End of Classes!

Today was my final day of classes, here at Lingnan! Sure, I still have 2 papers to write, 2 exams to take, a project and a take home exam to do, but I don't have to go listen to any lecture or participate in tutorials any more! And I am completely done with one of my five classes (we had our final exam last night during our usual class time)!

It's now crunch time but I am trying not to procrastinate (let's see how this works out for me) so I can enjoy my final days here.

Yay!

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!

Class Happenings

For two of my classes, Media Ethics and Media, Culture and Society, I have the same professor, Lisa. Both classes have been talking about objectivity, fairness and truth in the news and it has been a rather exciting week in class. In Media Ethics, Lisa invited a reporter from the Apple Daily Newspaper, who was at the Manila hostage situation, to come and talk to us about that event while focusing on being truthful and objective. And today, the Media, Culture and Society class visited Cable TV. These were both great hands-on experiences and provided insight into the journalism world of Hong Kong.

The reported from Apple Daily spoke in Cantonese so Lisa translated for me. He talked about being in Manila while the hostage was taking place and what he as a reported had to go through to get the right story because at the time many different things were being said. He had to deal with informing the public about this breaking news but also respecting the rights of the wounded and dead. One thing he mentioned was actually not reported- I forget if he talked to this woman or somebody else, but this lady was wounded and felt extremely guilty because she was late to the bus and by being late the gunman was able to get on the bus so she felt like the hostage was her fault. The reporter said they didn’t report this because they didn’t want to bring more stress or attention to the woman.

Outside Cable TV

This morning though, I went to Cable TV, one of the local TV stations in Hong Kong. I was so excited to go because I had never been to a TV station before. We were given a tour of the studio by one of the producers. We were lucky enough to be there while they were doing a live broadcast, so we were able to watch it for about ten minutes from the control room. It was amazing. I never really considered what goes on behind the scenes in airing a news segment- so much planning. In one of the smaller studios we talked about the blue background they use. Anchors aren’t allowed to wear blue because it blends in with the background and viewers would only be able to see their head- think Harry Potter’s invisible cloak. The producer actually had a blue blanket and showed us what it would be like- it was so cool.

Cable TV's version of Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak

We then got to sit down with one of the news directors and he talked a lot about the Manila hostage and what it was like for the station to report the news. The computer in the room had a program where they have news segments from years ago. We were able to watch the ones from August 23 when the hostage was first reported. The anchor was informed about the hostage during the middle of the broadcast and then had to report it to the viewers, so for a good moment, she’s just starring at the ground listening to her producer tell her about the situation via her ear bud; it was very interesting to watch, especially after just being in the control room. The news director also talked about being truthful and objective especially in breaking news. When the hostage situation was developing, there were a lot of different versions of the story going around and they waited until they got exact details to report to news. Although they had to wait to break the news, he said they didn’t want to misinform the public or worry the wrong people, so it was worth the wait.

Blurry picture of control room

It was great to see a TV station as well as talking with a reporter. After taking two journalism classes at HWS last semester, I hated journalism and wanted nothing to do with it, but these two experiences definitely opened my eyes to a different view of journalism/broadcast…

The entire class with our professor, Lisa.

Most of the class with the news director