Monday, August 11, 2008

Some rants about Jiaotong Uni...

I learned a lot during my semester at Jiaotong, although I still have a few dislikes:

* There are so many international students at Jiaotong that classes take place both during mornings and afternoons. This is kind of annoying, as most people prefer to go to class in the morning and do something else (like work) in the afternoon. But unless you have a working permit or, if you are a housewife (and have that kind of visa), you can't do anything about this: you cannot change your class and you cannot get away from having afternoon classes. (Morning classes are from 8.30-11.50 and arvo classes run from 13.10-16.30).

* While two of my teachers were great, my reading&writing teacher was a pure nightmare! She was actually a level 5 teacher, so she thought we were slow and dumb, and constantly gave us harder texts to study. This made no sense to me. I barely understood our textbook... why get harder texts when we have only studied for such short time? I tried to tell her but it wasn't in her nature to listen... so the study pace was quite fast! I thought maybe I was just unlucky until I spoke with a friend who did Level 1 at the same university last semester. She had an almost identical experience with a teacher that rushed them through the chapters, leaving little or no room for repetition of the previous chapters... But then again, I guess you can always be unlucky with teachers?

* The amount of international students at Jiaotong almost makes it feel a bit... impersonal.

Except for that I think Jiaotong can be a fun place to study if you are into hanging with fellow laowais and if you like partying.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

feel sorry about the terrible teacher you mentioned. good luck.