Blimey O'Reilley's Trousers. I don't even know if I'm supposed to be stressed right now, I'm so confused I can't remember.
So the timetabling thing here is a sham. The technical way things are done here is that you search through the uni website and pick courses before you get here, write them on your learning agreement which is then approved by the international office, then you get here, go to your faculty, find out you're not in a very good faculty for what you want to do after all, read the timetables that are on the walls, and discover that 1) nothing interests you, 2) the ones that look passable have lecturers that mumble, or 3) that the times of class clash with everything else.
And woe betide anyone who wants to take something out of their own faculty.
So I wrote some classes on my learning agreement. I get here, can't find half of them on the wall, assume they've been pulled, pick others, try some out, etc etc. I find one that I really enjoy. Then I discover that I can't take some other modules that I'd picked because they're actually fourth year courses (and therefore very hard apparently), and so I need to find 7 credits from somewhere. Well guess what? EVERYTHING clashes with EVERYTHING. Oh, the other stupid thing here is that I'm trying to count ECTS credits, but Deusto have their own credit system which means they list everything as one credit higher than it is in ECTS. So, things that I thought were 6 credits are actually only 5. Which just meant I was even shorter than I thought (as, of course, no one pointed the credit system out to us... everything just says 'creditos' so I've no idea how we're supposed to know which kind of credits they put on the walls!). To add to the mix, because we were assigned the faculty of Modern Languages, lots of the courses are in English, or in Basque. Neither of which are much flipping good!
The solution to this great big mess? To just take free electives, which are aimed more towards Erasmus students. Literature, Galician, History... very general stuff, but which all fit into a timetable. So, I waved adiós to my favourite theology module (sob) and have just chosen free electives. But even within those, the most interesting ones clashed with my Spanish course, which I can't change. Flipping marvellous.
I went to see the academic coordinator (who practically knows me by name, I've been so much) and she said this was acceptable. But it only added up to 26.5 ECTS. Deusto insist on us registering for 30 ECTS (which is daft, as Lancaster are only going to take my best 22.5 ECTS anyway!) La solución, amigos, is to just write down any old course and to never go. That way, you're registered for 30 but you're doing less.
So, now I've explained the intricacies of the university system here, I bet you're all going to rush to book a year abroad, aren't you? Thought so. Well I now get to write down my courses five times (twice for the uni secretaty, 3 times for the international office - that should give you some clue as to the level of efficiency here). I think I shall take a siesta and hopefully wake up mañana, when of course everything will be just peachy in terms of a timetable. I've got so many pieces of paper scattered about my room that I could paper my wall with crossed-out timetables.
Time to take a chill pill. Hasta luego blogueros (and may I mention that actually speaking Spanish is pretty cool) xxx
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