The Czech Republic uses the European standard for measuring credits, called ECTS. The usual conversion is 2 ECTS credits/1 US credit. I am taking 40 ECTS credits, or 20 US credits, which is more than the average European student (and American for that matter). I am also kind of auditing the Czech language class. I'm not signing up for it officially, but I am showing up and learning some (but not doing the homework if I don't feel like it). I haven't been to many of these classes, though, because they meet at 8 am and the professor had a car accident and has cancelled several of the classes.
My schedule is Mondays: Making of Europe 12-1:30, Remodeling Political Culture 2-3:30, and Ethnic Relations every other week from 4-7:30. Tuesdays: US Pres. Elections 12-1:30. Wednesdays: EU in European Politics 12-1:30. Since not all the classes meet each week and often don't go the whole time, I have about 6 hours of class/week. This also means, my weekends go from Wed. at 1:30 until Mon. at noon (or an hour and a half shy of 5 day weekends).
The classes are run as a type of hybrid between European style and American style. By American style, we have actual homework. In some classes, the grades use the US scale and others use the European one. It is actually much harder to get an A or a B in Europe because they treat C as a good grade, too.
The European grading scale:
A Excellent
B Very Good
C Good
D Satisfactory
E Sufficient
F Fail
Some of the professors have realized that American/Canadian students taking these credits back home have a hard time convincing advisors that a C in a European class is a good grade. A professor that I have for two classes uses the scale of A=100-82, B=81-75, C=74-68, D=67-61, E=60-55, F=54-0. Another uses a European style and out of 50 total class points, one must get 47 for an A and 44 for a B.
The homework has varied, too. The classes are worth 3-6 US credits but only meet for an hour and a half because of all the outside reading. Many students in Europe rarely go to class and cram in all the reading in the month-long break before the final tests. (All my finals will be in December rather the normal January/February to accommodate foreign students.) The professor trying to be like an American class requires a short 1-2 paper each week about the reading. Other classes have 2 or 3 papers throughout the semester and a final essay test. My first "big" paper is a 3 page paper about JFK for my US Presidential Elections class (the second paper is on Bill Clinton).
The teachers have been very interesting themselves. The first week of classes is just an introduction and overview of the class (each class that week lasted about 5-20 minutes). Two of the professors were late and answered their cell phones when they went off in class. None of the teachers are native English speakers, but I've had enough foreign TAs to be used to this. In the Czech Cinema class (that I'm not taking but went to out of sheer boredom), the professor showed a Czech fairy tale movie and in the set-up for the movie, told us he went to see the movie the weekend the Russian tanks rolled into Prague in 1968.
My US Presidential Elections class is very interesting, seeing it from a foreign perspective. There is a Pennsylvanian and a Utahn (official term, I looked it up) in my class. The first day of class, we mentioned the Iowa Caucuses and the professor had me explain about them for about 10 minutes. That was actually pretty cool. The class is overflowing because, although it is supposed to be a quasi-history class, there is a lot of talk about the current election. The professor has also made it clear she prefers McCain, which I found good and very interesting.
I'll talk more about classes in posts to come as this one is getting long. Wish me luck on writing my papers, without having a real American library to use for research.
1 comment:
Don't forget you can always access the library's webpage to read through professional journal articles, etc. :)
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