Observations About School and University

In honor of finishing my first of two exams just a bit ago, I thought I would write a quick post about what I have learned about the British school system. Some of it might not be totally accurate, or it might only apply to some places/schools in the UK.

• School refers to anything lower than university. University is referred to as university or uni. If you talk about something you did at school, the British person will assume it happened in high school, or perhaps earlier.

• It is quite common for children to attend boarding schools. They might board even if there homes are not that far away. 

• Both public and private schools have uniforms.

• You can leave school when you are sixteen, but it normally is not seen as "dropping out." It does not have the same stigma as in the USA.

• Their last two years of high school is devoted to taking A-levels in several subjects. The scores on the A-levels will affect which universities they will be accepted to.  

• At university you can a course, not a major, and they typically take three years to complete.

• All you study at university is your course (major). There are no general education requirements.

• Once you have enrolled in a course and started studying, you can not change courses. To change a course you must drop out, and then wait a year to apply for another course. So, if you end up half way through your course and discover that you actually hate that subject, then you either have to just finish and earn a degree you don't want, or leave school and the previous years were wasted.

• It is very common to take at least one or two gap years before starting university. Students take that time to discover what they really want to study since once they start they cannot change.

• As a result of gap years, the average Fresher (name for a first year student) is older than freshmen in the USA.

• Very few students bring their laptops to class. Legal pads are very popular for note-taking.

• Most professors insist that you call them by their first name.

• At the end of the semester you do not review for the test, you revise.

• Classes, at least at Oxford-Brookes University, only meet one day a week for two hours. The two hours are usually split into lecture and seminar.

Assignments in a Stairwell

Turning in assignments should be easy, but at my university in England it is more of an ordeal. On Wednesday, an outline for a paper was due by 5:00 pm. Now, this was for one of my Thursday classes, and to me it makes much more sense to have it due on the day we have class, instead of a day early. This is compounded by the fact that the Business campus, where my Thursday classes are located, is a 25 minute bus ride each way for me. That is 50 minutes total of travel time needed to simply hand in an assignment.

Then, instead of turning it in to our professor, our assignment sheet only said to put the paper in the provided box in the Business Undergraduate Center. That was the only direction. It did not say which building is the Undergraduate Center (it is not labeled) and it did not specify where the box would be in that building.

So, on Wednesday, I finished up the outline and caught the 2:05 pm bus to the business campus. I entered the library to find that every computer was taken. After taking an awkward lap around the library, I found that every single computer was taken. Sitting down in a red arm chair among the bookshelves, I check my email on my iPod, waiting for someone to leave. Ten minutes later I made another lap and found a free computer.

Unfortunately, this computer was next to two boys speaking loudly in a foreign language, I am guessing German or some Eastern European language. I kept waiting for one of the people working at the main library desk to come over and tell them to be quite. It is a library after all, but no one did. I did some final editing to the outline and printed it.

Needing to find out exactly where the turn-in box was located, I asked the librarian hoping that he would know. He had absolutely no idea, and called someone who also had no idea. He was able to direct me to the building known as the Business Undergraduate Center. It actually turns out that this is a building I hang out in between classes. The first floor has a cafe and seating areas, but there are office upstairs.

Upstairs there were a lot of doors to choose from. I went left to a circular room lined with computers labeled at the "Student Help Area." Well, there was no one around to help me with my current predicament so I went back to the stairs and went right. One door had a small sign outside labeling it as the undergraduate office and I could see some people inside from the door window.

I opened the door to find about six desks arranged around the room with people behind them, all of whom were now staring at me. Nervous with all of their eyes on me, I managed to explain that I was trying to turn in a paper for a class. One woman with bob length blonde hair understood what I was asked and said, "You just go done the hall past the computer room and go down the stairs on the right. The boxes are just downstairs." I thanked her and followed her directions out of the room.

At the base of the stairs I was once again completely confused. There were several doors leading out of the stairwell but the woman had not given me any further directions. Searching around the stairwell, lit only by the sunlight drifting in through a window, I found the boxes behind the stairs. The boxes were about two feet tall, wooden with a slit cut into the front. There were six, a row of three stacked two high. Only three were labeled with a piece of paper stating the name and number of the class and the assignment due date. I slid my paper inside and my task was complete.

I understand why it might be save class time for everyone to hand in their assignments into a box and not directly to the teacher, especially in a class of over one hundred people. But why on Earth would you decided that the best place to put those boxes would be in the back corner of a building (one of the farthest from the campus entrance I might add), in a stairwell, behind the stairs. There are not even any signs to help people find it. I guess they just expect everyone to know where it is, or just have them wander around cluelessly like I did.

A Thursday of Classes

6:55 am:
I am awoken by the sound of church bells, better known as my iPod alarm. It is a much more pleasant sound to wake up to, so pleasant in fact that I decide to stay in bed for a little while longer. I think about all of the things I need to do to get ready for the day and the best order to do it in, instead of actually getting out of bed and doing it.

