Just Some Random Musings...

Today's class showed me yet another way in which our culture is completely different from that here...respect and discipline. Now I'm not trying to be presumptuous or anything here, but as far as schooling goes, students here have far less discipline than back home. Well, maybe it's not discipline, maybe it's respect for their teachers, or maybe it's self-motivation, or maybe it's something all together different, but the fact of the matter is that students don't show up to class on time. I arrived to class at 9 this morning and waited about 15 minutes for the professor to show up. Yes...the professor was even late, although in all fairness, she's always there at quarter after, so at least she's consistent. But then, we both waited around until 10 for another student to show up. There are only about 8 students in the class, but it took until 12 for all of them to slowly trickle in --and let me mention that the class finishes at about 1. And then to top it off, it took another hour or so for everyone to display their works (we had our first critique today), smoke a few cigarettes, and then wander back into the classroom. And to top it off, the critique we had was not even close to those we have back home. Again...I'm not trying to sound high and mighty or anything, but the students didn't seem to be interested in each others' works in the least. They don't seem to be interested in helping each other and discussing their work in the same way that I'm used to. I'm used to everyone from home standing beside eachother giving opinions and advice and criticism, but here, the only peer critiques have consisted of "It's good" or "I like it," phrases that are forbidden in critiques back at home.

This having been said, I seem to being a lot of slef-exploration and development. I suppose that's what I came here for, so in a way, I'm succeeding down here. I guess I just didn't expect to be doing that in classes as well. I expected to come here, take classes, learn from my professors --much like at home-- and then spend my free time doing the self-exploration end of things. I didn't think I would be doing all of my work in class on my own. Maybe the language barrier has something to do with it, but I've definitely been doing more self-developed and self-explored works along with teaching myself how to use oil paints and mix proper skin colors for different complextion and other similar things that one would expect to learn from a professor. In a way, this is refreshing, becuase I'm learning that I can teach myself, something I've never been to sure I could do. My critique today was on my first piece completed without the support or input of peers or professors like I get at home. yay me...