Sunday, February 06, 2011

Semester Two: Discourse Analysis

Semester Two at Big Northern University and forty students are crammed into a room designed, it soon becomes apparent, with less than half as many people in mind. We sit facing each other across narrow desks, wedged into corners against radiators that are too hot and windows which can't be opened, pushed behind heads that bob up and down as they write. Necks craning, we turn sideways to view a presentation which is already half-blocked by a flat-screen monitor and the lecturer's right arm.

4 comments:

Garry Nixon said...

You make University life sounds so alluring...

Michael said...

It's going to get worse next year. I hear BNU has had seven hundred applicants already, almost all from Chinese graduates with no teaching experience whatsoever. Everyone agrees that ninety people on the course this year is too large a number, but with all the funding cuts etc universities seem to be putting short-term concerns for money over long-term concerns for quality. Wrong choice.

Michael said...

Overall, I'm enjoying it. Very glad I didn't wait another year or two, though.

Wood said...

That's the great thing about university education today, business is business and 40 tuition paying students are more important than 20!