2015/09/25

First Day of Classes

School has started yesterday. Somehow, it's a bit confusing to say school because that makes me think of my elementary or high school, but not of university courses. However, it's used here and the rooms we've got lectures in look sometimes a bit like a class room as well ;-)

 Class/Lecture room for one of my courses.

There are indeed huge lecture halls for undergraduate courses which are sometimes taught to up to 900 persons. One of my classes is considered as "large" because 25 persons attend it :-)

Some rooms have "normal" chairs and desks, but in quite a few the table you write on is directly connected to the chair. As a consequence, you can't go to a place and sit down on the left or on the right chair, you have to choose for example the any of the chairs to the left, because the other ones are blocked by the chair's connection to the table.

I tried repeatedly to get checkered (kariertes) paper for normal class room use (that is very common in Germany), and I was not successful in three out of three stores. Finally, I found out, that people even in physical sciences either use plain or lined paper... anything else does actually not exist. (Thus, I'll adapt to the culture and give up my climate-saving, checkered, brown recycling paper .)