ORIENTATION

On our second day here, the American Studies dept took all of the Americans in Swansea on a trip to Mumbles. We were supposed to go to the Gower penninsula which we have heard is one of the most naturally beautiful places in the world, but the snow apparently made it impossible to get to. So instead we walked around the Mumbles for a while. There is a very large group of students here from Iowa State and University of North Carolina at Wilmington. My group has become really good friends with 2 girls from Oklahoma, so now the 7 of us hang out all the time. The Mumbles was really beautiful but it was really cold, so we ended up spending most of our time sitting in the cafe there drinking hot chocolate.

We had a course we took for our first 2 weeks here while the British students had exams from last semester. Our course was British Politics and Culture Since 1945. The professor was awesome and he did a really good job of making it interesting for us. We alternated lectures on politics with ones on culture and the culture ones usually involved watching movies or talking about music. We had an entire lecture on The Beatles and some other 60s music and an entire lecture on James Bond. It was all day everyday for 2 weeks with 1 or 2 hour gaps in the schedule every now and then while seminar groups met.

The American Studies course took us on 2 field trips with the course, the first weekend to the Big Pit and Cardiff and the second week to Bath. I'll write about them in separate posts.

To end the course, we just had to write an essay. It was supposed to be 2500 words, plus or minus 250 and we got the topics on the first day of class. I wrote about how 1960s music reflected post-war politics and culture in Britain. It was actually really interesting to research. Here they do most of their work independently, there is very little homework or required reading. Most professors just give out a reading list and expect you to go check books out of the library that interest you and do it yourself. So I got some books about 1960s Britain and used Hamilton's online journal resources to write my essay. When it was done, it ended up being 2495, I don't think I could have gotten much closer if I tried!

We haven't gotten our grades back yet, but apparently here a 70 is an A+. He said he is grading these essays out of 65, so a 50 will be an awesome grade. The grading scale is certainly going to take some getting used to!

The course was a really great introduction to coursework over here. We got really lucky with the professor and he made it interesting. A few groups of students didn't come over for the pre-sessional course and they got here like 2 days before classes began. I can't imagine coming over and jumping into classes! I think we were so much better prepared after having done that.

The Arcadia group at the Mumbles

"The Big Freeze" in Britain