Insights on School

This was the first week of school so I noticed many cultural and social differences between the UCT students and what I am used to. One of the biggest things I noticed was how different the concept of time is.  When it comes to a social meeting people do not have a strict schedule that they stick to. It has taken me some patience and time to understand that people are more laid back when it comes to social meetings. However, even though people don’t have a time-table for social meeting, I have learned that being on time for lectures and school meetings in very important. Initially I thought that a lot of people would come very late to lectures, also because UCT is a much larger school than I am used to, but I have noticed that only a few come late to class.

       Through students arriving to lectures on time and through my observations of class I understand that people take schooling very seriously in South Africa. Even though they may not stick to a specific schedule when it comes to social gathering, when it comes to education I feel that these students really want to learn. I can tell that these students really want to learn because just through listening to conversations or comments in class it seems like these students know a lot of information. However it is my understanding that students at UCT chose one field to study and that is the only field that they will study while at university.

      At UCT the students chose one subject to study and that is the only subject they study, and this is a little different than my university in California. Although I do have a major that I follow, most American universities require students to take many general education classes so that students are all little more well rounded. Originally I was taking physics with first years but I ended up dropping but hen I talked to some of these students I asked them about their curriculum and they told me they only take science courses. These students have chosen the course of science so they have focused on science courses like physics before so they already knew many of the answers making it too hard for me. Through my observations I think that South African students want to become more focused on a single subject and work only on that subject, while American students have a general field they want to follow as well as learn some about other subjects.