Classes!

So far I am in week 3 of classes here at Westminster, things have been going well, but it is very different from class at Stonehill! I'm taking four classes here that transfer back as five Stonehill classes. Each class here is split into a seminar and a lecture each that are an hour and a half long. Some of my classes have the seminar and lecture right in a row, whereas others are split up. The lecture is all the seminar sections combined with one teacher, even though we all have separate teachers for the seminars, depending on how many there are. Its weird having the same structure for each one of my classes here. Long powerpoint presentaions for the lecture and discussion questions in the seminars. Its not bad when its split up, but it gets a bit boring having the same structure for each class. All my classes only have two parts to our grade. "Coursework" which is one essay equal to 30% and a final which is either an essay test worth 70%. Very different from what I'm used to where you also have small assignments, participation as well as other grades.

The classes that I'm taking are The Economics of Financial Markets and Financial Reporting and Analysis, both which count for my major back at Stonehill, and then The London Economy and Work Psychology, both which count as electives. All of my classes here have lots of international students in them, which makes it interesting to meet a lot of new people from all around the world. My group for a project in The London Economy is myself, a girl from Japan, a girl from Atlanta, a girl from Germany, a boy from Spain and a boy from London so I'm getting to learn a lot about other places! Its hard to work in a group where there are many language barriers, but for the most part everyone here is very good at English.

Because Westminster is such a large University, the Professors are a lot different from Stonehill's. Though my London Economy Professor is very friendly and trying to get to know all of us, most of them aren't like that. A lot of work in the class is done independently so most of the Professors show up for the lectures and don't really stick around to be friendly or outgoing. Its a bit of getting used to from the small atmosphere of Stonehill, but hopefully it will help me to be more independent in my school work and be able to better research on my own.

I miss everyone so much but have been staying busy. Last Thursday, Nigel Barker from America's Next Top Model was at Selfridges, a large department store on Oxford Street. He was signing his new book called "The Beauty Equation." My girlfriends and I went to go meet him and ended up buying the book to get it signed. He was so sweet and took pictures and chatted with everyone that came to meet him. This weekend was our friend Larry's 21st birthday so we went out to see him at the Harrow campus (just outside of London) one night and he came into London the next night and we celebrated at a pub. This week is super busy as I'm trying to stay on top of all my reading (which is difficult when there is no work assigned) and Father Cregan is stopping in London on his way to Italy on Thursday and taking all of the London study abroad students to dinner. Friday morning at around 3 am Bobby and I are boarding a bus to Stansted airport and heading to Munich for the weekend! It's my first trip outside the UK so I can't wait. I will let you all know how it goes! 
♥
Here is a picture of my friend Ali and I with Nigel Last week...