HKU allows students–full time and exchange–to take up to six classes. I am currently taking four as I need eight to graduate and the last four I necessarily need to take them at Northeastern. The four classes that I am taking are: State, Law and the Economy (ECON), History of Economic Thought (ECON), Economic History of China (ECON) and Politics and Public Opinion (POLI). I have really enjoyed and learned from all of my classes but Politics and Public Opinion is exceptionally interesting, compared not only to the other HKU’s classes, but to all classes I have taken during my entire college experience.
Politics and Public Opinion’s class is basically focused on how to measure public opinion (the study of polls) and understanding how it shapes local, regional and national politics. Also we study how governments and candidates behave depending on the result of different polls that measure the public opinion. The content of the class is very interesting but what makes it the best is the professor. The professor is the director of a very famous and prestigious local pollster that is constantly cited on television and local newspapers. As the professor has experience on the topic he constantly teaches the theory of the class but at the same time shows with real life examples how what he teaches has a practical impact. Also, the professor is very passionate about the topic so he really puts a big effort to make the class dynamic and constantly interesting. Something very positive about having a professor that is very well known is that he can invite important members of Hong Kong society to his classes to provide us different ideas on a variety of topics. Last class, for example, one of the leaders of the Umbrella Movement–a huge Hong Kong protest that happened two years ago and that received worldwide attention–came to talk to us and provided his analysis on public opinion and its relation to the movement.
Politics and Public Opinion, as all the rest of my classes, is not being constantly evaluated. Classes at HKU basically have only one final exam and a final project and there is no homework at all. So what I try to do is to read the material before the classes so once I receive the lectures I understand them better and if there is anything I do not understand I just ask the professors after the lectures are over. There are many nice places around campus that allows me to read in silence. HKU has coffee places to study around (best known is Starbucks), many tables with chairs around the campus and obviously the library. The library is by far my favorite place to study as it has a “quiet area” where no one talks so it is very easy to get focus in there. The only problem with the library is that it often gets too crowded and it is hard to find a seat, when this happens I regularly go to an empty classroom and just do all my readings in there.
