The past few days have been rather routine exercises in going to class and doing readings. I did spent 4 or 5 hours last night with two English girls and an Italian girl discussing various cultural and institutional differences between our countries. One English girl actually seemed more pro-American rather than pro-British, which was nice as I didn’t have to find myself defending my country against really absurd and ill-informed assertions. I’m fully aware that our country isn’t the best about everything, but that doesn’t mean we are the opposite either.
On that note, Andrew telling me that American universities were way ahead of the rest of the world was a huge understatement. UCL is considered the 3rd best university in England pretty much unanimously. The library here is an absolute joke. Because classes here cannot require you to buy books for whatever cultural reasons, there is never a single text for a class. For Shakespeare this is fine because the texts are easily acquired and are pretty similar. For history classes this is a complete disaster. There are no redundant copies of books in the library here, so if I am assigned a list for the week of 10 books, and there are 40 kids in the class, there’s no way I can get my hands on it at the library.
For all that the school rather smugly claims that it’s more “grown up” here because you have to do more work on your own, I think that’s a cop out. I am expected to do more work, with more emphasis on individual thought and interpretation in the United States. Moreover, I have a much easier time accessing materials. Electronic reserves mean that at Emory I can download articles from any computer anywhere at any time. Here I have to pray I can get my hands on the one copy of the book the entire class is angling for, and quite frankly I refuse to go to bookstores and buy new books every week.
It’s asinine. Just because your university lacks basic infrastructure and learning materials doesn’t mean it’s “independent learning” or “more grown up”.
I arrived an anglophile. The people my age are really refreshing and musically it’s a great place. But the academics here are beneath the entry levels of my high school.
I think our high school must have been even better than anyone realized. Of course Darienites are well aware that couples move to Darien for the good school system, but they really are good. Most of my Carnegie Mellon courses were not as challenging as I expected or as I needed. Some were fine and challenging and intellectual, though (Peggy’s courses especially).
The availability of course materials sounds like a real bummer. That’s enough to ruin any (serious) student’s day. At CMU, if there were paper materials that every student needed to read, they were kept behind the circulation desk and could not be taken from the library. Each student had to read it in the library and within a limited amount of time. I think even that system is better than what you have available. Poor Nick!
You know, I bet Dad wouldn’t care if you ended up with a whole lot of extra books. You can check with him, of course, but I’m betting he’ll bring over an empty suitcase and then carry your books back to America in that. Or do what he usually does and pack light on clothes so he has room for books. What do you think, Dad?
By: Annalisa on 17 January, 2008
at 4:24 am
I certainly would relish any spare books you have in those subjects. Back in the day, getting copies of articles to read was a major logistic issue, solved often I think, by ignoring copyright restrictions. In college (50 years ago), we used thermofax copies (waxy documents produced by some heat process). In law school, the Reproduction Center was very important. There was an urban legend that law students at Columbia would razor out articles to get a competitive advantage. It may just be that Emory is a few years ahead of other schools.
By: phil schaefer on 17 January, 2008
at 4:35 am