First Day of classes

Monday Feb 16^th…

We woke up early for our first day of school. You know how new semesters start, you have to get up early to shower and be there early and look like you are awake, alert and ready to learn. Yes that was Caitlin and me Monday morning. We did this knowing it would not last because no matter the ambitions for the new semester I always fall into the same routine…sleep-in, shower the night before, don’t shower, walk in late, sit in the back, possibly fall asleep half way through class…you know all of the normal college student things J

Anyway our first class was at 8AM – Modeling Analysis and Controls of Dynamics, it sounds just about as fun as it actually is…not at all! So we walk into class as a group of about 15 Americans. Caitlin and I were the only responsible ones to find out where the class was so all of the guys followed us. We walk in and the only two people in the room were the professor and one other kid. We later come to find out that this Chinese student is only there because he failed the class last semester, and we make up the rest of the class. This was a major let down. We wanted to have some interaction with the Chinese students. I don’t want to ruin the anticipation that you all have hearing about the rest of my Monday but our other classes are filled with Chinese students…so for this class it may actually work to our advantage. The Chinese people are super smart in controls…this way they can’t kill the curve. 

The classroom…Is freezing!!! All of those stories you hear about the Chinese children suffering in cold classrooms, and not being able to concentrate...I am now that child. L Classes are an hour and 40 minutes. Well they are more like an hour and a half because there is a 10-minute break half way through. The whole campus moves on a bell system. During the class the halftime bell rang and the professor just stopped talking, and he was like okay we will take break now, and we were all like just keep going and he wouldn’t. We needed to have that break. It was bizarre.

The professor spoke English well, or at least well enough that we could understand. It was no different than a Chinese professor that I would have at Purdue, so the sad truth is that I am already use to it because it is just like at home.

It seems like the classes are going to be a lot more straightforward than they are at Purdue. This is what happens at Purdue…you are taught something in lecture, your homework is on something different, the quizzes you have are on something completely different from both the lecture and the homework, and then when you think there is no other variation, you take the exam. The exams have nothing to do with anything that you have learned through lecture, the homework, or the quizzes…so no matter what you do, you do not and will not know the information.  But here at SJTU, so far at least, the homework ends up being related to the lecture J

After class I had a little breakfast snack of sorts. Some sort of fried something…the Chinese sure do love their pan-fried dumpling type foods. After that Kyle and I went on a run. I showered and hung out for a while before it was time to eat lunch. There was a group of us that went to grab lunch.

After lunch we went to our second class of the day. Introduction to engineering materials. In class we were the minority, and wow did we get some stares when we walked into that room! I think they were more stares of excitement J

This professor was harder to understand but her slides were helpful and she would say things verbatim from the book, so it really is not a problem.  During our halftime break I met the students sitting behind us. Very nice people filled with excitement to have American friends. As most encounters go, we exchanged our contact information.

After class we came back to the room for a while. Abhinav was helping me set up a program on the computer, the installation actually ended up being unsuccessful L but we will figure it out. After killing sometime in the room and starting a movie, we went to a later dinner.

On the way back from dinner we met another exchange student from Texas. Her name is Yuning and she goes to University of Texas.  She was asking us where the dinning hall was so we ended up just going back to sit with her even though we were just there.  Turns out Yuning lives just a couple doors down from us. So it is nice to now know another girl on our floor J

We came back and finished the movie. Then I got on my computer and I read about the bomb threat in the Mechanical Engineering building at Purdue. Thank God there wasn’t a bomb in the end but kind of scary to think that our school had a bomb threat. Don’t worry everything is okay!!

Overall it was a great first day of class. I now know that I must layer up before class otherwise I will never make it until Spring.