By Sarah Stubbs
Reagan Massengale, a senior at the College of Charleston, began a six-month educational adventure in January 2015. She left the United States January 24th to enroll as an International Student at the University of Nottingham in England. She returned home June 19th.
Life as a student in England was, in many ways, different for Reagan. Among the new things Reagan encountered was the size of the University of Nottingham campus. The campus is over 300 acres and has approximately 34,000 students. It is easy to get turned around or lost on a campus this large. Walking to class could take 20-30 minutes. The beautiful landscape and old buildings at least made the walk to class more enjoyable.
Classes at the University of Nottingham meet once a week for lecture; the lecture classes last between one to three hours depending on the level of the course. Some of the courses have a one hour weekly seminar with about 20 people. In the seminar students get help with essays and delve a little deeper into the content from the lectures. Reagan found the seminars to be really helpful.
Reagan took three courses which equaled 15 credit hours at the College of Charleston – one history course and two sociology courses. The history course, Reformation of the Revolution, was one hour with a seminar each week. History of British Social Policy, a sociology course, was two hours; Prisons and Incarceration, another sociology course, was three hours with a seminar each week.
The emphasis in English universities is on quality not quantity. Reagan believes the professors expect more from the students than professors in the United States. Courses are lecture based with occasional assignments. Assignments are usually individual rather than group work; the goal is to make students more independent. Each of Reagan’s classes had one essay and a final exam with the two grades averaged together for the final grade. Assigned essays could be 1000 to 3000 words. The exams were one question, but it could take a couple of hours to answer that one question.
Another difference is the grading scale, which Reagan still does not completely understand. A 40 is passing and a 70 is a ‘first’, which is really great – an A+ in America.
Reagan’s educational experiences in England were not confined to the classroom. There were new friends to meet, new foods to taste, new modes of transportation, a new monetary system, and many new places to visit. She was able to take short weekend trips around Europe. She also visited several countries during the Easter break and at the end of the semester.