Classes

Well, here I am 5 weeks into classes and I'm just starting to comprehend a good portion of what the professors are saying. Progress!

Let me start by explaining how the Italians organize (for lack of a better word) their university system. First of all, I haven't signed up for classes yet. That's right, that happens sometime in November. But I've been attending classes since the end of September. Somehow, before arriving in Bologna, no one thought it relevant to mention this to us UC students, where signing up for classes requires you to sit in front of your computer, watching the clock tick toward the time of your first sign-up period, ready to pounce with the course numbers of what classes you want to take ready in front of you with 1st choice, 2nd choice, and 3rd choice. Knowing that we don't sign up until much later might have saved me a bit of stress this summer when I was worrying that all the classes I would want to take would fill up.

So, how DOES it work? Basically, in September we found what classes we would want to take/sounded appealing and then went to the lectures to see if we liked the style of the professor. On the first days, all the professors laid out for us the format of the class and what was required. (Quick side note: there are students here who are "attendees" and "non attendees." "Non attendees" have a heavier work load with the readings, so all of us exchange students are encouraged to be "attendees" and even go talk to the professor about the material because they can cut it down for us more or allow us to focus on what we're interested in.) If you like the sound of the class, you keep taking it. If you don't, you just don't go anymore. Whenever we actually "sign up for classes" in November, isn't so much as signing up for the "classes we have been taking", but more for "which classes we want the option of taking the exam". For example, I'm currently taking 3 classes. If suddenly I realize that one of them won't count for my major and I REALLY need this other class (that I haven't been attending), I can "sign up" for it in November, take the final exam for that class, potentially pass, and I'll get full credit for it. If I don't have a class on my "sign up" list, I'm not allowed to take the final exam for it.

The final exams sound oh-so fun. They are all oral exams (and the only part of class that is graded). So I'll get to sit down with the professor (possibly with the rest of the class sitting in the classroom studying themselves or watching me), and the professor will ask me some questions about the material (the exams usually take about 15 minutes). Most of the "material" is from the readings, and very little will be about the lecture. This is why professors can tailor the final exam to the student: if I had previously asked a professor if I can focus on a few chapters of the book and skip the rest, he/she will just ask me questions about those chapters. If I demonstrate that I know the material assigned to me, I'll get a passing grade. If I don't like the grade the professor gives me, I have 2 choices: 1) I can tell him/her to ask me something else so I can demonstrate that I actually know what I'm talking about. If I pull it off, the prof. can offer me a higher grade. Or 2) I can tell the prof. that I will be back for the 2nd round of exams after I study a bit more to try to improve my grade. The student has to accept the grade for the grade to count. If the student never accepts it, then they can keep trying to retake the exam (to the annoyance of the professor), or just never get credit for it.

Here are the 3 classes I'm currently taking (all in Italian):
1. Sociology of Visual Communication (about 15 students; the professor strings all her words together...)
2. Gender, Citizenship, and International Politics (about 30 students, 3/4 erasmus, 1/2 of those who speak Spanish)
3. Literature and Critical Analysis of Dante (about 150 students; energetic, amusing professor who tries to help us erasmus students since there's about 20 of us in that class)

I'm apparently also going to learn a bit of Spanish in my Gender, Citizenship, and International Politics class because there are about 7 women in the class who all speak Spanish (from Spain and Chile). So they understand the Italian quite well, and therefore are able to intelligently contribute to class discussions (unlike myself who is barely following along, much less forming my own thoughts). However, their Italian isn't good enough that they can speak it, so they speak in Spanish and our professor and other classmates "translate" into Italian...which usually doesn't help me very much because I've lost the context. Too bad I've never taken a single Spanish class.... The saving grace in this class is that the professor knows English, so the 15-page paper I have to write to get the max number of credits for the class can be in English. Whew!

All in all, it has been a very interesting experience. The first few weeks I was exhausted after every class (which are all 2-hours long--I can barely concentrate for that long at UCLA!), but now I'm starting to get the hang of it and my notes are now mostly in Italian rather than mostly in English with a few Italian words thrown in there for fun. Now that I'm understanding what's happening in lecture, I should probably get around to understanding the reading material...since that is what the final exams will be on.

The adventure continues...!