Classes, you know, the reason why I am here.

I have had two full weeks of classes already and I think it is time to share a little bit about the aspect that brings me to Rome for four months...

I am taking a Principles of Marketing class, a Principles of Management class, both of which count towards business core, and Intro to Italian Language and Culture, and Art of Rome.

First of all, one of the biggest culture shocks academically is how small the university is and how small all of my classes are. There are about as many people at AUR as there were in my graduating class. There are more people in some lectures at MSU than there are that attend AUR. Ok, I think you've got the picture and I will explain more in regards to how this is so strange in respect to specific classes.

Principles of Management- Frankly, I don't really like this class and I don't like my professor. He is one of those "lets have everything I say be a joke even though no one thinks its funny" because p.s. its not funny at all and you are just wasting time. He spent over the first ten minutes of our last class trying to get us to choose a secretary of the class and then he made a big hoopla, yes hoopla because that is the only word to describe it, about giving the class a gold star for how well we did on our first quiz that we used our notes for. Really, is it that hard to do well on a quiz when you can use your notes? Well, if that's all it takes to impress you you must have had some really bad students in the past. Also, we have groups for the whole semester. We had group homework this weekend and then we will be working on our group project for the entirety of the course and it will be presented during the last week of class. I don't like group work, usually because I find group members to not be as reliable as they should be and to not be as smart as they should be. Further more, weekends are used for traveling or seeing Rome not for working in groups. How in the world are we going to find time to meet. Oh, and as a spoiler for when I talk about marketing, we have groups just like this in there as well. Beyond not liking the group aspect it can only be do-able because it is a small class also because of this we have individual presentations that we have to do and we have to participate in class. I know these things aren't horrible or even "bad" they just aren't things that would be common in a normal management class at a large university consisting of several hundred students per lecture. And all these things would be better if they went along with a class that was a subject matter that I cared to learn about.

Principles of Marketing- Groups again, class participation again. And I forgot to mention that with the whole class participation thing (and the promise of pop quizzes) you actually have to read the book. And that is a lot of reading, 30+ text book pages almost every class. Then, my professor wastes time and makes us behind by talking on and on about certain companies, and if you really know nothing about the company, how are you supposed to participate? My professor seems ok at times but other things she is just really meticulous about things that are ridiculous. We have to e-mail her a schedule of all the dates and times for out group meetings. What good is that information going to do for her? But, likewise with the management groups, I feel as though meeting with each other is going to be a struggle especially having to set up two sets of group meetings with fitting with everyone schedules. That is going to be a nightmare. Oh well. I could complain more about small classes and group work but its really not that bad. But, on the other hand. The marketing material has actually turned out to be rather interesting. Not because I find marketing in general interesting because I don't, and I think the interesting aspects might wear off as we get into more in depth material but I am in Rome and talking about how marketing to different cultures completely changes the way you market things is truly a very interesting approach at looking at different cultures and just the idea of culture in general. More on this later because I could go on and on.

Into to Italian Language and Culture- I am really glad I chose this (ITL 100) over ITL 101 which would have been a more grammar oriented way of learning Italian that is like any elementary language course (and the ITL 101s meet four times a week instead of just two). This class is definitely the most useful because it would be nice to learn some of the language while I am here and we also take the time to look a lot at Italian culture which I think will be quite interesting. There is not much else to say about this because it is just what it sounds like and pretty enjoyable.

Art of Rome- This class will hopefully be amazing. Although it seems as though there are a lot of things standing in the way of its awesomeness. I'm going to quickly go through the down sides and then talk about the good aspects because they are far more interesting. And then I think I will also do a post about the specific class session (oh man that's already 2 more posts I have promised and I have so many more running around in my head, I wish I was better at this "blogging" thing). Downsides- quiz every week, reading every week, 2 papers to write, and my professor is annoyingly particular. First, me and a few other people were late because we were meeting at some random "bar" (that is what they call like snack shop/ cafe places where you can get coffee and gelato and other assortments of things) we were literally 3 minutes late to a 3 hour class and he was like, oh you guys are late, that's half an absence. (And if you get more than one absence you loose like 2% of your grade.) Seriously 3 minutes out of 180. Maybe if we were like 10 minutes late ok. And then we took a quiz. Pretty straightforward on the stuff that we talked about in the first class... except spelling counted and if you didn't spell it correctly then it was wrong. Ok I guess that is alright, but we had to spell isosceles that was not part of the new vocab we used that was one of those stupid words you learned in like 3rd grade when you were learning about triangles that you could never spell but never really cared because it didn't matter. Last time I checked being able to spell isosceles had nothing to do with art history. The last down side that I am going to mention is that I could not care less about describing, analyzing, and interpreting art. I ust don't care. But on the upside. We spend 3 hours every week walking around Rome and seeing the historical things while he tells us about the history. Which was fascinating, until we had to start analyzing Trajan's Column. As I said before I will get into more of the details of what I have already seen in the class and maybe do a quick post every week about it.

So those are my classes, like them or not I have to take them.