First Day of Classes

Hi Everyone,

After a long wait of 2.5 weeks it finally happened... I had my first day of class! Granted I only had 1 class, but its a start! The class I had today was religion and society from 1 to 2:50, but we only met for the first hour. Most of my classes are in the political science building, but this one was in New Hall (Creative name, right!?). New Hall is located in North Campus which is about a 5-10 minute walk from my room. It was nice to walk to class and finally see other students with backpacks and such. New Hall is a, you guessed it, "new" building and is (I think) five floors of classrooms and lecture halls. Much like the states, the classroom had a projector, whiteboard, etc. and had room for about 35-40 students. I'd say there were about 30 students in the class and with the exception of me and maybe three others everyone was Turkish. The professor is about 35 and was really nice. Unfortunately, he didn't speak in the loudest voice so it was difficult to hear him, but his English was superb which is key! He described the class as a 4th year seminar, which would make it the equivalent of a 400 or 500 level class at BU. In terms of workload, the professor described it as writing and reading intensive, but after looking at the syllabus its nothing compared to BU. We have four papers throughout the semester that are each 3-5 pages. There's no final exam and there's roughly 60-80 pages of reading a week. Compared to BU, in my IR 521 class on the CIA, I had about 200-300 pages of reading per week a midterm, final, one short paper, and one 10-12 page research paper. When I think about it, 3-5 pages of writing for a non-native english speaker is probably quite challenging as I can only imagine writing 3-5 pages in Turkish or even Arabic.

As interesting as the class seems, I might have to drop it. When I registered, my advisor told us that we could have up to 2 hours of class conflict (two classes at the same time) during a week. So I went ahead and registered for both the religion class and politics in developing countries despite them meeting at the same time on Tuesdays. My classes meet three times a week so my plan was to alternate weekly between the religion and developing countries class. That way I would still attend class at least 2 times per week and would get the notes for the class I missed from another student. This ended when today's profession said that he does not tolerate absences and more than 4 will result in a half grade deduction. Tomorrow, I'll attend the politics in developing countries and see if the professor is okay with me missing that class once a week. If so, I'll keep taking both classes and if not, I'll drop one and take something different.

On a different note, my roommate moved in. He arrived on Friday, but didn't spend a night here until yesterday. His name's Yigit and he's a chemical engineering major. He seems really nice and eager to help! Later tonight, I'm going to sign up for a trip to the Cappadokia region of Turkey from Thursday March 4 till Sunday the 7th. Its a trip organized by the university for exchange students. I'll have more details on the trip later.

Okay well that's all I have for now. I miss you all a lot! Enjoy the winter weather that's supposed to be coming the next few days!!

Love,

Brett