7:15 am
My secondary alarm goes off and I drag myself out of bed, dressing and brushing my teeth in a daze. Mornings in England are just the same as in the United States, at least until you leave the room and go to class in a bus instead of walking.

8:05 am
Libby and I begin the walk from our dorm at the bottom of a hill to the bus stop at the top. I remark jokingly to Libby, "Didn't you know it is supposed to rain today? Since you are wearing your Toms and not your boots it will end up raining extra hard." It seems that she always ends up choosing those shoes, with absolutely no water resistance, on rainy days.

8:13 am
A girl with long dark hair rushes past us at that strange pace that is in between a jog and a brisk walk. Whenever I see someone walk/running I want to say, "just choose one and then commit." Then I began to think, "If I was late for the bus would I run to catch it? Probably not unless it was for class, then again, I prefer to be early for things so it would be highly unlikely that I would ever need to make this decision. Oh look, the bus is here."

8:16 am
Libby and I board the bus and find seats on the top level near the back. No good views of the drive today with all of the windows fogged up. I admit that I am a bit disappoint that I can't watch all of the children walking to school in their uniforms. They all just look so adorable.

8:38 am
The bus arrives at the Wheatley Campus and everyone piles off. It is surprisingly warm outside considering the early hour. Though I am only wearing a cotton shirt and light blazer I feel comfortable, no shivering in the near future.

We enter Dora Cohen Hall from the main entrance instead of taking a side entrance like usually to stop off at the loo. The huge lecture room with rooms of desks stretching from one wall to another is dark. The weak morning sunlight is not strong enough to illuminate all of the corners, and none of us feel comfortable enough to turn on the lights. We always leave that job to the teacher for some reason.

9:16 am
The lecturer for International Markets and Competition, an Indian man who always seems to wear a purple button-down shirt, explains market structures that fall on a sliding scale from perfect competition to pure monopoly. It still takes me a second to recognize when he says "mono-poly" (only two syllables) that he means "mo-na-po-ly" (four syllables). I am not sure but I think that is just his personal way of saying the word and, not the actual British pronunciation.

9:36 am
The two boys behind me (I think they are speaking German) have not stopped talking the entire lecture. It is incredibly rude and distracting and I almost turn around to stare at them to see if they will be quiet, but I don't.

10:25 am
I am sitting in the undergraduate building trying to get some schoolwork completed before my seminar starts at 11:00 am. I manage to complete one reading assignment for my travel writing class. It is a very interesting account of an American journalist's time in Saudi Arabia over the past decade, focusing on how she was treated differently in the Islamic country because she is a woman. I think that  traveling to the Middle East would be a major life experience because it is so culturally and religiously different from the United States.

12:14 pm
Libby joins me in the library after eating her lunch in the refectory. I try to find one of my class textbooks to read but someone else is using it. I spend most of the hour wasting time on Pinterest and trying to find a recipe to make on my assigned cooking night. I tentatively choose sweet potato pancakes, potato hash and turkey bacon.

1:17 pm
In seminar for Financial Markets and Institutions, we are told to split into groups to answer the assigned questions. I choose to be partners with the young man who won the stock market game we played in class last week, hoping he would know the answers. He ends up knowing about the same amount as me, a.k.a barely anything, but we muddle along and have a relatively good time doing so.

3:33 pm
"If you can find the graphs somewhere on the internet for me to paste in the Powerpoint, well, that would be brilliant." This is the first time I have heard a British person actually use the term "brilliant" in conversation...outside of Doctor Who that is. Perhaps it is because it is a foreign usage, but "brilliant" sounds much better to me than simply "amazing" or "wonderful."

4:07 pm
I board the bus to get back to main campus and my dorm, choosing to sit in one of the raised seats on the bottom level. Sitting higher than everyone else is fun and appeals to my inner child.

4:13 pm
I pull out my iPod and find my place in my Phantom of the Opera audiobook. An extremely attractive boy with golden hair and a bit of scruffy facial hair sits down next to me, listening to his iPod. I surreptitiously glance at him from the corner of my eye for the rest of ride.

4:25 pm
The air in the bus is stifling. People are packed together, body heat fogging up the windows so no one can tell when we have reached their stops. In my headphones, the managers of the Opera Populaire keeping nattering on about safety pinning a letter to a pocket's interior so the Opera Ghost can not steal it. I am relieved when the chapter changes to more the more engaging topic of Christine Daae's disappearance from stage during the middle of a performance.

4:34 pm
The bus reaches my destination and I have to ask the man sitting next to me to move so that I can get off (he replaced the cute guy when he got off several stops earlier). Of course, it is raining outside so I grapple with the side pocket of my backpack for my umbrella. One of the umbrella's metal rods are broken and keeps poking me in the head. I cross the main thouroughfare onto the back street that leads to the path to the dorm. Several cars speed past on the tiny road and I am determined not to be splashed when they go through the accumulated puddles.

4:41 pm
I have finally reached Flat K1, signaling the end of my academic day. All I want is a hot tea and a snack before I have to do more schoolwork.