Get it all done!

Hey y'all! 

Can you tell I've been living in the Midwest for more than a month now? ;) 

Now that I'm a month into the semester, I had the first two weeks where I was just swamped with school work and events! I had my first papers and a few article reviews due last week and this week, let alone the reading that I had to keep up with. Now it is a little better but I definitely need to keep up with all the homework. Yes, there is actual HOMEWORK in American Universities. Today I want to give you a little overview over the work load of courses at TU. This is overview however will be limited to English and Education courses. I don't have an idea on what is happening in business courses or science courses. TU is actually a very big engineering school. So if you are interested in chemical, petroleum, physical or any other kind of engineering, TU is the school for you.

Check out what was happening last week! 

For my semester here I chose three literary classes: Contemporary Literature & Politics, World Literature and Film by Women and a Jane Austen Literature & Film course. I also have an education class and a fun class, Jazz Dance 1. First of all, I really do enjoy all of my classes. BUT three literary classes mean a whole lot of reading, which is similar to literary classes in Siegen. However, there are SO many papers to write during the semester. All assigned papers of the classes combined, I will have to write at least 48 pages of response papers and essays/ papers. And that are only the literary classes. There are written assignments in my education class too. Basically, by the end of the semester, I will have written essays and papers that add up to the length of a Staatsarbeit.

For those three literary classes I will get 3 credit points, for the education class I will get 4 credit points and Jazz Dance is only worth 1 credit point. In order to be considered a full time student, you need to be enrolled into 12 credit hours total. The maximum of credit hours you can take without paying extra at TU is 18 credit hours. I have the greatest respect for people who take 18 credit hours and still manage to have a life outside of school. While in Siegen it is quite possible to have more than 10 courses and still kind of get along and have a life, it is much harder here because he professors tend to keep you on your toes with Homework, test and pop quizzes (quizzes without a warning beforehand).

I really don't want to make this a super long and super boring post so I will stop here for now. I also do not want you to be afraid of going to TU because of the workload. It might have been a good choice to take one literary class less, but being the nerd I am, I couldn't have decided on which of the three classes to drop for an "easier" one. Right now I'm just really happy to have handed in my first written assignments which will be graded. I have all my fingers crossed that I did well on them. Even though my grades back home do not really matter within my course of study, I really would like to do well in my classes here. 

You made it through the whole post. Congratulations and thank you for reading :)

Jenny Sch.