A few weeks of classes have gone by here, and I think I’ve got the hang of this. The first difference that was immediately noticeable between the system here at SBU and what I’m used to was the scheduling of classes. At home, I usually have any particular class once a week, with a lecture and a tutorial back to back on the same day, if I’m lucky. With the classes I’m taking here, everything is done through lectures only, and I have the same class twice each week. My Monday and Wednesday schedule are the same, and my Tuesday and Thursday schedule are the same, and I got lucky and have Fridays off (hooray!).

Over my first couple of days of classes, I realized that that meant I had to get some time management going fairly quickly – most of my professors really like giving homework. And any homework I get on a Monday or a Tuesday usually has to be done before the next time the class meets, two days later. The first week was pretty full-on, because every teacher I had assigned homework each class, but the workload has evened out a little. For now. Midterms are just around the corner and some major papers are starting to be talked about.

The format of the way classes are taught also took some getting used to. I understand now why class sizes are capped – the classes I have that only have about 30 or 40 students in them involve a lot of interactivity, which the smaller class size allows. It’s kind of like being in a combination of a lecture and a tute. There’s discussion happening throughout the lecture, and students are expected to participate and ask and answer questions during the lecture.

And another thing from the “It’s not wrong, it’s different” file – generally in schools in the US, assignment lengths are measured in page count, not word count. I still haven’t broken myself of the habit of constantly checking the word count while I’m writing!

Well, that’s enough of that – what have I been doing for fun?

I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that I’m only a couple of hours away from New York City. Arriving there is something that should be associated with a big production – a long plane ride, and a suitcase. Not just sitting on a train for a while to find myself on the corner of 34^th and 8^th. The sense of “Oh my God, I’m here!” has yet to wear off each time I’ve gone to the City while at SBU. I’ve had the chance to see one of my favourite bands that I had never seen live before, so that was amazing. I was also able to go to a taping of The Colbert Report, which was also amazing (and, of course, completely relevant to my media studies major, and therefore extremely educational. Seriously!).

I’ve also taken the ferry across the Long Island Sound to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where I saw the travelling PostSecret exhibit while it was at the Housatonic Art Museum. I’ve read the PostSecret blog for years so that was really cool to see, and I’m glad it was so close by and I got the chance to see it. I’ve also been to Red Bank, New Jersey. Possibly not a destination city you’ve ever heard of. But if you’re a fan of writer/director Kevin Smith, you might know that it’s the center of the View Askewniverse. I am a Kevin Smith fan, and I was in Red Bank to go to a live recording of SModcast, the podcast he does with producer Scott Mosier, and a signing of the newly-released SModcast book. To say I geeked out is probably an understatement. It was kind of an insanely long train trip (an hour and fifty minutes from Stony Brook to New York City, and then another hour and a half or so from New York to Red Bank), but one of those truly once-in-a-lifetime things. So it isn’t just New York City that has all the fun stuff to do – I’m finding the tri-state area as a whole has plenty of awesome and rare opportunities going on.

Well, the leaves are starting to turn just a little bit, the ice rink at Rockefeller Center has opened, and I have my American History midterm next week. Time is going by far too quickly, but I’m trying to make the most of it!