La Universidad Autonoma de Aguascalientes

This has been a busy week. My usually tranquil classes have all been realizing that perhaps they were a bit too tranquil, and we have pushed forth with great gusto into uncharted territory and unfinished projects.

I realize as the week comes to a close that I will miss my very strange and colorful semester here. Some days were the loneliest in my life and on other days I literally sang on the paths between classes and danced up and down the steps of the library.

This semester I took seven classes, three in civil engineering, three in urbanism, and one in environmental sciences. Each one had a distinctly different professor and classroom dynamic. The form here is to have all of the students of one career in the same “salon” each semester. The groups of thirty or so then have almost every class together for the five years of their undergraduate studies. As you can imagine, that makes them very familiar with each other and each salon has a particular style. Fortunately, I got a very good look at seven different groups of a variety of ages and met a multitude of interesting people. Unfortunately, my unwitting enrollment in seven different groups meant that I remained pretty foreign to all of them and had but a handful of convincing friendships.

Anyway, each of these classes had an absurdly small amount of homework, infrequent exams, a variety of note giving and taking methods, and fairly horrible attendance. There is an attendance policy that parallels the number of classroom hours each week, but the late arrivals, early exits, food and bathroom trips, cell phone calls during class, laptop games, and incessant texting did stress me out for my first month or two. Usually there would be two or three different classes during the week in which there would be either no professor or no other students, usually for reasons unbeknownst to the majority of whoever did attend.

And so you can imagine that the classes were a bit of a jumbled experience all around, but a pleasure. I passed almost all day every day in or between classes (from 7 or 9am until 4 or 7 at night), making lists of new words and writing down everything that I heard and saw. At times I was exhausted, but with a mix of Structural Concrete Design, Urban Sociology, Mechanics of Soils, Environmental Economics, History of Urbanism, Electric and Hydraulic Installations and Environmental Psychology, and Spanish on top of that, I was never bored.

In my first months I found many victims sitting alone and I would sweep in and test out conversations, learning little things about a lot of people. My reputation formed to be and still remains one of amiable attention and horrible Spanish, and it is nice to have many acquaintances around campus with whom I can share a smile, a meal, or ask a chagrin-worthy-obvious question. My rocky start language-wise has made people’s expectations of me almost irritatingly low sometimes, but I know that I deserve it for being a lazy student.

All around it was a lot of fun to have such variety in my classes. I had time in between them in which I could attempt to study or get away with just taking a nap somewhere. Learning was varied too, and the quantity is worthwhile, I think, if the content not absolutely certain.

I have several final projects yet to go and I am very tired, but thankful.