The first week of classes has finished and I have reached the conclusion that I will have to make a handful of mental adjustments to align myself with this academic schedule rather than the one I am accustomed to at home.

At Dickinson, the average student takes four classes each semester with each class meeting two to three times a week for either 50 minutes or an hour and 15 minutes. At UEA, I learned this week that third-year English literature students are expected to take two modules total for the duration of the semester, meeting either once or twice a week for a total of three hours in the classroom.

As a third-year English student, I am currently enrolled in two 600 level modules that meet once a week for three hours each. The Dickinson humanities course accompanying the abroad program is only two hours. Although this span of time does not sound unreasonable while talking or thinking about it, after around an hour of sitting in classes I mentally begin preparing myself to leave. It has come as a bit of a shock each time I realize that I still have two full hours of class left.

The way the first classes were conducted also surprised me. It was logical that they would not follow the traditional Dickinson approach of introductions and going over the syllabus with little else, but I certainly was not expecting to jump into  analyzing quotations by Jacques Derrida so quickly.

In my literature and deconstruction course, we did just that. It was a very brief introduction to the class, a slightly longer introduction of ourselves to the other classmates and then nearly instant analysis. We spent one full hour studying two sentences, watched a video of Derrida avoiding answering an interviewer’s questions and then followed that with analysis of another two-or three-sentence quotation. Even in the first meeting session, class was intense.

Since classes only meet once a week, the homework between classes is extensive. For my one class, we were assigned a total of five readings with two pieces to edit, and for the other class, we were assigned five much denser readings.

Having a full week to prepare all of these readings for a class sounds manageable, but it brings into question how in depth we are  expected to prepare. How many times should I read the readings? When should I begin doing the readings? How do I know I’m going to remember what I’ve read if I try to be efficient and start a few hours after class ends?

Adjusting to academic life here will be a challenge after becoming very used to the pace of learning at Dickinson, but the professors have all made it very clear that they want nothing more than to help their students.