JANUARY 17, 2011
Well, the time finally came for me to wake up at 8am and begin the 'study' portion of 'study abroad'. 9am Monday 3-hour lecture is going to be the death of me this semester. That, coupled with a lecture I have until 6pm on Fridays, is going to severely limit my weekend European travels. But, it might be for the better considering my wallet is becoming increasingly lighter a bit quicker than I had originally planned on..
Anyway, this morning I had my first lecture as a student at King's College London. And it was pretty boring. 'Operating Systems and Concurrency' already doesn't sound like a particular fun course, but it seems like it's not going to be too bad. Other than the terrible lecture time, the only other bad part is the fact that the teacher just reads from powerpoint slides the entire time. I guess I can handle that, as long as understand what's going on. But there wasn't much that needed explaining in the first lecture - it was, for the most part, an introduction to the course.
One weird thing of note that I've never encountered before is the amount of students that could care less that there's a lecture going on and hold loud conversation in the middle of the room. I'm not wagging my finger or anything - it doesn't really bother me, especially reading powerpoint slides - but it's just weird that they have this almost cocky attitude that they think they're better than everyone else. It's certainly not all the students, just some of the ones that looked like they didn't really belong in a course dealing with some pretty in-depth computing concepts.
Also, I hail from Case, where the great majority of students sit with rapt attention and hang on the professor's every word.. Of course, I'm the guy about 3/4 of the way towards the back, jotting down the important stuff, but generally not really getting to into it.
I think that maybe, since university over here is minimally a three-year ordeal, these kids probably just finished their first term at uni and are feeling pretty good about it. Plus, I'll admit that it is hard to care when the professor hands you copies of the same slide she's reading off of. She barely added any side comments or anything, so it was basically like I had all the notes already. Oh well, if all I have to do is study the slides for the final, that shouldn't be too bad.. Oh and did I mention that the only grade in the course is the final exam? Yeah, I'm not sure whether that's going to suck or not. If it continues to be this easy, it probably won't be too bad. But I'll wait and see what the examples and tutorials turn out like.
Anyway, we ended early because there's not much to talk about at an introductory lecture, then I stopped at a Subway for lunch - the security guard for my apartment was handing out coupons like it was his job, and I'm all for discounted food! I think after I ate, I did a bit of emailing and organized some stuff. Since I'd only had one lecture so far, there's not really a lot that I have to do.
The main problem at the moment was that my schedule had a slight conflict in the form of an overlapping hour of lectures (Thermo and Abstract Algebra) on Friday. I was currently in talks with both professors, as well as the Study Abroad tutors for their respective departments, just trying to figure what my options were. And I was looking at flights home from Newark, NJ where my plane home lands on June 4, but that's another story.
I think after all that I just took a nap for a bit! Woke up to eat a bit of dinner, then bought my ticket for the boat party the next day (Tuesday) which you'll hear about in the next update. But after I got everything together for the day, I hopped on a train to head down to my first football training session as part of KCLFC. It was a lot of fun! I wasn't warned that it was a turf practice field, so I was kind of slipping everywhere in my cleats, but it was good to be out on the pitch again. And it was the school's 1s and 2s teams, so these guys were pretty good. I kept up with them, for the most part, during the drills and stuff, and even had a couple of goals in the end mini-scrimmage. But, as I expected, it's halfway through their season and they have a full roster, so there's probably no chance in playing with those guys. BUT, there are like six different teams for club football at KCL, and it just so happens that the 4s are looking for players. So the one guy I was talking to gave my number to the 4s captain and.. I'll get to that in my next update!
Hopped on the train home, showered, and figured I could stay up for a while since my Tuesday lecture isn't until 5pm. Talked the girlfriend and a couple people from home, and eventually hit the sack.
But that was it for my first day of classes at KCL. Goodnight, London!
Never going to get over this view.
This is actually from Saturday - totally forgot to include it. It's near London Bridge and I think it's some sort of church, but I don't remember, I just thought it was cool.
Sorry there's pretty much no pictures - Monday was a pretty boring day in which a couple cool things happened, but I just didn't have my camera on me to document them.
Good music for a first day of classes:
Matt & Kim - "Daylight", off their album "Grand"
Not a huge Matt & Kim fan, but I do like this song and the style - I just wish they had less songs that sound the same.
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Still catching up, hope everyone had a nice day off for MLK! Missing you guys!
Cheers!
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