National University of Singapore: First Impressions

Hey guys,

Despite the fact that I now live on the surface of the sun, I have not died yet.

So here is a lowdown of NUS so far:

Wednesday was registration and then Thursday was Orientation for all the Exchange and study abroad students. Registration literally took three hours to do. And even after all that I still need to sign up for one more class and go the Immigration Authority building to collect my Student Pass. Argh!

But that aside, at Orientation I met some very nice people. The person that stands out the most to me is this one girl from Canada who studies at McGill University. She is an East Asian history major and she will also be taking courses at NUS in Southeast Asian studies. I found this very surprising but the vast majority of study abroad students are Americans and most students as a whole are studying Engineering. Out of 200 students there are probably about twenty people including me who are studying in the School of Arts and Social Sciences.

Class registration is also different. You know when we sign up for classes through ISIS you also sign up for a section? At NUS classes are called "modules" and sections are called "tutorials". You have to sign up for tutorials on separate days from when you sign up for modules. Tutorials for many classes are also every other week instead of every week. NUS' version of ISIS is called the Integrated Virtual Learning Environment (IVLE). So the classes I have so far are: Chinese language, Indonesian language and a Southeast Asian studies course called Migration and Diaspora in Southeast Asia. I will be adding a history class which will either be the History of Myanmar or the History of Chinese and Southeast Asian Relations.

Beginning language classes are also structured differently. For my Indonesian language class for example, there are no lectures. Everyone is broken up into two hour small group discussion classes twice a week and then we take one hour grammar classes at the end of every week as well.

In addition to needing to take the public bus to NUS I will also need to take the NUS shuttle bus to get around campus. This will definitely be a very significant change from Hopkins. All my classes are also located in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences which is located at the Kent Ridge campus. Most of the undergraduate students take classes at this campus. I will be sure to post more photos of what the place looks like.

I will have more updates later. Just to give you a short preview of what's to come you can expect some posts on my visit to Johor Bahru, Malaysia and my visit to Raffles City and the Asian Civilisations Museum.

Hope everyone is having an awesome New Year! I will be starting school on Monday. Looking forward to gaining knowledge!

Best,

Kavanaugh