The first few days of papers

I think this semester is going to rock.

I love all my papers [classes].

Monday I had only one paper - Literature and Gender. At least five minutes into the course, I decided it was going to be amazing and I am going to love it. The professor seems wonderful. She's intelligent, and very passionate about the subject; she also just had a book published about modernity and gender in modern novels. Also, here is our reading list for the semester: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, To The North by Elizabeth Bowen, The Hours by Michael Cunningham, and Saturday by Ian McEwan. These are books I've heard are good and have wanted to read (sometime or another), but never got around to doing so. I'm excited that I'll be reading them. I've already started Mrs. Dalloway and the writing is excellent.

Yesterday (Tuesday) I had New Zealand Art from the 1890's - 1970's. The professor seems a little weird, and maybe a tad bit boring, but the subject matter is fascinating, although, unfortunately, we won't be looking very much at Maori art history.

Today was a full day. I had Lit and Gender at 11 again, immediately followed by 2 hours of Irish poetry, then a one hour break, then 2 hours of Religion in Popular Culture. Irish Poetry is very small (about 12 students). It's taught by two professors - one a kiwi, the other from Scotland. The latter had a wonderful accent, but it was a bit difficult to understand sometimes, since the accent was very strong. Religion is very small (8 students), but very fascinating. I'm excited about it. We'll be looking at how different forms of media (movies, television, graphic novels) depict religion and examining how religion may use the media to teach. I just love that it's a religion class that isn't based on Christianity. We'll be looking at several different perspectives, which seems interesting.

I think my favorite thing about all my classes is that they are being taught from a perspective that counters any perspective in which I've been taught before, in the sense that the perspective is completely non-American. I love seeing what it may be like to look at society and the world around us through a non-American perspective. Further, it wll be interesting to look at America from a non-American perspective.

This is so cool.

Teaching in New Zealand universities is structured differently from teaching in America - at least teaching structure I've been accustomed to at Concordia. Once or twice a week - depending on the paper - there is a lecture. Then at a different time during the week, students attend tutorials. This is when students meet to have discussions. Large papers are divided into many small tutorial groups and smaller classes simply meet at a different time to discuss the lecture and reading materials. Also, the tutorial is often led by an upperclassmen or a graduate student knowledgeable in the area. Also, most classes don't have very many assessments for grading - just one or two major essays per semester and a final exam.

In other news, we are having a Thanksgiving dinner at our house, mainly for my kiwi housemate who has never experienced the amazing-ness of a Thanksgiving meal, being from NZ and all. We're having a few other kiwis over and they seem excited about it. It should be fun.

Hopefully we'll do something epic this weekend so I'll have more great pictures to post for you.