Classes started this week and honestly it has been hectic. I’m only taking 4 classes but trying to figure out which ones I want to take and what they could possibly count for back home is really difficult.

Since this is a specialized agriculture school they don’t have general education credits or just a class you can just take for fun like astronomy or skiing. Every class people take counts toward their major and people don’t take classes outside their major. They also generally don’t change their major so it’s not possible to ask one person about classes in a several different disciplines. Instead I’ve taken to sitting in on lectures for classes that interest me this first week just to get a taste of what I want to stick with.

In my last post (which for some reason isn’t showing up in my achieve but can be found here http://geoblog.psu.edu/2012/02/1-week-down.html) I mentioned the setup of classes and how there are large blocks or full days where there are no classes, this is because they have a lot of outside class time for the classes which they call ‘papers’. There are things called “tutorials” which set up through the instructor on your own time where you meet up with other students and talk about the class topic. They’re mandatory but not on your schedule till your sign up. The labs for classes are also set up on your own time and aren’t put on your schedule until you sign up for them. There are also days where certain classes have field trips so classes for students that don’t have field trips are cancelled for the day.

Times of classes can sometimes overlap, meaning they will be at the same time so you have to watch for that because their scheduling program doesn’t keep you from doing it.

Students and teachers are also on a first name basis which I learned very quickly when I accidently called one Professor and he gave me the oddest look. The instructors also tend to know their students of hand and recognize them outside of class because the campus and classes are so small. My largest class this semester is 70 people but I have heard of someone having a class as small as 5. Thus, people tend to be blown away when I tell them there can be hundreds in a class at Penn State. But the odd thing is that they don’t put caps on how big the classes can be. Instead people can come and go for two weeks and after that you are not allowed to switch classes anymore without it being on your record. After that teachers have to put in a request for a bigger or smaller room depending on what their class size ended up being. Many classes are also team taught by multiple people that will cover a very specific area of the course.

As far as grading goes they do many more projects and paper for grades instead of test. Written exams are also more common or at least partially written and the have to count for at least 40% of your grade according to the school rules. Needless to say I was flabbergasted and plan on studying like mad in order to ace the exams since due to the grading scale it is hard to get an ‘A’ but nearly impossible to fail. I’d rather pull of A’s just to be safe.

But to be honest this week hasn’t been all work. The halls tend to get together after classes and watch movies, eat dinner together or plan trips around the island. Yesterday I had the pleasure to travel just an hour away from here to Akaroa with my RA, who was playing in a touch rugby tournament, and a girl in my flat. We were only there a few hours but it was really beautiful on the water and we got the best advice from a local, my RA, on the best fish and chips and town. I’m determined to go back there and get more because it was that good.

We stopped up over a ridge to take a look over the peninsula first before going down and the sky manged to open up and provide some good shots of everything below us. It was a little cold so we didn’t go down on the beach but we did get some pictures next to the water and get to walk the streets. 

It was the perfect time to be on the water because once the sun started to set it looked like the sky was on fire over the mountains. It was completely worth the cold weather.

Iplan on doing a video soon on some of the words and pronunciations used in New Zealand. I have a lot of them so it may end up being a two part thing. So keep an eye out for that!

Location: Akaroa, New Zealand