The first week of classes has been incredibly different from Umass’s first week. The whole system of registration here is, in my opinion, ridiculous and unnecessarily confusing. There are several ways to register for any one class; you can sometimes just show up, sometimes register through a student portal web page(Spire-like), register through a different student portal (similar to noodle), sometimes you only need to email the professor, and the last one I had to do is apply for a spot in the class through a third web page. The whole ordeal was incredibly stressful for me. I’m greatly in favor of the simple online shopping-cart method that Umass uses even if the Spire site is a pain in the ass. First week has also been interesting because there have been school sanctioned parties literally every day of the week except for friday, saturday, and sunday. Often these parties run until three or four in the morning. The idea of so many school sanctioned parties don’t really make sense to me but I guess thats just the way of it in Germany.
Classes run a little differently here than in America. Most of my classes meet once a week for about an hour and a half, half the time per class a week as American classes. Most of the memorizing is done out of classes and there is little to no homework besides a recommended problem set maybe once a week that is ungraded. The way I’m guessing this works is that no one really cares about school until a month or two before finals, then they cram and memorize as much as possible and show up for their tests (which are the entirety of their grade for their class). These tests are also open response sorts with only a few questions. It will be interesting to see what most of the test are actually like and if they are as difficult as I think they will be.
In addition to classes I’ve started regularly going to the gym, which is exactly what I imagine 90’s gyms to have been like. They even play 90’s hip hop. I think I was lifting to early Beyonce yesterday. In the gym there are a lot of different benches and incline benches crammed into small areas with a mix of mismatched weights. Most of the dumbbells are screw on plates that come loose after using them for a bit which give everything a little wiggle. It’s also a lot smaller than at home and usually much less packed. One of the things I’m most thankful for is the lack of televisions. I feel like there is a lot more focus on what is being done and fewer five minute tv breaks staring at the 6 televisions lining the wall of Umass’s gym. I heard that there will also be a fee to use the gym of about 10 euros a month which is something I’m also a little confused about for a student facility but as long as it’s not too expensive I don’t mind paying.
A reoccurring theme in this country is a the lack of sunlight. By my count the total number of days with sun for more than two-ish hours is FIVE. I’ve been here for a month and a half. I am really beginning to understand the meaning of Seasonal Affective Disorder. It’s a struggle to get up in the morning and force myself out into the gray especially compared to the bright crisp New England mornings and I never have any idea what time it is. Sometimes I will wake up at eight thinking it’s past noon and other times I’ll wake up in the afternoon and think it’s early in the morning. If I had to make a list of thing I missed the most the sunlight would be close to the top.
Night’s here on the other hand are much nicer. I’ve noticed the wind drops down a lot and the humidity picks up. Paired with the whole city being lit up by street lights it’s relatively nice to go walking at night and even the number of friendly people out in the street at one in the morning is surprisingly high.
Hopefully now that first week of class stress is out of the way I can look into a few more excursions on my weekends. I have no classes monday and only one class early in the morning every other friday. So I have a four day weekend every other week. Hopefully I can take some awesome trips in the near future.
BRIAN PENGUIN 