Considering I'm nearly done with my second week of classes, I figured I should probably actually update my blog! I'm really enjoying all of the classes I'm in at York, although it's a bit of an adjustment from the American university system.
Mondays I have LFA(Langauges for All) Arabic Level 1. It's at 6:15 pm, which is a little odd, but I really am enjoying the seminar! I'm a bit ahead of the material they're going over at present, but it's nice to have a refresher on some of the vocab and grammar I learned over the last two semesters at home. It's good to keep my language skills in practice in case I want to continue with Middle Eastern studies and Arabic (one of my thousands of grad school options). And my tutor is quite an interesting person. He's from Iraq and lived in Damascus for a bit and now he's teaching Arabic in England. He also tries to bring in some aspect of Middle Eastern culture in each lesson, so the first week we looked at Arabic calligraphy and art (my favourite ever, thank you Islamic Art haha), and this week we looked at typical Middle Eastern dishes (I recognized/had eaten most of them at some point in my life haha. Oh goodness, I miss kanafeh!!) Next week we're going to learn some dialogue for ordering food and shopping for groceries, I could have used those last summer!
Tuesdays I have a history seminar on Childhood and Adolescence c.1300-1600. I really, really love this seminar! The subject matter is a great combination of women's studies and medieval history, and I really enjoy all the readings I have to do each week. Our tutor is P.J.P. Goldberg, who has written and edited a billion books and articles on medieval history, so it's really exciting to have someone who knows so much about the field as my instructor! He's a very typical medievalist historian, who is a bit in his own world but knows so much on the period, it's amazing. I also think there's a really good group of people in the seminar so we have good discussions every week as well. This week I had a group presentation on "the unfortunate and accident-prone children" in medieval sources, which went quite well! Discussing medieval history in a medieval building (King's Manor) is also exciting for me, since there aren't any buildings in America (especially Wooster) that old haha.
Seminars are set up very similarly to Wooster classes (20 or fewer students sat around a table with a professor, primarily discussion based, etc.), but they only meet once a week for 2 hours, and you have to choose the readings for yourself from an extensive reading list. So it's nice in that you have some freedom to decide what you think is most interesting and what you want to explore, but you also have a lot more responsibility to develop your own reading schedule and time management, and make sure you take substantial notes to prepare for the discussion. It's a bit of an adjustment from having 2 or so reading assignments on the syllabus for each class meeting every other day of the week! (My British classmates said they thought they would prefer that setup when I was talking with some of them after class haha). So it's a lot less structured here in terms of contact hours and reading assignments, and I have tons of free time that I have to balance out for myself between work and socialising.
Wednesday mornings I have my one and only lecture, Thinking Through History. It's at 9:15, which is the earliest time slot for classes in York (all my friends with 8 am's are crying right now, I'm sure; my flatmates were appalled at the idea of an 8 am class haha). I don't know why it feels so early, but it does! There are about 200 people in the lecture, the largest class I've ever been in, but it really doesn't make much difference since you come in, sit down, take notes, and leave; it's not like 200 people are trying to have a discussion in a seminar. I think it's an interesting approach to teaching historical theory, after taking both history and archaeology method and theory courses in America. Each week we tackle a large theme in historical research and the issues and debates around it; last week was "living and dying" (demographic history, which I detest), this week was "time and space," aka learning about the Annales School of thought which is my favourite, so I quite enjoyed the lecture today!
