A Different Kind of Shopping

There are many differences between the British education system and the Canadian one. Different school year, marking is different even different terminology. But the best difference is the idea of shopping for classes. It was first introduced to me in Michelmas term (what they call the time from October to December). It's based on the idea that you should go to a class before you decide to invest 10 weeks, countless hours of reading and work and pounds to excelling in it. Teachers are fully aware of it too. The first class acts as their pitch to students: here's why you should take my class and why I'm awesome.

I have to say that I think it's a great concept. It is kind of ridiculous to choose a course based only on its title and professor. That's why here they make as much available as possible--timetables, class syllabus, due dates, reading lists, etc—all with the hope that it will help you make your decision. This concept benefits students to: if your students want to be there, they’ll try harder, do well and make for a more interesting seminar.

But sometimes the system breaks down. Case in point, last semester. I had to choose three classes. I ended up choosing "Presidents, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy," "Political Economy of South East Europe" and "From Nationalism to Fascism: Europe, 1880s-1939." Now according to the first class, "Presidents and Public Opinion" should have been the worst. I had already studied American history and I actually fell asleep during the introductory class. But this was not the case. This class is by far, no contest, hands down, my favourite class. The classes are brillantly structured and the professor is very engaging. Ironically, the class with the best introduction class—From Nationalism to Fascism—turned out to be the worst. The class is disorganized, the teacher is unhelpful and the concepts are sometimes too abstract for me to care about.

That’s why this week I’m shopping for another half credit class. I was supposed to take Varieties of Capitalism, but after a horrible experience with Political Economy of Southeast Europe, I’m thinking of moving away from political economy. I’ll let you know what I end up “buying.”

Image: jisc_infonet