Class Culture

    Going to class here isn't too much different than back home. DU's classes are normally 15 to 30 people, and my classes here are about 20 to 30 (Well, around that many show up to class- who knows how many are actually enrolled in the class). Students show up a lot later here, they roll into class 10 to 15 minutes late, and normally class is starting around that time, so it's not a big deal anyway. I have had some teachers at DU that will mark you as absent if you aren't there within the first 10 minutes. My professor for my music class is always late, and normally at DU, if a professor is more than 5 or 10 minutes late to class, the students take that as an excuse to leave and call the class canceled. On the day of my midterm in History, about twice the amount of students showed up to class than on regular days . That's because a lot of the students don't go to class, and they do all the reading right before the test. I've experienced this in Colorado too, though. If the professor puts the PowerPoints on line, a lot of students don't feel the need to go to class. I don't think we are graded on attendance either because I've only seen her take attendance on the days we have a test or homework due, and these are the days everyone comes to class anyway.
    If a professor here cancels class, they normally try to make it up by adding another day of class or an hour to another class period. I'm experiencing this with my Spanish class. We missed a bunch of days in the very beginning for Zonda wind and personal matters of the professor, and we are still making those days up by adding an hour to each class period for a month. I think this is unfair because it's after we made our schedules for other classes.
    Students don't normally bring food and drinks into class here. My professor has mentioned it many times in class because Doug keeps trying to eat in class and our professor reminds him that people don't do that here.
    I'd say that the participation level of classes is about the same as at home. Students seem tired and kind of lazy, just listening to the lecture, but there are a few kids who ask a bunch of questions all the time.
    I've heard a lot of phones go off in class, much more than normally at home. They don't answer, but one goes off every class period or so. Nobody has their phones out texting because texting and data are expensive here, which is a nice change from the US where everybody has their phone out during class.
    Professors assign "trabajos practicos" here, which are essentially either in class assignments of out of class assignments. For my history class, the dates of these are all listed online, but then we had a surprise one last week that wasn't mentioned at all beforehand. I'm not sure how hard these are graded (and I'm still awaiting grades from the partial exam I took), but these trabajos practicos seem to be busy work that make me feel like I'm in high school. Twice I've had to read a couple pages of a document and summarize it and turn in the summary. Others have been short answer questions to very vague questions. However, no matter how hard the assignment is, it's still difficult for me because it's in another language.
    The system for taking tests is strange here, and I've already talked a little about this, but students take tests a long time after their classes finish. For this semester, the students will be taking tests in late December, even though we finish the class in mid November. This means that the international kids will be taking the test early in November without the local students. The local students also have a week of testing in the middle of the semester to take tests from the last semester. So this week, I didn't have class because the students are taking tests from last semester. Spring break isn't an actual thing here, so instead, IFSA gives us a week off during this testing week. Somehow the schedule got messed up, and we are taking our spring break from IFSA the week after testing week, so we are actually going to miss our classes at Cuyo and Congresso. So essentially I'm skipping an entire week to travel, and I only have 2 classes this week. I should be using these free days productively, but instead I've laid in bed all day; I think I'm turning into a Argentinian. When its cold out, all I want to do is lay in bed.

This is what my notes look like because I fall asleep every two minutes. Class is at 9 am and learning about catholic Kings in Spanish is quite draining!