I'm here to tell you I do indeed go to school. I'm happy to report that there are only 3 weeks left in the semester. Unfortunately I have 8 deadlines the last week of class in comparison to the 3 I've had throughout the rest of the semester. Taking school seriously has been difficult so far, but now I get to spend November being a real student.
The academic part of Hong Kong has definitely been different than I expected. We all know the stereotype of all Asians being super smart and diligent in school... not true. Here is an example.
Today I had a group meeting about a presentation we have to give on Monday. I showed up on time. One girl, a local student, was already there. Another exchange student in our group came about 5 minutes late. Then the other two local girls showed up 45 minutes late. Are they serious? I was ticked. Not only did they come late, but they were unprepared with their slides for the presentation. Oh and then one of the girls asked me to e-mail her what I had compiled of the presentation so far. Then she proceeded to give commentary about what she thinks could be improved. Forget that. I tried to be polite, but I very clearly made the point that some people (her being one of them) hadn't even submitted their slides yet so the most important part is to get the presentation completed before we critique each others work. She probably thinks I'm a brat, but I wasn't about to listen to her tell me my part wasn't good enough when hers was nonexistent. SO frustrating.
That group has been a real delight to work with. Now let me give you an example of some group work in another class.
The assignment is to write a group paper on the topic of "Why we can't love people who repeatedly hurt us?" Not too difficult. Except that the only thing people have contributed is random opinions about love and trust and happiness and pain that has no legitimate knowledge to back the comments. Oh and nothing that anybody has contributed flows together. So the teacher gave us the last half of class to meet with our group and try to organize our paper. How many people are in our group? 10
How many people showed up? 2, me and my new friend Walter
Once again, another delightful group to work with. What I really don't understand is how I can feel like I'm barely putting any effort in at school yet I'm contributing more than the majority of other students.
At least I'm learning so many new things daily outside of the classroom that I feel compensated for the lack of education inside the classroom.
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