Wednesday, July 21, 2010

First Week of Classes at Univ of Auckland

New Zealand Travel Diary, Entry #5

The moment I walked in my Anthropology Class my professor looked at me and said, 
Oh my God, you look like Jesus!
I looked at her and said, "Oh really?" I said to myself, "Is that a good thing or bad thing?" Guess what course? "Worldview and Religion". 

Of course this was not the first time someone had said so. My unshaven beard and disheveled long hair has gotten me a lot of comments, some of which I don't know how to interpret. After the class, I came back to my apartment and looked at the mirror trying to decide if it was time to shave. After a quick debate, my laziness scored a victory(as it usually does) and I decided I was not in a shaving mood.

And in my Thermodynamics course, the professor started out by saying, 
19 years before when I took this Thermodynamics course at Cambridge, I failed it. So when I was asked to teach this course, I said, "Oh my God." I had to learn everything again.
From listening to his three lectures so far, I feel he has not learnt it quite yet. He does a terrible job at explaining concepts. He makes fun of himself several times in the class and that's the only time people are not yawning or leaving their seats for the door. He seems like a nice guy and a nice human being but he struggles with delivering clearly what he wants to say.

My Control Systems professor seems to be quite good. Looking at the handouts and future course materials that contain plenty of graphs, it seemed to me those would be appropriate for learning in labs. We learn most of those concepts involving graphs in labs but here they have labs only three times a semester for this course which is why I guess this difference. 

Anyway, I don't want to be super-judgemental about everything here. I am quite impressed with their state of technology in classrooms. Every classroom has multiple projectors and screens along with laser pointers and magnifier for hard copies too. Not all of our classes have these back at Trinity University. But the size of student body is huge here and since I am taking four classes in four different departments (Electrical Engr, Chemical Engr, Anthropology and Politics), there is not a single person with whom I have more than one class.

Read Entry #4 of New Zealand Travel Diary Series here.
Read Entry #3 of New Zealand Travel Diary Series here.
Read Entry #2 of New Zealand Travel Diary Series here.
Read Entry #1 of New Zealand Travel Diary Series here

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