The Egyptian University

I'm fresh out of my first class at Alexandria University and I am itching to write about it.

Firstly, for all my friends at Maryland who sometimes get frustrated and frenzied when class registration comes along, who think Testudo can sometimes be disorganized and who wish the Maryland mail system was better, take heed. You don't even know what a jewel you have!

The Egyptian school system is COMPLETELY different than ours. Beginning at the end of sophomore year of high school, students are asked to pretty much chose what they want to be when they grow up. They chose a track- either science, premed, humanities, etc. and they start learning their specialties junior year. Come graduation, every Egyptian senior takes a test and what they get on this test determines the rest of their lives. Those who score highest enter the most elite and well respected fields- medicine and engineering. Business and science are somewhere in the middle with humanities and law at the bottom. If you wake up late the day of the test, wasn't feeling at the top of your game, or, like me, aren't a good test taker, too bad. What you get is what you get. No redos.

Once they enter college, the people in the same year in the same department take all of the same classes. It is all predetermined an prescribed. They take several more subjects than us per semester, and all of them know each other from year one until graduation.

Now, onto class selection:
If you are a foreigner, like me, just trying to take a class, there is no handy website to go to or even course manuel to peruse. Instead, you have to walk from department to department to look at a hand written schedule with class times and rooms. Unfortunately, these papers are usually posted about 100 feet high on the wall so little people like me struggle. But I guess that's why we have big and tall friends!
Anyway, after running around the college, talking to about 4000 different people to make sure that the class you have chosen is actually available and meeting at the prescribed times, it is time to brave up and head to class!
I chose a class in the sociology department called "Elm Igtimaa Al Reef" or "The Sociology of the Countryside/ Rural Sociology."
The schedule told me that the class meets on Sundays from 12-2 and 6-8 (there are 2 different teachers and it is very common for the class to be split up in such a way).
So 12 o'clock comes around and I head to class. Top floor of the building. All the way up those stairs in the heat. Only to find out that they changed rooms. So a hikin' I go. After searching about 3 different floors, I finally find the class in a completely different building than the one originally written. I walk into a room full of Egyptians, and the coordinator Heba, decides to demand the attention of the class, point out that I'm an American taking this class, and please be nice to me and watch out for me (thanks, Mom!) So about 200 people are looking at me at once. WOO!
Anyway, I take my seat next to my new friend, Wahaa, and class begins.
I have to say, I understand my Arab teachers at home much better now. The professor enters the room, sits at a desk, and lectures for the next x amount of time. Microphone in one hand, he uses his other hand to emphasize each of his points. He follows his tangents as he likes, and talks until he runs out of things to say. Students sit and take notes.
Needless to say, I understood about 10% of what was going on. Whether due to my poor Arabic or to the microphone's distortion of his voice, it was quite difficult.
I left class at 1:15 (1:15 is the new 2:00), a little dejected, I admit, but ready for the next class. However, to my surprise, I find out that the class starts at 4:30 not 6. And when I walked into the room at 4:20, I found out that the class starts at 4, not 4:30. This time we had a woman teacher and she had a little different teaching style. She basically read her notes slowly so that students would take notes. And I'm telling you, it was like watching people watch television. When she read notes, that was when the show was on. Every student in the room put his head down and diligently wrote every word. The minute the professor stopped reading and started her own explanation, it was as if the commercials came on and the chatter started up. I found this class much easier to understand.

Finally (as if this entire experience could get anymore Egyptian) our program assigns us an academic partner from our class to help us through it for obvious reasons. I now (literally) have 8 academic partners. First, there's Wahaa and her friend Asmaa who I sat with during the first class (we doodled together and made bored faces), then there's Sarah, my official language partner and her 3 friends who surrounded me enthusiastically after the second class and offered to help me with "eih haga" (anything). Then, the sociology department assigned me Hoda. Hoda took me by the arm and showed me around the university, explained everything that needed explaining to me, and even walked me to the tram when I left. Hoda also assigned me Ahmed, a 4th year student who promised to mess any dude up that looks at me the wrong way. They couldn't have been more friendly and more wonderful or more helpful.

Egypt!!

ps- how do you like the new look?