Yesterday I started my first day of classes. SOAS is split up between two campuses, Vernon Square and Russell Square; the former being about 2 minutes away from my residence hall and the latter being about 20 minutes away. My first class, Society and Culture in 20th Century Africa, was scheduled to be at 11:00am at the Vernon Square campus which was exciting since I got to wake up pretty late. Anyway, I got there on time and I find that me and three other Americans are sitting in the class for about 15 minutes and no one else has shown up. We finally asked a security guard if this is the right room and it turns out it wasn’t because the registrar triple booked that room and did not update the website. Great. We then went to the “right” room to find out that another class was in there. Even greater. Finally, we see a sign that says lecture was cancelled for the week and that lectures would take place in the tutorials (American equivalent of discussion sections). I guess I was happy that my first class was cancelled and that thankfully I wasn’t at the Russell Square campus which would have been pretty aggravating.
My second class, The Making of the Modern Middle East, was at 2:00pm in the Russell Square campus. I left at about 1:40 assuming I’d be able to navigate my way and get there on time. Wrong. I got there at about 2:20pm because the map I had was pretty blurry; so blurry that I read “Gulliford Street” as “Ouiliford Street” and kept walking until I was a little too south off campus. Thankfully I realized that and walked back up and found the main campus. Different things I noticed about the street system in London (or at least in my area of central London, Islington and Bloomsbury) a) There are no street signs. All the street signs are on buildings which is a little awkward and definitely not too helpful. b) There isn’t a clear system of streets and avenues (aka a grid system) like north of 14th street in Manhattan. London as a whole seems like south of 14th street, which can get a little annoying. c) I haven’t seen any trash cans on street corners. What’s more interesting is that there is no litter…I’m going to make a hasty correlation and assume Londoners don’t eat as they walk. I mean what else can explain no trash cans and no litter?
Enough of my ranting…back to my classes. The Making of the Modern Middle East is very interesting and starts off where I’m most familiar with (end of WWI) which is great since I’m not too familiar with the Middle East after the World Wars (didn’t pay too much attention in class last semester). Hopefully it’ll go through all of the 20th century and into the 21st, which I’m definitely looking forward too. I’m not too clear about the scope of most of my classes because I’m not technically registered yet so I’m not receiving the emails, syllabi, and handouts online. I should start receiving everything next week so I’ll be in the loop by then. The next class I had was Globilisation and Global Governance (I have to get used to the British spelling) at 3:00pm. Most of my lectures are one hour a week with a corresponding one hour tutorial which is great because I have a lot of free time now…free time that I should be using to read though :/ The Globalisation class is also really awesome especially since it goes back to my interest in International Relations and this class is pure IR.
My classes at Russell Square were over by 4:00pm and now I had to run back to catch the tutorial for my cancelled lecture. I took the tube home and got back pretty quickly and ran to Vernon Square to realize that there was no tutorial in that room. I think this is a sign that I should not take this class. I was pretty peeved at this point and went back to my flat and checked the timetable to see that they just changed the tutorial times and that there was no tutorial at 5:00pm. It’s pretty annoying but I really have no control over this since I’m technically not registered hence not on the email list hence not able to get information like this in a timely manner. Oh well.
This morning at 11am I had Politics of Development which I really liked. It was in the Russell Square campus and a friend and I walked (in the snow!) and made it in about 25 min, just in time for class. This lecture is two hours long but the material is very fascinating since its economics from a political perspective. I’m going to try out another class tomorrow, and I have a bunch of tutorials to go to tomorrow night. Overall, I really like the three classes I went to but I’m not too excited about the work. I have two 12 page papers due for two of my classes and one 12 page paper and a final exam for another class. Hopefully I’ll manage my time better this semester and not end up trying to do all of them a week before the deadline.
That’s all I’ve got regarding my classes and I’ll update you once I have my final schedule. In the meantime, please keep Haiti in your hearts and prayers after the devastating 7.0 earthquake. Donate to UNICEF here https://secure.unicefusa.org/site/Donation2?df_id=6680&6680.donation=form1 or CARE here https://secure.unicefusa.org/site/Donation2?df_id=6680&6680.donation=form1
