UU (Uppsala Universitet)

Uppsala is very different than Cal Poly. Although the science building at both are terribly confusing. For one the Professors are much more removed from the students. I'm used to being able to talk to my professors and I always feel comfortable asking them questions. When I try to talk to a professor here, they seem confused as to why I am talking to them. The classes are in English, but you can still tell that English is a second language. They speak more slowly, which is a benefit for me. Sometimes they won't know how to say a word in English though and will just say, "This is how you say it in Swedish _____, I don't know with English though." So thats not really helpful for me.

At Cal Poly you usually take multiple classes at once, here I'm only takine one. I take one class for four weeks and it's 7.5 credits, the next four weeks I will take another class that is 7.5 credits and so on. There are 16 weeks in a semester. There are aslo 15 credit classes that last 8 weeks. I will probably take a 15 credit Biochemistry class next semester.

There are only about 12 people in my class with a total of 4 international students. All the Swedish students are future pharmacists. They are all really nice and speak fluent English. Most of them have also studied abroad before, so they know what it's like to be in my position, and have tried to make it easier on me.

I am learning a lot about spectroscopy in this class. Even about how all the machines work, which is more than I learned about Cal Poly. I have a ridiculous about of class time, so I should be able to master all these techniques here. I am still a little bit jealous of all my international friends who only have 6-10 hours of class/week (for the same amount of credits). But I have also found they are bored a lot during the days.

My last few days have been really calm because of all the class and reading assignments. I have no idea how the tests are formatted here, so I want to make sure I've covered all the material so I can do well. Lab safety test tomorrow! Yay! And then we don't have an exam until the final, which is 50% of our grade. I heard someone talking about how you can retake exams here though? I guess if you don't pass the first time you can take it until you do pass...so that's awesome. They also don't have letter grades. It's just pass, pass with honor, fail. And since I can retake the final...I guess I won't be failing!

I am still learning how to get to class without a map. I have used one of my maps so much that it tore in half. It takes me about 30 minutes to bike to class so hopefully I'll be able to find a route that cuts that time. I'm thinking about moving to another dorm/apartment-thing for the second semester so I can be 1) closer to my chemistry classes (in the biomedical center BMC) and 2) be around more socail people. My corridor-mates are all very unsocial!

Time to study NMR and Mass Spectometry! They are both very difficult for me :(