Class Updates

The past few weeks I’ve been pretty busy with papers, projects and midterms. The last two weeks in October marked the ‘Mid-term Exam Period’ so everyone has been locked away in the library. I actually only had one mid-term exam and a paper, but I still have a few presentations and projects due in early November. So now, I’ll do a brief update on my classes (sorry if this is boring, it’s just different from my normal classes at HWS so I figured I’d write about it).

Let’s start with International Politics. I had a midterm exam in the middle of October. This exam consisted of 10 multiple choice and 4 short answer questions. The questions were on a separate piece of paper, which we were able to keep, and we were to write the answer in an 8 ½ x 11’’ green notebook (like blue books, but normal sized). In addition to the professor, there was also some other administrator in the class to proctor the exam, which I thought was odd since she just stood there. We got our scores back this past week, but it wasn’t your normal ‘here’s your whole test and this is what I took points off of’ but rather ‘here’s two pieces of paper for the whole class with your student id number and your grade.’ So after class the professor left these two pieces of papers at the front of the class and there was this mad dash to them. It was rather unorganized and crazy, something I’m glad we don’t do in the States. I am also working on a presentation with Viktoria, from Russia, for our tutorial on Thursday. We are presenting on Regionalism.

 A different perspective of the world.

(The school also had a “University Assembly” (similar to HWS' President's Forum) with the former Head of “Mossad” of the State of Israel Ambassador Efraim Halevy and our professor recommended us to go. So I did. Although his talk was scattered and all over the place, he focused on non-state actors and intelligence services in the 21^st Century. It was rather interesting and an experience to say the least since some Lingnan students were protesting about something religious in the back of the auditorium.)

Moving on to Media, Culture and Society. I had a midterm paper for this class due last week, and although it took me quite a few drafts to write, I finally did it and was happy with the final product. I also have a term-project for this class and I am working with some other exchange students on it. We are supposed to focus on some community thing and provide a voice to certain groups/minorities/organizations. (It’s okay if you don’t understand, because my group and I are still trying to figure it out as well). But we’re planning on working with this community arts organization and will produce a magazine with different articles/pictures about events and local and ethnic artists. Two weeks ago we went and visited an organization in Yuen Long that works with children of ethnic minorities, and our professor, Lisa (yes, the same professor that teaches Media Ethics) wants us to use that field trip as an example for documenting our term project.

I’ll continue with Lisa’s classes and talk about Media Ethics now. Except there’s not too much to say. Since I did my tutorial presentation in September I don’t have to worry about that. We have a term paper due in December that I’m not too concerned about that. And a lot of the same topics are discussed in Media, Culture and Society and in Media Ethics. Last week in lecture, the Cantonese was finally cut back, but I think I will have to wait until Thursday when I have tutorial again to say for sure. Stay tuned!

And now, Visual Culture and Digital Media. Nothing too exciting going on here either. We’ve been talking about our projects and presentations that are due at the end of the semester/later this month actually. I’m working on “creating identities online.” The class has been looking at how media and culture have changed over the past few years. Remember—you can check out that blog here: http://smhvisualculturedesignmedia.blogspot.com/

Last but not least, Non-Fiction Film. For this class we have this main project to create worksheets/discussion sheets for Hong Kong secondary (high school) schools about documentary films that we think they should see. So in my group, we decided local students should see the film ‘Petition’ by Zhao Liang about people in Beijing petitioning for injustices and wrongdoings by the government. Zhao Liang worked on this film for over 12 years and was forced to stop right before the 2008 Olympics. It’s an interesting film that sheds light on how Chinese people feel about the government. My group has to give a presentation about the film and our discussion sheet on Thursday. In the classroom though, we’ve been watching about 2 films a week in addition to lecture and short discussions. I’ve been able to see a variety of films, especially Asian documentaries that I probably would have never picked out myself.  Last week, we watched ‘Nanook of the North,’ a 1922 film about the Inuits in Northern Canada. It was a great film!

Classes here are very different from those at HWS. They’re longer (2 hours is short, here) but they always have a ten-minute break at some point, which is nice and necessary. And most classes are broken up into lectures and tutorials, which allow time for discussion. I will say it’s weird not having one class 2 or 3 times a week for a shorter period. I think I like the HWS style of doing classes because I feel classes here are so rushed as professors are trying to get in so much in such a short period of time and they just get so boring. It’s had to pay attention for 3 hours especially if the professor is lecturing the entire time. It’s quite the experience!