I was finally able to register for decent classes today, and I’m extremely glad that everything worked out and went fairly smoothly. Here is my class schedule:
Sunday 5:30-7:55pm (POLS 430) Politics of Palestinian-Israeli Relations
Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday 9:30-10:20am (ARIC356) Society and State in the Middle East 1906-present
Monday, Wednesday 12:30-1:45pm (ARIC 271) Islamic Art and Architecture
Monday&Wednesday 2:00-4:45pm and Tuesday&Thursday 1:30-3:20 (ALNG 111) Accelerated Modern Standard Arabic
If you add it up, I’ll be taking about 10 hours of Arabic a week. It’s a 6 credit course that meets four days a week…and it’s a lot, but I’m hoping that it will really help me to learn and improve. I’m really excited about my Palestinian/Israeli Relations course…I actually will be going to it in less than two hours. Sundays in general will not be fun, because I have a morning class until 10:20 and then I don’t have class again until 5:30, so I’ll be stuck on campus all day with nothing to do. I might try to switch my schedule around, but I’m happy with it other than that and I’m not sure if I want to go through the hassle. It took me five days just to get registered and get decent classes, I can’t imagine how hard it would be to try and see if I could get into a different section of one of my classes.
School is very…interesting. It’s like being in America except everyone speaks Arabic and is really well dressed. They told us that the students here will be very different from us. Apparently, they were taught mostly rote memorization, and are not good at more essay-oriented tests. They also said that although they know English, their English reading level will not be on par with ours, so their 200 level courses are more like 100 level courses and will be far below our level. We’re supposed to expect that our reading assignments will seem easy. I am curious to see if our tests/assignments will follow more the Egyptian standards of memorization or the American standards of long answers.
Advertisement
