An amendment to what I said about Italian University not being harder than in Canada… maybe

Ok, so I can’t be sure that university here is harder than in Canada, but I do know that it is perhaps wackier. Or the teachers are just mean. Or that students are just insane. The school year started on Thursday here, as I headed home around 6:45 on the train it was packed with students heading home from the University of Vicenza. It became apparent that these students all had a few things in common. For one, most were already studying on the train, almost every one of them had a book open and was reading during the train ride. In my experience, the first week of school is still the slacker week, sure they gave us readings and homework, but for the most part we all put it off for one more week of freedom (thus beginning the pressure and stress when all this needs to be studied for midterms… I suddenly do not miss school at all). Also, while some read on the buses most of us took that time to chat with friends, send text messages or zone out to our mp3 players. Reading on the bus was mainly exclusive to midterms and final exams, a few last minutes of cramming as we headed to school, but coming home was always the time to decompress after classes, before we got home and pulled out the books again.

Secondly, any amount of books I lugged home from the bookstore on the first day was nothing in comparison to this. The students here were all carrying big heavy backpacks filled with books as well as other bags full. Some also used carry-on luggage to transport their books. And if you’re thinking this is just a first day of school situation, nope, they do this everyday (I also tend to wonder if they haven’t just figured out that not all textbooks need to go to class, I mean do the profs. really make them bring them? Ours rarely did, so our every day life was basically our notebooks and pens and a few dozen printed pages worth of studies and notes because while we had to buy the heavy texts, they were rarely used, instead were supplemented with many $ worth of printed pages and dead trees). Hauling books to class is a work out in itself here.

And this isn’t just exclusive to university. Everyday I see young kids with backpacks that weigh more than most of them, filled with textbooks and homework that they have to complete by the next day.

As for the actual university program, I still haven’t figured it out except that here it is basically 5 years to get your degree (I don’t know if it’s a bachelors or what). The years are split though, first you do 3 years and then you can choose to do the next 2 and get your degree, I’m not sure what you get if you only do the first 3. Apparently it used to be a 4-year program like us but they wanted to give students a choice after the 3 years to go into a career or something.

After all this, I’m not exactly sure that going to school here is any harder than in Canada, because while they do have to write papers here and write exams, I can’t see why school would be made easier in one place and not in others. I think the ways we all go about it are different and we become accustomed to the way we are made to learn. That being said, I’m glad I did school in Canada, because carrying the books, taking the exams, the constant studying, I’m not sure I could handle all it. That’s not to say the way I did it wasn’t filled with stress, god knows I had many late nights and spent a lot of times crying from all the stress, but here it sounds like the pressure is greater or something I can’t put my finger on.

Also, from experience it seems that the students here go crazy. Or so that’s the conclusion that we’ve reached after a small study of a handful (2-3) of people that we’ve done our own psychiatric evaluations on (we being me, who has taken some psych courses; Christian, who has dated the crazy students; and Livi, the translator and wise older person giving out sage advice).