Classes

I have successfully survived two weeks here as well as five days of classes. My schedule is entirely in Spanish, so I was a little worried about how well I could understand everything, but so far so good. I am taking one class with Argentine students (International Relations) and three other classes with international students. Classes here are definitely different than in the US, but not drastically. However, the campus layout is way different than what I am used to. No dorms really, very few extra curricular activities, and as a whole the school for better or worse is basically a school and nothing more. Here is a picture of the campus.

It is really interesting being in a skyscraper for classes, and we have incredible views of the city from just about any classroom. The school is in the middle of the Belgrano neighborhood, and is called Univerisdad del Belgrano. Luckily, Belgrano is the same neighborhood that I live in so it is only  two subway stops away.  Here is what the neighborhood looks like right now. I will be doing a panoramic once Spring finally arrives and the trees start blooming.

Classes themselves look to be lecture based and relatively notes heavy with less of a focus on homework. Classes are also less discussion based than back home, although questions are still welcome. The entire classroom is more casual than back home, with teachers often arriving between 5-15 minutes late for class. Teachers also have their cell phones on them and do not seem to care if students do as well. Attendance is strict though, and if your attendance is less than 75% then you cannot take the final and you fail the course.

Interestingly, projectors are not very popular in classrooms. Every single one of my teachers either just talks to us or goes old school and uses chalk and a blackboard.

This university is a private school, but the country is full of public universities, which are free for all Argentine students. After talking with some locals, they even told me that generally public schools are viewed as more rigorous than their private counterparts. I was told by them that the main reason people go to private schools is that classes are much less likely to be interrupted by the relatively frequent strikes that hit the public system.

Well that's about all I can think of at the moment. Sorry if this post was a bit boring, but now that I am in the swing of things, we are going to start exploring the city more, so the next post should be better. Once again, comment any questions or comments if you want to know something.

Thanks for reading!

Scott