Blogabroad
by Mary Pinckney Waters

October 31, 2005 - To be or not to be - Advised

You're standing at a crossing. The pedestrian light is red, and everyone around you is waiting patiently, with unblinking eyes fixated on the little red man on the light post. The street is as bare as a "Playboy" model. You haven't seen a car in the past five minutes. Your toes are throwing a temper tantrum in your shoes, eager to dart across, but the feet around you are cemented, and only the color green will release them.

Germans are notorious for their efficiency; they are stereotyped as being OCD-orderly, never arriving late for anything in their lives and able to cite a rule or regulation for any circumstance. Of course, not all Germans fit each of these stereotypes, but they do take their system for pedestrian crossings very seriously.

With this image of German stringency in the back of my mind, the first Monday of the semester had begun. As I walked to class, I tried to equip myself with as nonjudgmental an attitude as I could muster (or, in other words, convince myself that the first thing the professor passed out was not going to be five pages of rules and consequences).

One part of the German university system, however, had already struck me as a nay-sayer to the cliche of German ordinance infatuation. In the United States, the process of registering for classes is extremely formalized. Each semester, advisement sounds the starting shotgun for students to race to the VIP Web site to reserve a seat in desired classes (a.k.a. classes without "a.m." beside them). If VIP doesn't say you're in, you might as well go ahead and warm up a spot for yourself on the curb.

On the other hand, when I was selecting my classes in Germany, I was told I didn't need to register for classes. "Einfach hingehen." (Just go there.) I kept telling myself I must have misunderstood someone's German along the way; this system is so different -- so nonexistent! And this is Germany -- Germans are supposed to have a system for everything

Furthermore, there is no mandatory advisement in Germany. Whereas USC students receive approximately 152 e-mails and flyers about signing up for advisement, a German student is simply mailed a letter with his adviser's name and contact information, and he can set up an appointment if he feels he needs advising. Imagine that. (And by "that," I mean, the time saved).

There are definitely pros and cons to their system. Con: When I walked into my first class, the only place I could find to sit was 10 square inches on the floor, shoulder-to-shoulder with other greedy space-seekers. Good thing that no fire-hazard officials wanted to attend that class because then we might have had a problem.

So why don't Germans have class registration so their students don't turn into sardines? Well, the sardine phenomenon only lasts the first week, when students attend far more classes than they intend to throughout the semester. Classes are first visited on a trial-and-error basis, and then sifted through for week two. A quite funny situation results, though, because professors almost try to "sell" their courses the first week, many times saying goodbyes like, "I hope you liked today enough to come back next week."

Other differences in the German university system are that each course only has one class a week that typically lasts an hour and a half. Therefore, students usually take about 10 courses a semester. Most often, there are no tests or papers during the semester, but instead one final paper or test at the end. If the course requires a paper, it is typically not due until the start of the following semester. (Students write a "Hausarbeit," or long paper, between semesters.)

Students do not receive credit for every class they attend. Some classes, such as a "Vorlesung" (lecture), are attended simply for introductory or supplementary knowledge. Students let the professor know at the start of the course whether they want a "Schein" (certificate of credit) for the course, so the professor will know whether to prepare a test or assignment accordingly. I've also heard that if a student is nearing graduation and discovers he is a credit or so short, he might notice that he has taken a class a couple years earlier that he did not receive credit for. In this case, the student will oftentimes return to the professor who taught the course and ask if he can write a "Hausarbeit" and receive credit for the course, albeit two years later.

That wouldn't exactly fly at USC, would it?

Why not? Why is the American system the way it is? Why is the Germans' how it is? From what I understand, German students have a lot more freedom, but, along with that, much more accountability. No, they aren't required to attend an advisement appointment, but the resources are there if they need them, and they have to be proactive about making use of them. No, they aren't required to sit through boring introductory lecture classes -- they don't receive credit for them and the university will never know they attended them -- but they will eventually be required to know the material, so, if they know what's good for them, they will have enough self-discipline to attend on their own.

I'm not sure that I would have ever thought about the education system, or countless other facets of life, in such an unfamiliar way if I hadn't experienced this different sphere of relativity. My mind just couldn't stumble upon such uncharted ideas on its own. It needs instigating. And my perspectives need to be questioned, perhaps adjusted, but inevitably more validated.

Mary Pinckney Waters welcomes your comments and feedback: marypwaters@yahoo.com