The 4th week of teaching is
already over and I realized I have not written a single word about university,
the campus, or anything really, that has happened since teaching started. To be
honest, I was so busy trying to get used to my schedule, the classes and student
life around here that I didn’t even get to write anything. The first few weeks
flew by so fast and there is so much to tell that I don’t even know where to
start.
How about starting with the end? ;)
My Masters’ thesis aka dissertation. I was very delighted to find out that I
will NOT have to produce one single document as a dissertation at the end of my
studies. Instead, what I have to prepare for my programme of study is a
“research portfolio” which consists of three individual research files which are
prepared and handed in at different stages throughout my studies. This makes me
a lot more relaxed about the assignment. Since the individual research files
are a lot shorter than one dissertation would be, I can work on it a lot better
without worrying too much about getting a low mark and therefore a bad degree.
Another thing I really like here is the university staff and how they position
themselves in relation to the students. It feels like the student-teacher
relationships are much more on a personal level than what I experienced in
Germany. Beginning in the first week, for example, one of our lecturers told us
to please refer to him as ‘Peter’ rather than ‘Professor’ or ‘Mr S.’. He even
said we could come up with other nicknames for him, as long as they are not too
insulting.
Let's come to the campus. Since my main programme
(Cross-Cultural Communication aka CCC) and my specialised pathway
(international business management) are each organised by different schools, I
have to move around campus a lot. The CCC lectures and seminars, which are
managed by the School of Education, Communication and Language Science, take place in the various buildings on main campus, whereas the
lectures for the business modules are managed by the Business School, which has
its own building a little further off. The Business School is located next to
the football stadium of Newcastle and is only a 6-10 minute walk away from the main
campus, so luckily it’s not bad at all. The only thing I don't like is that although there are so many bus lines in Newcastle, especially in the city centre, I cannot use a single one to get around campus a little faster. None of them connect the parts of the city I need to get to, so it's always faster to just walk.
To give you an overview, here's some visualisation:
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| Newcastle Upon Tyne City Centre Map |
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| main campus |
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| Business School |
As already mentioned above, I have most of my classes on the main campus, and exclusively so in the 3 buildings on the north-west side in that circled area. When looking at the old castle-like buildings of the main campus area, I sometimes feel like I'm in Hogwarts :)
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| The Monument |
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| China Town |
On top of the Grey Monument in the city centre stands Charles Grey (the very one we know today for his Earl Grey tea). The bus I take to get to university every morning goes right by the monument. When I have to go to the main campus, I get off the bus at the monument bus station and have to walk the rest of the way. Only when I have classes in the Business School, I can wait 2 more stops, because the bus passes the Chinese arch, the Business School and the football stadium. The Chinese arch marks the beginning of China Town, which has many Chinese shops, supermarkets and restaurants.
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| Millenium Bridge |
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| standing on the bridge at night |
The Millenium Bridge is a bridge only for pedestrians. It can be tilted to let ships pass through, which uses about as much energy as would be required to boil water in a kettle. At night the bridge glows in beautiful changing rainbow colours.
We went to the Theatre Royal last week to watch Shakespeare's Hamlet. Our German flatmate told us that the Theatre Royal here in Newcastle offers special cheap tickets to get more young people to go to the theatre. So for people aged 16-25 they reserve 25 tickets per show which can be bought by these young people for just £5 instead of the regular price of £25. Too bad I'm 26 already, I had to pay the full price :/ But even for that price it was definitely worth it. It was played by the Royal Shakespeare Company, which seems to perform quite often in London and Newcastle.
The last point on the map I'm going to mention here is the Goose carvery. It's a restaurant near university campus which serves lunch. The special thing about it is that it is comparatively cheap and the quality of the food there is way better than anything else you can get for this price anywhere in the area. Students pay £3,77 for one type of meat of their choice (usually they offer gammon, turkey and pork) or £3,41 for battered fish or meat pie. Two slices of the chosen meat are then cut off the whole piece in front of them and additionally there is an all-you-can-eat vegetable buffet with round about 10 different veggies and potato variations to choose from. This is clearly the first surprisingly positive experience I had here so far concerning food. Other than this, most of the food here, even from supermarkets, is more expensive than it would be in German supermarkets, and this even though very often the quality is worse. But there will be more on food on my facebook page pretty soon. ;)
All this
should give you a pretty good overview of 'my Newcastle', or 'toon', as
geordies would pronounce 'town'. Just one more little thing for those of you
who are bored enough to watch a bus ride from Byker metro to the monument. I
filmed this one for fun, just to show you how bumpy such a bus ride can be over
here and what it looks like when sitting in the top front of a double-decker
bus, which is where I usually sit on my way to university.
First of all, anything below 50% is
a fail. However, if you score 40-50, you get the chance to repeat an exam,
essay or whatever the assignment might be, but no matter how horrible or
excellent this repetition might turn out to be, it will always be marked as 50%. (at least it's better than getting a 0%). Then 50-60% is a pass, 60-70% a merit, and 70-80% is a distinction. 80% and over is
very rarely given (none of the CCC professors have ever given anything better
than an 85 in their whole careers, and even those were rare exceptions). A
piece of work awarded an 80 or above would be considered worth publishing. So
in reality, the scale doesn’t go up to 100% but an 80 is almost like a 100
already, and the lecturers told us to not be too disappointed when we get back
our first assignment, and to keep that scale in mind.
So this year I pretended to be Lara Croft again. It wasn't close as good as previous Lara costumes I've done and I wanted to do it better this time, but oh well. It was fun anyhow. I even managed to go into a Poundland on the day of the party and get some guns this time. The party itself was a huge disappointment (pumpkin carving and making toilet paper mummies, seriously?) but at least I spent the evening with some really nice people and I'm glad I went out.
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But the most important difference is
the tap water. Since Hamburg has excellent tap water quality, I grew up and
lived all my life almost exclusively drinking tap water. Here that’s just not possible because there’s
too much chlorine in it. My solution so far: using a filter and buying bottled
water. Filtering tap water twice or three times seems to make it acceptable to drink, but it’s
still not very tasty. Plus I’m not convinced that it’s the healthiest solution.
Bottled water tastes better but creates extra costs and is heavy to carry home
from the supermarket. We’ll have to see which one is the better solution for me.
Something that seems to be a very
consistent custom over here (I've seen it in Scotland, too) and is also different from usual habits in Germany,
is how to behave when using public transportation. More specifically: buses.
Here, people form a queue to get onto the bus. They really line up in the order
they arrived at the bus stop. If you get to a bus stop and people are standing
there already, you always get in line behind the last one... and don’t try to
stand around somewhere else and jump the queue! It’s not appreciated at all. When the bus approaches, you
briefly stick your arm out to the side and into the street to let the bus driver know that people
want to board. I don’t know if this is specific to areas like Newcastle, where so
many buses come by one single bus stop that this is necessary, or if it is a
general UK thing. It’s just something that sticks out because it’s different
from what I was used to in Germany. Also, when getting off the bus, every
single person thanks the driver before exiting. Since buses only have one door,
which is in the front, everyone comes by the driver anyways. 
