During my time in Shanghai, I of course also went to University. Some might forget this reading my blogs about Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Hong Kong, the constant parties and excursions I plan with my friends and fellow exchange students. However, one needs to consider something very important when on exchange. You have a lot of spare time!
When on exchange, and you travel to a country far away enough you leave everything behind. Your girlfriend, your family, your friends, your sport and even your own stuff! Keep in mind you can only bring a certain amount of kilo’s with you on the plane! So you spend hardly any time with them, this gives you so much time to do all the other stuff. Spending your days on the internet, simply browsing and looking at video’s or pictures is also over. For the internet in Shanghai was so drastically slow, it makes it so time consuming you simply leave it be.
University life is very different from in the Netherlands. The classes are hands on and you really need to prepare. Part of the grade ranging from 20 to 50 percent of the grade includes; class attendance and class participation. This means you need to answer questions and show up for class. This does not automatically count for all lectures but it does for the majority. Some teachers give out surprise quizzes, which you need to complete before you leave. Its mainly done to check attendance but the quizzes are marked and affect your class participation grade!The university takes up very little time as far as lectures are concerned. For every class there is only 1 lecture a week which consists of 2 hours in a smaller classroom with roughly 30-40 students. We exchange students always sit at the front because the Chinese students always arrive earlier than we do and occupy the back rows. They do this because most of them simply sleep during lectures. The most memorable phrase I will probably hear in my life is when our lecturer said: “And now a question for the exchange students because all my Chinese students are sleeping.” We looked back and indeed all of them were heads down on their desks!
On the one hand I was pleased by this approach it meant that for every class I was prepared and I prepared my slides in advance and even came up with interesting questions. However, seeing as we only have 1 lecture per week there is a lot of homework! Nearly every week we receive homework for each class. This needs to be handed in 2 days before the next class and needs to be comprehensive. I remember our first assignment which was relatively easy and we worked in a group of 5 exchange students. We thought we would put in some effort and wrote an extensive paper consisting of 5 pages of solid text. It turned out that in the end we had written quality work but we had just written the minimum that was expected.
Teachers give homework as a guideline, it is expected that students add to the homework and give it their own twist. One needs to look for additional sources and questions that might arise and follow up on those. It’s oké to be wrong but one needs to put in a lot of effort. The teacher does not inform you how many pages or words need to be written and just tells you to do your best. We thought this to be strange because the Chinese, stereotypically, prefer to have direct tasks. However, they also like to excel and over achieve, by not having guidelines they can keep working on a paper endlessly and therefore score points. A good example of this is when I was working in a group with me being the only foreigner, we had finished our paper on time. However, the teacher was ill so she moved up the deadline. I was happy because this meant that we would not have homework for next week. But apparently I was wrong! My Chinese students wanted to improve and build on our current work, while I thought we were done. This is a completely different approach as to what we are used to in the Netherlands!
This whole mentality takes some getting used to but in the end it becomes part of you. You no longer limit yourself to the assignment; you start to think outside the box. What else could we consider, what else should we take into account, what other angle could we look at this from. These are good qualities to master. The main flaw of the Chinese is their understanding of the English language, I would have to rewrite and correct their work every time. But they would give me less work to do in return. Also my Chinese colleague students, even though they strive to do so, have problems thinking outside the box. My main task within groups was to give that different angle we were looking for to make our project stand out. Additionally I would present most of our presentations because presentation skills (as one can see in the picture) are far below European standards!!!
The exams differ immensely from being very analytical to being completely vague and focused on opinion. One exam would be easy and the other extremely difficult, so it is impossible to ask me whether it is easier or harder in China. Overall, yes you are more involved in the subject because of all the homework. But you have to still learn the concepts and theories and analyze new cases. Exams are taken in the same classrooms and sometimes the classes are overcrowded as repeaters join us to retake the exam. In one exam students would take desks outside the classrooms and other would sit on the floor! You might not believe this but trust me, it is true!
Overall I believe that a mix between the Chinese and European learning would be best. To have more focus on homework, class participation and attendance, being taught interactively in smaller classrooms is better in my opinion. However, there is need for more ‘contact’ between the course and the students. Meeting only once a week it too minimalistic, even though students spend more time together working on assignments the supervision of a teacher is beneficial. So it boils down to the setup we have at UvT with one large lecture and one additional interactive lecture, combined with smaller weekly homework assignments and preparation.
I do say this with some caution, for many students would disagree with me. In Holland we prefer to study at our own pace. Relax and do what is required during the year and a month before the exams really dig into the material. But with the amount of free time we had in Shanghai that is simply not possible, we needed the homework and surprise quizzes to keep us in touch with the university besides the weekly lecture.
In the end my grades for all my courses, the ones in the Netherlands which I followed long distance and the ones I followed in China were drastically higher than the average grades I managed to obtain in previous years. This might be because I have ‘less’ distractions and am more focused and busy with the material or because I’ve aged another year and become more serious, I don’t know. But especially my parents were really pleased! I followed two courses long distance and 6 courses at SJTU. This is a lot more than my fellow exchange students who mostly took only 2 or 3 courses. But in the end I was happy seeing as it provided a responsible way to kill time! In the end I decided to reduce the workload and drop one of the courses at SJTU due to the fact that it took up too much time and was not too interesting for me. But I did see the other, in total 7, courses through. I still have to wait for my final exam marks for 3 courses in Shanghai and I still need to take the exams for the 2 courses in The Netherlands.
All in all I am pleased with my academic achievements in Shanghai, China. I can strongly recommend it to anyone who is even ever so slightly interested in finding out how real Chinese students work and study. However be prepared for some drastic changes! For example don’t expect to be able to study in the Library. The library is used by students to sleep in during summer and winter because the library is air-conditioned and their dorm rooms are not!!!
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