Catch 1000

The Danish university system emphasizes different things than the Canadian one does. I am in five hours a week of classes for what would be twelve hours a week back home. Evaluation is also more lenient. Instead of a midterm/paper, a paper, and a final/paper we only have either a paper or an oral exam. That is it. I will write about fourteen pages this semester.

So I was thinking to myself what is the catch. Well, there is a catch. Reading, lots and lots of reading. I am expected to read 2000 pages in four months — each syllabus prescribes a certain number of pages that must be read for the number of credits given— which is how they balance out the limited amount of class time. It is an adjustment for sure and requires a lot of discipline to get done. For my one class this week I had to read an article and 120 pages of one of the textbooks — that is just one.

It’s not like back home there were no readings, they were often just considered to be optional. The key to being a good student was to figure out which readings needed to be done, and which ones didn’t. Perhaps that is the key here. We will see.

It is also nice to know that we are indeed covering a lot of material, just not in class.