Academic Update

Week 9.5,
There have been a few people out there that have asked me to explain the word “Calcio”. Calcio is Italian for Soccer (USA), Football (the English speaking world), Futbol (Spanish), Futebol (Portuguese), Fußbal (German), футбол (Russian) and Voetbol (Dutch).

Academics…
This week I have had midterms. I have one more test tomorrow. My two Italian classes have been fun, because they have been active and interesting. My sociology/anthropology/history class has been rather boring. I have learned, or I should say heard, some interesting ideas and history regarding Milan and its foundations. I still need to study for this test. There have been a lot of dates mentioned and the material is rather dry. I have tried to participate as much as I can but even the strong Italian coffee does little to keep me alert in class. I just had my political science final on European Integration. The test consisted of 28 multiple-choice questions. No joke. I was done in 9 minutes and out of the room in less than 10 minutes. I enjoy this class a bit more as it consists of material that I am familiar with and there are fewer students in the class, which leads to interesting discussions at times.

Class efficiency
Overall I would describe the classes here as being very inefficient. The classes are 1 hour and 50 minutes long and I think they could be compressed into 60 minutes at most. I feel that the teachers are told to keep the students in the classroom for the whole class period even if they have nothing to say. It kills me. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to teach a class in your second language, so props to the teachers, but there is a lot of repeating in class. Each class has a powerpoint (excluding my Italian classes), which is emailed to us at the end of each week. This makes taking notes seem almost pointless. I manage to jot down some info regardless. The powerpoints are filled with fluff as well. I am missing the very structured classes of Wooster. I much prefer the intense 50 minutes of class.

I think that is all for this installment of the academic update. I will try and attach a picture of where I play calcio.

KR