University Life, The Dutch Way
Carousel Travel/ERASMUSPublished November 28, 2008 at 11:18 No Comments
We attend the Vrije Universitet Amsterdam, located on the outskirts of Amsterdam, near Amstelveen. Having been used to the student way of life in Leicester, the University here is completely different. The first thing we noticed was how little time we actually spend in the University. At Leicester we would have a minimum of 8 hours a week. Here we have four classes a week at most but this is more often like two due to cancelled classes or they take place every other week etc. One of our lectures is often off to conferences and so for this particular module we have only been to 5 classes over the past two and a half months. This means that we are only studying in the University on a Wednesday, giving us a six-day weekend!
The whole attitude to University is completely relaxed, we get set homework every week of reading several articles, as English students in Leicester this is nothing, yet here we often get told in the beginning of classes, ‘Oh, we know most of you will not have managed to read everything’.
In just under a week we will be taking mid-term exams, however just the other day we were told that for one of the modules it would be a majority of multiple choice and fill in the blanks! Do not be mistaken into assuming these are not worth anything either, this particular test accounts for forty percent of the module. This does sound stupidly easy, however we do have to know definitions for terms we have never come across before as here we mainly study linguistics and language rather that literature and some revision is needed in order for us to know the correct terminology required for the blank spaces.
We do not have lectures here; in fact we actually miss attending them! The classes last about an hour and forty-five minutes with a fifteen-minute break. Here we have classes of approximately twenty students where the session will go through a power point presentation, however student-teacher contact is much more of an aspect here, a lot like our seminars, and mid class we will often find ourselves doing little exercises and quite a few mini-presentations. The classes are so different that a few weeks ago we spent a whole lesson making a handout, something neither of us has done at school since we were 12 years old!
Helen Fisher and Sian Savage
