Classes in the UK haven’t been too much of a culture shock for me. It was pretty expected that lectures and seminars would be pretty similar to how we conduct them in the US, however I will say there is one pretty major difference. At NEU, we meet way more often for instruction whereas I feel like here it’s expected that students do a lot more individual study and preparation. Every class I’ve taken at NEU has met 2 or more times a week for lecture and one or more times a week for seminar, but at Goldsmiths, I meet once, maybe twice, a week for each class. This leaves me with a lot of free time, but also a lot of readings to do before every week.
Assessment wise, each of my classes only has one major assessment. Either an exam or a paper to write at the end of the semester, which is pretty much how your grade is decided. This means there’s no other assignments to buffer your grades, but it also means I don’t have as much daily homework. I can’t tell yet if I like this approach or not, so I will have to report back.
The teaching style doesn’t seem too different and classes sizes are relatively the same to what I know but I think there seems to be a much different attendance etiquette here. Classes are all blocked right up next to each other with no break time which means they generally start about 10 minutes late to allow for travel time for most of the students. That just seems a little nonsensical for me, but nobody else seems to mind so who am I to judge?
One thing that I really enjoy is that all the required readings that I have are provided to me. Maybe it’s just the classes that I’m taking but that means I don’t have to spend any extra money on textbooks which is AMAZING. None of my friends seem to have had to either so it feels like a common trend. *cough* Northeastern pay attention. 😉
The professors seem extremely chill here though. In my experience it is NOT uncommon to see professors and students grabbing a drink at the end of the day. Perhaps that has to do more with etiquette and drinking age in the US, but in the UK, a casual get together over a pint is not uncommon.
Life here is pretty cool; would definitely recommend you try it out.
