La Universidad de Guanajuato

As of today, I have had all of my classes. Granted, we just went over the syllabus and talked about the general plan for the class, but I think that they will all be very interesting. I am taking four classes this semester. One is directly through the University of Guanajuato and is taught at the Literature and History School. The other three are through CIEE, but are taught by University of Guanajuato professors. They are all in Spanish.

Historia de Mexico
This is my one UG class. The class has about 20 people in it and is taught by Lic. Eduardo Vidaurri. We will be covering the time of pre-Columbian Mexico until the Porfiriato era. As the teacher put it, the dates we will be working between are 50,000 a.p. to 1867 (a.p. means antes presente or before present, so basically the BC period). The professor seems pretty laid back and he is willing to take questions and even joke around in class. The Mexican students seem eager to learn and there were a few that introduced themselves and seemed interested in us American kids. There are two other CIEE students in the class.

Migration, Politics, and Current Social Issues in Mexico
I think this will be my most interesting class. We will be reading about and discussing migration and many topics surrounding migration. We are going to do a brief overview of historical migration and then dive into 20th century issues. The class will finish with a discussion of the effects of migration in Guanajuato specifically. The professor for this class is really nice. He talks slowly and enunciates well which will make lectures easier and more interesting. He is a historian and is very interested in this topic. He told us that he doesn't believe that migration is motivated by economics, but rather that it is a right of passage for Mexican men to go to the US or to migrate from the country to a city. I'm really excited about the chance to view migration through the eyes of the Mexicans.

Spanish for the Professions
This class will probably prove to be the most useful. It is designed to increase our vocabularies, improve our speaking and reading comprehension, and to provide us with the ability to communicate in the professional world. We are covering topics like health, law, education, art, community and social work, and business and economics. We will be reading articles from both local and national newspapers and magazines, practicing by role playing, and writing responses to the things we read. I hope that my grammar is refined and my vocabulary grows by leaps and bounds.

Reading and Writing Revolution
In this class, we are going to be reading literature of the revolution. We will cover the majority of the revolutions in Mexico since the 1910 revolution, including the 1968 Massacre, the sexual and personal revolution, and the Zapatista movements of the most recent decades. By the end of the class we will have read a 300 page book in Spanish. The professor for this class is named Flor and she is really excited and passionate about literature. She told us about how fewer and fewer people are choosing literature as a major because it takes a lot longer to make money with a degree in literature. She told us about her friends who wanted to be doctors and now have a house and a car and belongings and all she has is a small house with books, books, and more books. She talks clearly and is relatively easy to understand, but I walked away from the class feeling like I had gotten a lot of information thrown at me all at once.
There are similarities and differences between the Mexican university and the way things are done at American universities. For example, professors here don't go by Dr. or Professor. You call them by their first name. More of the work is written outside of class. At least in the classes I am taking, I will not have many in-class exams. Most of the graded work is essays that I will write outside of class. Grades are done on a 1-10 scale with 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. Being on time is not exactly a requirement. The professor showed up 20 minutes late to my History of Mexico class and no one left or freaked out. When he arrived, he informed us that class would start at 10:20 instead of 10:00. Go figure. The classes are very small. While this is normal for Wofford, a university in the US that has 20,000 students would have classes with 100 or more people in it. At UG, the classes are no bigger than 20 and once you get into the more advanced, elective classes, 6-10 is a more likely number. Textbooks and college bookstores are non-existent. Instead, professors assign a reading from a book and the students are responsible for going to the library and making the necessary photocopies. And, to top it all off, the Mexican students pay $150 per semester to attend the University of Guanajuato. Slightly different from the $38,000 to attend Wofford, but many students can barely afford it and live in tiny apartments and have to save money to eat well. I'm excited about all the interesting things I'm going to learn this semester. I think that I will be exposed to many new perspectives in all different areas of study.

*The first picture is of the main university building. Unfortunately, I have no classes there. All of my classes are at the Escuela de Idiomas and the Philosophy School in Valenciana. The two other photos are from the Escuela de Idiomas - the courtyard/patio area and the coffee stand respectively.