First two days of Class

So it has been an entertaining first two days of class. The classes here, so far, haven't seemed to crazy for me. Its going to be interesting trying to adjust to a semester instead of a quarter. I keep thinking that I should be done by November but thats not actually true-I won't be done until december something or another. Something I do like about the way they have their finals set up is that I have two reading days before exams start. I guess we kind of have that at Ohio State but its not a specified day its just a regular old Saturday and Sunday. Here, the finals are going to be a week and a half long-definitely not something that I am used to. It looks like I will be taking Introduction to Finance, Introduction to Operations Management, Globalization Studies and maybe Personality Psychology. I decided not to take any other more exciting classes like International Relations in East Asia because it won't help me graduate (I am rethinking my decision to finish all my general requirements in the first two years..oh well, nothing I can do about that right now). I am going to try and audit some classes so that I can expand my East Asian knowledge base. I think I am going to try and go to IR in East Asia or maybe Chinese Heritage or something cool like that.

I think two of my classes are going to have a group project (write a group paper and then make a presentation). Nothing too crazy. Although, in my Intro to Ops Management class, it looks like the final is 70% of my grade. I am definitely not excited about that and it makes me really nervous but I think I am going to try my luck. My other three classes do not have cumulative finals so hopefully that will help me to focus on that final.


Currently, UST has a 3 year track for undergrads to graduate. They are moving to a 4 year track in a few years to coordinate with North America, I believe. Interesting.


My friend Sumana overheard one exchange student talking to her professor in her Financial Markets class about whether or not he believed that she would be okay in the class without too much of a quantitative background. This professor started to go on this spiel about how he hates having exchange students in his class and how he hates Americans/North Americans in his class because our schools are not very good or very well based in a lot of quantitative knowledge..etc etc. This girl turns to him and tells him that she is canadian and he goes to the board and asks her to solve an integral (which apparently wasn't too crazy but was definitely not cake either) and she thought he was joking but he wasn't and he apparently told her not to take the class.
Something about that interaction just rubs me the wrong way. While I don't think that the American education is that great, I also don't think that it is very professional for him to say all of that to student that is attempting to learn something from him. While I don't know that very many exchange students have really come here for a world class education, I do believe that there are people here that really would like to learn and are very, very intelligent. I definitely don't agree with his methods of bashing all exchange students and all North Americans. I'll keep you posted on any anti-western views that I find.

Speaking of something interesting that a professor had said...I was sitting in my Intro to Finance class and the professor is a local that studied and worked in the US and she asked Evan (OSU), Sunil (Texas) and I where we were from after she asked whether or not anyone has been to California (thats where she worked). Evan and I said that we are from Ohio State and she definitely said something to the extent of "California is a little more interesting than Ohio State" and then moved on with her lecture. We all just paused for a second and then looked at each other and laughed..

I think its going to be a very interesting semester.....