Classes

Some of you have asked about my classes and while I've tried to give a reasonable description of each class I thought I'd give the official class explanation here. If you have any remaining questions, you are too interested in my classes.

History of Eastern Europe:
This class covers Austria-Hungary, Poland, and the Ottoman Empire (and touching on Russian and Prussia) from 1740 or so until the beginning of the first World War. The professor is great, and really knows this history well. The only problem is that he turns about 1/4 of the class time over to us who do not know this history well. He's stoked to have us present on articles and discuss them. It's fine, but he gives us a ton of time. Pretty soon I start to feel like I would rather hear from the guy who knows what he's talking about. I think I'm just not much of a discussion guy. Most of the time students don't have a lot to contribute and the professors feel like they're really facilitating a great learning experience when they're actually facilitating an ignorance exchange. That said, I am learning a lot in this class and I like the readings.

Colloquium on Europe and Eurasia:
This is my background class required for everyone in my program. Right now we're doing an intro to Europe and in the coming weeks we'll do an intro to Russia. The class is interesting and I like the other students. The notable thing about this class is the teacher. She's a visiting professor from Italy and she's a crack up. Here are a couple of her gems of wisdom:
-Never trust a Greek as they will agree to anything and then do nothing
-Belgians are ugly and have bad coffee
-Norwegians are bad dressers
-Being married to one person your whole life is boring
I'll keep you updated if there's anything I just don't think you can live without.
The class is pretty good and I feel like I'm getting more confident in class and learning what I should be learning. When we switch to other subjects we'll have different teachers which should be cool.

Current Issues in the European Union:
This is the best class ever. I'm learning so much my brain is exploding. The teacher is a Romanian professor who knows the EU ridiculously well. She seems to know the different treaties by heart and assigns a ton of reading. Her lectures are great and she doesn't let anyone get away with a wrong answer. Here's a sample in class exchange:
Professor: Who can tell me why Britain would agree to French agricultural demands?
Student: (confidently) Because they are a powerful country and they thought they could manipulate... (trails off as professor looks at him disapprovingly)
Professor: No. That is wrong. Anyone else?
I love this class because she lectures non-stop for two hours and I just try to keep up. She assigns a ton of reading but I am learning a lot. She keeps asking if she's making it too hard but I appreciate her assuming we can take a lot and learn it. We finished going through the EU structures and now we're learning about different policy areas. Good times.

French Classes:
I'm also taking two French classes at the Alliance Francaise, a local place where they do all kinds of French language promotion. I have one grammar and conversation class and one class on the EU, but given in French and from a French perspective. What I've learned so far is that I am super rusty at French, my accent is worse than it's ever been (not like it was great to start with), but I can still understand almost everything.

Anyway, that's it for classes. Thanks for asking.