Week One - Term Begins

Hello again, I thought as I have finished the first week of term (I have Fridays off) I would write another post with what I have been up to the past week and some of the differences I've noticed so far between American and English teaching. Hit the jump to read more.


So last Friday as the previous post shows I went on a trip with UNM's international office up on the tram to Sandia Peak. We were warned beforehand to bring a jumper with us as it gets cold at the top and can get as low as 55 F which is about 15 C so a warm British summer day. As suspected it wasn't too bad and made a refreshing change from the heat. This trip offered brilliant views of Albuquerque and the surrounding area as some of my pictures show. After the trip me and my friends went to Friday Night Live the universities equivalent of a freshers fair showing the available clubs. There was also a karaoke area which was very fun to watch people attempt to sing (in some cases failing miserably) famous songs.

The storm

The isotopes warming up

The firework display

Saturday was spent helping moving my friends into the accommodation off campus and then going to a minor league baseball game. The game was between the Albuquerque isotopes and the New Orleans Zephyrs with the isotopes winning 3-1 with a late burst of runs. On the way to the game we got caught out in a storm and had to seek shelter in an abandoned hotel called the Vagabond inn which struck me as a possible setting for a horror movie. The game went by reasonably quickly, despite lasting nearly three hours long, possibly due to the ridiculous events between innings such as the Mexican food race or everyone in the stadium singing Sweet Caroline. After the game because it was a home game there was a firework display which was easily one of the best I have seen.

Sunday we investigated fraternities and ending up playing volleyball with Phi Gamma Delta (Fiji) who took it a lot more seriously than us. We also found out that if we wanted to join it would cost us a minimum of about $500 depending on our grades so is very expensive. In the evening we went and watched the Avengers on the sports field with the rest of my flat.

The next day lectures began with a Quantum mechanics lecture at 8.30am. Fortunately so far in quantum everything is relatively straight forward as we've done it before. On Tuesday I had the first lectures in Electricity and Magnetism 2 and Geophysics. EM seems like its going to be the hardest of the modules and Geo the easiest. 

I've noticed so far that there are many differences between studying in America and Britain. Firstly there are a lot less people doing physics. In Exeter the class size was about 90 people and at UNM about 15 if your lucky. Secondly Americans prefer using chalk boards as opposed to white boards which I suppose is only a minor difference. Also lectures are a lot more interactive with at least 10% of each module on class participation. Furthermore despite being 20 me and my friends are by far the youngest in our classes (one person in quantum was at least 60). Textbooks are much more expensive as well, one that I brought in the UK new for about £30 is about $170 dollars here, so I'm glad I got it beforehand. 

This concludes this post hope you enjoyed it again and hopefully I will write again soon depending on how busy work gets/ when something interesting happens.

Thanks for reading 

Sam