The way it works here is that you have your Spring Term AND your Summer Term treated as one US semester. Spring Term, you get all your classes out of the way and in the Summer Term, you take the tests for them.
Spring Term ends late March, which is followed by an absurdly long break of one month. Summer Term lasts for about a month, and them BOOM, done. Since Spring Term ends March, it's about, hey, ten weeks long, so really I never left the quarter system, it just means that I get to test later than I thought I would. So the same generous amount of coursework I have to complete is STILL there, required to be done in the SAME amount of time as it used to be. Not exactly the change of pace I was aiming for, no?
But this week, once again, I have had Tuesday and Wednesday off (it's early Wednesday morning...well, 10AM). Tuesday was spent slogging through homework, a bit of reading and a whole lot of staring at a terrible statistical program and trying to get it to behave. I did get to walk around a bit which was great, but nowhere "new" per sé as I really only went out to try to find something to eat...which took a lot longer than it should. I settled on some "halal" place halfway between my abode and the university, and, um, I got a burger. It was pretty good. But they charged me for condiments! Just a little thing of BBQ, man, it costs you a dollar for the whole 100000pc box, just give me my condiments!
I've come to the conclusion that they generally charge for almost everything over here. Charged me for internet at the hotel, charged me for condiments...I wonder what's next.
To make up for my lack of being able to do tourist stuff recently, today I'll be going onto a Duck tour (those amphibious vehicles from, like, WWII) with a bunch of other Affiliate Economics students (and by Affiliate Economics students it also basically means "all American students abroad studying Economics"). I'll have pictures up soon.
But my sly parenthetical brings up something interesting that I've come across. UCL is 30% international students. But it seems, still, every single person I've ever met is, well, American. Perhaps it's because the number of courses offered to Affiliates are limited, so it's overloaded with Affiliates (probably mostly American, likely because it's really, really expensive to study over here). Perhaps British people don't like the courses offered to Affiliates, or maybe I'm just not in the right set of classes. Whatever it is, it's slightly a bummer 'cause my goal of really getting to know some British kids is not really, ya know, getting off to a great start.
Well, I gotta go, I have to go back to the damn statistical program and see if it will behave for me this time. I'll update with Duck Tour stuff soon.
-e.
NP: Eluvium - Life Through Bombardment
Basically a comp of all Eluvium has done so far. Ambient music, so put it on in the back while work gets done!
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