Fridays I have Archaeology Practical Skills: Artefact Analysis, also in King's Manor. I think this is my favourite class I'm taking, and now I'm in trouble because I've fallen back in love with archaeology! (I have too many interests, it's a problem). A practical is kind of a combination between a seminar and a lab from what I can tell. There are about 15 people in the class, and each week we're going over different classes of archaeological artefacts (stone, bone, ceramics, metal, coins, etc. as well as how to write up object reports), and we get to interact with real artefacts and reports from the York area. We're going to be working with the Yorkshire Museum (which is right behind King's Manor) and their collections. Our group project in the summer term will be identifying a collection of artefacts from their collections and writing up a report, which is going to be really awesome. So pretty much, best class ever and I'm so happy that my supervisors got me into the module :-)
Mondays I have LFA(Langauges for All) Arabic Level 1. It's at 6:15 pm, which is a little odd, but I really am enjoying the seminar! I'm a bit ahead of the material they're going over at present, but it's nice to have a refresher on some of the vocab and grammar I learned over the last two semesters at home. It's good to keep my language skills in practice in case I want to continue with Middle Eastern studies and Arabic (one of my thousands of grad school options). And my tutor is quite an interesting person. He's from Iraq and lived in Damascus for a bit and now he's teaching Arabic in England. He also tries to bring in some aspect of Middle Eastern culture in each lesson, so the first week we looked at Arabic calligraphy and art (my favourite ever, thank you Islamic Art haha), and this week we looked at typical Middle Eastern dishes (I recognized/had eaten most of them at some point in my life haha. Oh goodness, I miss kanafeh!!) Next week we're going to learn some dialogue for ordering food and shopping for groceries, I could have used those last summer!
Tuesdays I have a history seminar on Childhood and Adolescence c.1300-1600. I really, really love this seminar! The subject matter is a great combination of women's studies and medieval history, and I really enjoy all the readings I have to do each week. Our tutor is P.J.P. Goldberg, who has written and edited a billion books and articles on medieval history, so it's really exciting to have someone who knows so much about the field as my instructor! He's a very typical medievalist historian, who is a bit in his own world but knows so much on the period, it's amazing. I also think there's a really good group of people in the seminar so we have good discussions every week as well. This week I had a group presentation on "the unfortunate and accident-prone children" in medieval sources, which went quite well! Discussing medieval history in a medieval building (King's Manor) is also exciting for me, since there aren't any buildings in America (especially Wooster) that old haha.
Seminars are set up very similarly to Wooster classes (20 or fewer students sat around a table with a professor, primarily discussion based, etc.), but they only meet once a week for 2 hours, and you have to choose the readings for yourself from an extensive reading list. So it's nice in that you have some freedom to decide what you think is most interesting and what you want to explore, but you also have a lot more responsibility to develop your own reading schedule and time management, and make sure you take substantial notes to prepare for the discussion. It's a bit of an adjustment from having 2 or so reading assignments on the syllabus for each class meeting every other day of the week! (My British classmates said they thought they would prefer that setup when I was talking with some of them after class haha). So it's a lot less structured here in terms of contact hours and reading assignments, and I have tons of free time that I have to balance out for myself between work and socialising.
Wednesday mornings I have my one and only lecture, Thinking Through History. It's at 9:15, which is the earliest time slot for classes in York (all my friends with 8 am's are crying right now, I'm sure; my flatmates were appalled at the idea of an 8 am class haha). I don't know why it feels so early, but it does! There are about 200 people in the lecture, the largest class I've ever been in, but it really doesn't make much difference since you come in, sit down, take notes, and leave; it's not like 200 people are trying to have a discussion in a seminar. I think it's an interesting approach to teaching historical theory, after taking both history and archaeology method and theory courses in America. Each week we tackle a large theme in historical research and the issues and debates around it; last week was "living and dying" (demographic history, which I detest), this week was "time and space," aka learning about the Annales School of thought which is my favourite, so I quite enjoyed the lecture today!
Fridays I have Archaeology Practical Skills: Artefact Analysis, also in King's Manor. I think this is my favourite class I'm taking, and now I'm in trouble because I've fallen back in love with archaeology! (I have too many interests, it's a problem). A practical is kind of a combination between a seminar and a lab from what I can tell. There are about 15 people in the class, and each week we're going over different classes of archaeological artefacts (stone, bone, ceramics, metal, coins, etc. as well as how to write up object reports), and we get to interact with real artefacts and reports from the York area. We're going to be working with the Yorkshire Museum (which is right behind King's Manor) and their collections. Our group project in the summer term will be identifying a collection of artefacts from their collections and writing up a report, which is going to be really awesome. So pretty much, best class ever and I'm so happy that my supervisors got me into the module :-)
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