Classes Beyond Due

I have been soooo busy lately it's not even funny. I was having quite some time situating things for summer school and fall semester. Then I began to worry about passing the japanese test for next year. I am going to study abroad again, but this time I want to be in class with people who speak my target language. This means I can actually integrate! But that's a whole different post.

While searching for blogs of past CIEE Tokyo participants I found exactly what I was looking for!! People who talked about the preparation and the classes they took and the school itself!
Most of the blogs are a few years old but one is for this year. The thing is while reading them and finding what I wanted, I realized that I forgot to describe those things here! I have reported too much culture and not enough info for people looking to use the USAC China programs!

So here goes:
This semester I took Advanced Chinese track 2. I liked that that class used a textbook that gave us articles to read. Real life stories or articles that real people have had published in books. It made me feel as if all of this learning was really paying off...No! I mean IS paying off haha We even started a "newspaper" textbook.
The only thing I didn't like was going over the passages line by line by the second half of the term. Then the homework was cut down because we did it in class! How do I know I improved if you do my work for me? You all know how this final went. Test and speech.

I also took Managing in a Global Economy Emphasis on China. That class was my favorite actually. Just because I was learning so much about the way things work in business. The homework was light but it was ok, we were also able to have class discussions about the real life cases that were related to the chapters we talked about. I didn't feel lost! There was one presentation, a final exam and an essay.

My second favorite class was U.S. China relations. Our teacher was very knowledgeable and most of the questions we had to ask got answered. The homework was reading different people's views on certain topics, and it was a lot of work, but wasn't graded. I feel kind of cheated by that because there is no way my teacher will ever know that I read those things!! and that I really did learn a lot while taking this class. The worst thing is the only grades we will have are 20% participation and 80% final paper that's 4-6pgs.
Most of you may think that's the easiest class ever but the problem is college professors NEVER like my papers!! I just don't understand why. Also if you were thinking I can show that I did my readings through my paper, think again. Our topics have to be unanswered questions. Something with little information on them.


I also liked taking China Phenomenon even though it was a complete lecture class. Only the teacher talked unless there was a random question. My teacher for this class was like a walking history of china book. I learned so much about china that I will never forget. I thank him.
For assignments we had 2 presentations, 2 500 word essays and a 2,000 word final essay. All on whatever topic you wanted that was covered in class.

TaiChi was a very nice class. It didn't go into the details of TaiChi but it sure was a great "fun" class. My teacher was so energetic and I just know that if a real fight broke out she would kick be-hind! haha Our final was us presenting the form and her recording it. Then we will do it one by one recorded.

I took these classes because they interested me. If you want some more details on the classes please do not hesitate to get in touch with me. Overall they weren't as bad as some people complained. They had me thinking, "If you've already taken this class or already know so much, WHY ARE YOU HERE???"