Culture shock?

I had a 3-hour class this morning. Or more precisely, 2-and-a-half hour.

The class was scheduled from 8-11 am every Tuesday. I wanted to leave the house earlier today, but I woke up late (6:05 am) and had to rush to work. I quickly ate some fried rice at home and brought a bottle of plain water with me so that I had something to push down the fried rice. I left the house at 6:47 am, hoping the traffic would not be so bad.

After about an hour of driving, I reached my office. I punched in, boiled some water to make myself a cup of tea. After drinking half a mug, I rushed for my class. It was 8:00 am.

Reaching there, I was expecting a class full of people (it was 8:05am). Instead, I found myself to be the first one to enter the classroom. The projector was on, but the light was not. I switched on the light, took a seat, and not long after, a few students came in. It was 8:10 am, and the lecturer was nowhere to be seen.

8:25 am: the lecturer still had not come yet.

8:30 am: finally the lecturer arrived, but the class had not started.

8:35 am: the lecturer asked, "Can we start now?" I was like, "Are you serious??" In my mind, of course..

Then the class went on for the next 2 and a half hour..a boring 2 and a half hour, to be exact. It was a 3 credit hour class..so we are supposed to meet for 3 hours every week (unlike in UCD, where 3 credit hour is equivalent to 1 hour lecture or 3 hours lab).

I don't have any problem with meeting for 3 hours every week. The problem is, it was a straight 3 hours. I will be much happier if they split the class into two sessions of 1.5 hours each. And since the lecturer did not have much to say anyway, she kept on rambling about unimportant stuff just to fill that 3 hours. Sometimes she gave like 10 examples (okay I exaggerated) for a point that she was trying to convey. Or sometimes she elaborated an example for 15 minutes (okay, I exaggerated again). But you get the point. The 3-hour class was not properly filled, nor it is used effectively.

Added with the dimmed lighting (the light was off to get a better view of the slide show, and since there was only one switch for all the lights, we had to turn them all off), many of us fell sleepy and eventually fell asleep (or at least, me).

Somehow I felt like I have succeeded in wasting my time this morning. I barely got anything from the class, since I have already learned most of the things that she said during my undergrad life.

A 3-hour class is too long. I am confident to say that the points that the lecturer was trying to teach could have been cramped into a 1-hour lecture. So, instead of having a 3-hour boring and slow lecture, they could just made it into a 1-hour fast (and maybe more interesting) lecture, and gave us assignments to fill in those extra 2 hours.

And plus, I am not used to starting the class late. For me, 8:00 am means 8:00 am, and not 8:30 am (although I came in a lil bit late, because I knew everyone would be late anyway). She said, last week she told the class that she would start the class at 8:30 am since she did not want to rush everyone to come in at 8:00 am (I missed last week's class because I was not registered yet at that time). However, I am sure that 8:30 am means at least close to 8:45 am. Hah.

O well, I hope I will survive this program. I aim to finish in a year, although I know that is a bit ambitious. Hoho.

p/s: I miss the ever-exciting-and-enthusiastic class environment. The students here do not seem too excited about learning. O well, I guess we cannot blame them. Blame the boring class, I would say. Or maybe the learning culture, in general.

p/s/s: I miss the road-filled-with-fast-bicycles too. I miss to see students rushing to their next class. Let it be running or cycling. It's exciting. It makes us want to rush to class too. (And I did. I was literally running to some of my classes. And sometimes I would bike as fast as I could.)

p/s/s/s: It's funny to think that, even without the attendence sheet, the students in UCD were very enthusiastic about going to class, and they would try to come in at least 5 minutes before the class started. But here, even with the attendence sheet, the students would take their sweet time to get to class. O well, again, we cannot blame them. There is no reason to come early anyway. The lecturer is always late. At least 5 minutes.

p/s/s/s/s: Okay, it should have been p/s/s or p/p/s? p/s means postscript, right? So, postpostscript makes much more sense than postscriptscript, right? But I think, there is no such thing as p/s/s or p/p/s. I think there should only be p/s. Hahah.