Almost Halfway Done

Week 5 has finished. There are only 12 weeks of classes in the semester so I am almost at the halfway point. It is kind of unbelievable how fast time has gone by. I guess my first indication that we'd been here for a while should have been the weather. I didn't need to wear a jacket yesterday! The sun was shining and the temperature broke 50 (Fahrenheit, that is). I'm sure if the weather was like that at Colgate everyone would be wearing sandals, shorts and t-shirts. It was absolutely wonderful to walk around in the warm sun and regret not having sunglasses. Of course yesterday was a Wednesday, and since I have 6 hours of class on Wednesday I'm not that surprised it was the nicest day yet. The weather always seems to be the best on days I have class. I've been busy writing a couple of essays, which should have been my second indication that the half-way point was approaching. There isn't much weekly work to do for classes, but work magically appears at the midway and end points.

I really do like it here. The town is a lot bigger than Hamilton, but it isn't too big that I feel overwhelmed so I feel like it is a great environment to spend a semester in. I also love being near the beach. Even if it is freezing cold, it is quite a site to see an endless expanse of water as I walk to class. An added benefit is the lack of snow. I love snow, and am very jealous of the Colgate-built igloos and snow forts, but it is also wonderful to leave the gloves and winter jacket in the closet.

I'm still on the fence about how they run classes here. At Colgate we have class basically every day. Even if the class only meets for 50 minutes every other day, you are engaging with the material on an almost-daily basis. Actually, it is kind of on a daily basis because you have to do the readings the night before and then discuss during class. Here, classes meet for a 2- or 3-hour chunk once per week. Not only is that an extremely long time, but it also means you deal with the material once. They give us huge reading lists at the beginning of the semester as a list of "stuff you should look at." But let's be honest: there is only one copy of each book in the library, and you can take it out for a month at a time. So who is going to do the reading? It isn't worth it to buy any of the books because you end up only needing to read a few chapters from each book. So if there are recommended articles to read I will look at them, but otherwise I find it difficult and kind of annoying to track down the books. It definitely makes me appreciate the Colgate system of narrowing it down to six or seven essential texts. I think I understand better now how difficult that is for professors - so Colgate professors you are awesome. Please don't change.

They also have a different concept of time here. I was raised on the "if you are five minutes early you are on time, if you are on time you are late" philosophy. I had a class that was supposed to start at 10am this morning. I got there at 9:50 and was greeted by an empty room. I thought the class might have been meeting in a different location because we were watching a movie for the first hour. After wandering the building for five minutes I ran into another girl from my class. She informed me that most people show up at 5 after. (Normally our class meets at 11, but since we were watching a movie it started at 10 so we could still have 2 hours for discussion). If we showed up late at Colgate it would not be looked upon favorably. I also noticed that half of my class just didn't show up at all. Maybe that was their way of protesting the earlier start time. But come on! We meet once a week, how hard can it be to get out of bed?

Now that I've realized I only have half the semester left, I've got to make sure I get to see everything here! I still need to visit the St. Andrews Castle and check out the mines that are under it. I still have to figure out how to get onto the golf course, or at least get some good views of it so I can take pictures. I still need to walk all the way down the East Sands beach and see the highland cows that live at the end. And I want to go to the aquarium in St. Andrews and see the seals!

I'm headed to London this weekend to see my dad, which is very exciting. We're taking a trip to Stonehenge at some point, and we are going to try and take a Colgate picture next to the stones. I made him promise to bring a Colgate sweatshirt!