The best thing about Europe so far is not the cuisine. It’s not the pastries or the old buildings or the culture. It’s the textbooks.
Okay, so it’s not the textbooks, per say. My German textbook is just as soul-sucking as a German textbook in America. The price, however, is a spectacular improvement.
I am currently taking two classes (I’ll take the other two in a secondary block period starting in March). In an American school, two classes could wind up costing me several hundred dollars for books.
Please guess how much I have paid for books so far.
16 euros. 16 beautiful, glorious euros. Or, in Northeastern terms, less than the price of dinner at the Cheesecake Factory in the Pru. I don’t have words to express the joy I felt when I cashed out at the bookstore. Take note, America. This is how you do textbooks.
In terms of classes, all of mine are taught in English, and though my professors are Austrian, my school is specifically a study abroad institution. I don’t have a traditional European institution to compare with, but the classes at Salzburg College seem pretty Americanized. My bigger class has 19 students, while my smallest class has around eight. For the most part, they’ve been structural similarly to what I’ve experienced at Northeastern, with the glaring exception being attendance. I can basically only have one or two unexcused absences before I fail! I’m the kind of person who always goes to class, even when it isn’t mandatory, but I have an irrational terror of something going horribly wrong. I could get sick. I could break a bone. My bed could be too warm and comfortable to leave.
I kid. I promise, I have great attendance. But everyone needs a day to sleep in once in a while, right? Turns out, no. Not the Europeans. They are superheroes.
One interesting thing about university in Austria is that they knock their fists on the table to show respect after a lesson. Perhaps since we’re a school made up of only American students, no one does that after our classes, but I’ve been told it’s common. Maybe I’ll try it out soon and see if I win any brownie points. If I win my teachers over, they might not fail me if I oversleep!
