Autumn in London '06

At Last, Classes!

Greetings Everyone!

Well, finally, after almost two weeks here in London, I've had some classes. Truth be told, I've felt a bit useless at times since coming here. I hadn't been in classes now since the middle of June, so it was nice to finally start in on them.

The first class I had was Wednesday night from 7 to 9. The class is called "Hands-on Journalism," and it is part of the Professional and Community Education (PACE) department here at Goldsmiths. Essentially, this means that the class is open to members of the community, and therefore the range of ages, professions, and walks of life in the class is quite diverse. There are three students in the class who are clearly over the age of 30, two of which do not speak English as their primary language, and at lease three others are post-graduates already in the working world. There are also, however, a lot of undergraduate students, and a lot of them are (ironically) from Boston. And, also, most of the American students in the class are Journalism majors in some fashion. This came as quite a shock to the professor, who believed that she was to teach an introductory class to older students who knew little to nothing about journalism. She vowed to give those of us who are quite beyond that level something more advanced to do, but time will tell whether or not this class is going to essentially be an academic waste of time. Hopefully it will be at least a refreshing change of perspective.

The other class that I've had, which I just had this afternoon, is called "Latin American Cinema." Funny that I've crossed the Atlantic to learn about our neighbors to the south, but it should be a very interesting class. While it is conducted in English by a woman who does not speak much Spanish herself (a bit of a disappointment, really), the class culture seems to be very conducive to good discussion. Contrary to most of the classes that I've taken in the States, this class seems full of students who really want to discuss, want to participate, and want to learn, and that makes for a very good class, generally. Also, I like that we are required to view the films outside of class and then spend the class time purely on discussion. I was a bit afraid that it would be a bit of a "blow-off" course in which we basically just watch movies the whole time. And the professor, despite not being a native Spanish speaker or natively from a Latin American country, does seem to be very knowledgable in her field, so that should be good as well.

Outside of the classroom, it's been a bit of a slow week, with a lot of nights in reading Angels and Demons or just chatting with my flatmates. When Kevin gets back this weekend, I'm sure we'll do a bit more. Till then!

posted by Zachary Nicholson @ 4:26 PM