The Course Day!
Well! Today is our first lecture day! We will be attending lectures, seminars, and other forms of college teaching. It is really exciting because I have never seen or attended something like this. Not even a workshop. I myself enrolled in History, the course on British Social History.
My class took place in the auditorium, or theater, and was taught by a historian called Mr. Watts. He went to Trinity College and lives abroad but came back to Cambridge to teach. The class itself was surprising. There were only 7 people that enrolled in the course. 6 girls and me, the only male student. And the auditorium was a room meant to hold over twenty times that. So the auditorium was mostly empty and quiet. We spent the first session talking about the different ways of studying history and some Victorian history.
History wasn’t quite as popular as some other courses like business or international politics, but to each his own (or her own. Let’s not be sexist). I learned quite a lot during the morning session, especially a lot of history jargon like histograms and teleological history.
After the first session, there was lunch and a meeting called by the counselor. The previous night some of the delegates who were roaming around outside at midnight, disturbing the other people staying at the place who then made a phone call to the counselor in London, having a day off.
Following this meeting, there was the second session. Sort of like the first session with a lot of History crammed onto my notepad and computer screen. Last night I slept too late and by 3:00 I was really tired. I mean really tired. Courtesy of the people hanging out outside of my window the counselor talked about.
After that was dinner and then a workshop. The workshop was based on three things: things that characterize a leader, a team player, and how can we stop global warming. Quite an abrupt change of topics, but it was fun. We had to split into groups that were geographically based, or going with the groups with the same nationality as you or near me. I personally, a guy from the Dominican Republic, got paired with an Ecuadorian, a Chilean, and a Brazilian. We had to work together to figure out a way to reduce the CO2 footprint of our countries.
Another brilliant night!