Today I rose well before sunrise to make it across Madrid to make it to my 8:30 class. Note to self: I do not like early classes. Even less so when there is a commute involved. It was cold and dark when I left, but the early class is the Spanish Painting in the Prado class, so I guess it's worth it. I felt very existential as there were more university students than I've ever seen at one time in my life (not true, I've been to college football games) flooding out of the Metro stop.
That one is with Reunidas, the North American consortium of universities. The professor kept apologizing for talking too quickly when in fact she was speaking muy lentamente. I'm pretty sure almost no one has art history experience of any kind.
The second class of the day (after inhaling a café con leche) was Hispano-American Literature I. The professor was easy to understand, and we are covering "conquista to liberation movements,"which is not my favorite literary time period, but it will have to suffice. She let us out early so I had another café con leche and basked in the sun.
My third class was Goya. I'm not really sure the class made much of an impression on me because she only kept us about five minutes. There were a lot of adults in the class. There may be potentially more than 5 Reunidas students, in which case there will be a lottery I will most likely lose.
Then it was time to go to Somosaguas, the political sciences campus. And my day went downhill...
I caught the bus going in the wrong direction.
Immediately upon setting foot on Somosaguas territory, I felt sad and dejected. The building was a prison. The students are threatening looking and so far to the left they make me look like a neo-con.
I had something to eat in the cafetería, which was infinitely more depressing than the ones I've eaten in on the main campus.
I decided that I wanted to avoid being there until 9:30 p.m. so I decided to shop around for suitable earlier classes. I scribbled down a classroom number and ran. I ran into Ryan, another Georgetown student, and when I told him my destination he said he wanted to take the same class, so we went in together. It was nice to see a friendly face.
Then the professor hands out a syllabus for psycho-sociology something so we bolt because it's obviously the wrong class. We re-check the schedule, finding it incredulous that we both wrote down the wrong room. We can't believe our luck when we make it into the right classroom just before the professor.
Until he starts to talk. He has a terrible lisp, and it is impossible for us to understand him. Not even the Spanish students bother to take notes.
We figure the next class has to be better. Somehow, I WROTE DOWN THE WRONG CLASSROOM AGAIN. No harm done, and the professor doesn't have a lisp, so all seems to be going well. The professor directs a question to Ryan and when he answers in accented Spanish, the professor asks whether he is español or Erasmus (the European exchange program I want to be a part of). When the answer is that he is from Georgetown, the professor smirks, says, "I see," and re-directs the question to a Spanish student, insinuating Ryan couldn't have understood him.
Soon, he doesn't even ask me a content-related question, just whether I am part of Erasmus (what, didn't I look Spanish?), then whether I am part of the University of California (they have an agreement with Complutense separate from Reunidas). He ignores me completely when I respond that I am also from Georgetown and the flush in my cheeks and nausea don't go away for the rest of the class.
My next two government classes were actually enjoyable and I guess I'll be sticking with them. Perhaps it is too much to ask for all of my classes to be on two days, be at two different campuses, fit within an eight-hour day, AND be with tolerable professors. The first government class was Electoral Analysis and Behavior, basically recycling the mathematical section of Langenbacher's CPS class that I liked. The second was International Organizations, an international relations course with a professor who came highly recommended from Georgetown and likes Georgetown students. There are a lot of international students, all Erasmus or from other Spanish universities, which should make the class interesting. Also, proudly, my Spanish is not the worst.
So, I'm stuck with the schedule because I'm the most attached to the first and last classes of the day. At the end of the day, I was tired, cold, and hungry, very similar to how I felt at the beginning except also much more beaten down.
I'm upset that basically one professor and the feeling that I am too much of an outsider at Somosaguas really ruined my day. I don't understand why the professor is so averse to having Georgetown students in class. It's a second-year course, whereas the other two I attended were specialized fifth-year courses. I also feel boxed in. To come here and directly matriculate, Georgetown makes us have a certain Spanish proficiency. They require us to take one Reunidas class, which is too easy, and forbid us from taking more than one. There is a cap on the number of Reunidas students in the Facultad de Filosofia and Letras. In other facultades, we can't take first-year courses. Frankly, I think I probably belong in a first-year Spanish Political System class but I can't take it. I'm stressed from my day. But I've got to go to bed so I can do it all again tomorrow...
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