The Great Mysteries of Registration

It’s time to talk about school. Being in a foreign country with more purpose than just flitting about is a relatively new concept for me. Sure I was “researching” in Ireland…but let’s be serious. It’s very strange to think of this experience as a “semester” of “college.”

The campus, for example, feels much more like a tropical safari than a college campus. I have yet to see a foos ball table or a skate board. I have, however, seen a pack of monkeys and hundreds of acres of undeveloped nature. The university is actually several miles outside the city and it really does look like a huge nature park here--that is the only way I can think to describe it. All of the buildings are really far apart from each other and between each building is expansive wilderness with huge trees that obscure any glimpse of civilization. Add to that the wild animals, the unpaved roads, and the harsh sunlight, and you’ve got yourself quite an adventure for getting around. The international dorm is about a 30-45 minute walk from the rest of campus, so out here it feels even more isolated. They gave us bicycles today, so we’ll be able to get around at least a little more efficiently.

Another unusual aspect of campus is all of the buildings under construction. The construction itself doesn’t seem that unusual, but in India construction workers live at the construction sites with their entire families in temporary shanty towns. One of these shanty towns is directly behind our dorm, so as we sit listening to our Ipods in air-conditioned rooms we look out of our windows at barefoot children running in and out of tents and women carrying huge baskets of food and water to and from the work sites on their heads. All of us in the program were a little unsettled by the shanty towns at first, but after several long discussions amongst ourselves, someone brought up the point that we are really imposing our American perspectives onto this community. Who is to say that our affluent lifestyles are the one and only way to live? Our lifestyle might be just as foreign to them as theirs is to us. I think as a group we are still very uncomfortable with the glaring cultural juxtaposition that looks us in the face every day, but it is certainly humbling and thought-provoking. I think we’re going to learn a lot just by looking out the windows.

Look at me…one week in India and I’m already throwing around phrases like “cultural juxtaposition.” I guess I should try to keep the philosophizing to a minimum.

Today was theoretically the first day of classes. It was indeed a culture-clashtastic day. We American students get stressed out about registering for classes, making tightly fitting schedules by reading detailed course descriptions and emailing professors. When it is time for classes to start we expect to have the name of a building and a room number and a professor’s name. Then when we arrive at the class we expect the professor to be there syllabus in-hand ready to read off a roll-call. They do all of that a little differently in India. We got a brief book of brief course descriptions but not all of the classes that were described were actually being offered. Some, but not all of the classes had professors listed. Most of the classes are offered at the same time every day, but some are offered at a different time every day. None of the classes had rooms or even buildings listed. When we asked how we would find our classes the answer was “go to the department office and ask what room the class is in,” which wouldn’t be so hard if we knew where the departments were, or if our campus map was legible, or if there were actually people working in the department offices. I spent the larger part of the morning wandering the (massive, hot) campus and did not successfully find a single class. I was frustrated by this at first, but then I heard that most classes didn’t even meet today. Most of the students who don’t live in Andhra Pradesh (this state) are staying home until the 19^th or so because there is some festival happening. It doesn’t really seem like it’s such a big deal to miss the first few weeks of classes…especially considering most of the professors won’t be here for it. All of the American students are panicking from the disorganization of it all, but the Indian students seem pretty at ease with the situation, so I guess this is just another time we need to adapt to the ways of the culture.