my life. She showed up to class with a laptop she borrowed from the university, but she didn't know the password to log in. Then she didn't have a cell phone so that she could call to ask what the password was. Instead, Julian let her borrow his computer and Nick lent her his cell phone so that she could call someone. It was a bit ridiculous. As for her handwriting, it literally is just scribbles. I know that most of what she writes corresponds to what she says, but even if I listen, I still don't know what she writes on the board. I'm not trying to nit pick because any professor/teacher that has terrible hand writing should work on it if they plan on writing on the board, but I just get super frustrated when I have no idea what she's writing. Thankfully though the mini-module is over and we are now doing the real stuff.
Unfortunately for me that means getting back into the swing of doing serious work after pretty much a 4 month vacation. Currently I'm writing this blog in order to put off reading for class (the reading is in German which is even more of a turn off because that requires even more thinking). Once I get settled into my schedule I think I can handle this, but we'll see. It'll be an uphill battle for at least the first two weeks.
One thing that I have noticed, which I was warned about, is this "us" versus "them" feeling in our group. Our group is composed of the TAM kids (Nick, Julian and I) and then the 20 kids from the Euromasters program. They all seem nice and like great people, but they all already know each other. Unlike last semester when TAM began, the urgency and the need to make friends isn't as pressing. We all have people we know and we're not completely alone in the city. There has been some mingling, but nothing too extreme and I can only hope this changes as the semester moves on. I can't blame them either and I know that we say that if new people came into TAM we would welcome them with open arms, but that's really easy to say when we're making assumptions. If we were in this situation I would like to think the best of TAM and that we would make sure to welcome everyone, but you never know. It's not easy making friends though and I almost feel like the new kid that moved to a new elementary school. We all just look at each other, but no one wants to make a move. We just want to be accepted and not look stupid, but fear of rejection and embarrassment are standing in our way from extending the branch of friendship first.
We shall have to wait and see how the semester progresses. I will definitely have more stories to share as time goes on and if this procrastination continues at all, then there will be plenty of blogs to read!
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