Week 1

At Queen's courses work differently.  First off, they are not called courses, but modules.  You have a couple of lectures every week, but not the standard MWF, TTh, or MW time slots.  These times appear more random, as you can see from my schedule below.  Depending on the area, different modules can have tutorials, practicals, field studies, or screenings.

In a tutorial, you meet once a week, starting Week 2, with several other students and a leader.  At this, everyone discusses what was learned in the lectures previous.  In some tutorials, you are given readings that help you to prepare.  I've never been in a course with anything like a tutorial, so this will be a new experience for me.

A practical is just a lab.  You are given an assignment that you must finish, or nearly finish, while you are a lab.  TA's and tutors are also there to help you with any difficulties during this time.

Field studies are just what they sound like.  I do not have any of these, but Kelsey, my fellow ISA student, has one.  During a field study, the students go out in the field and study.... Simple.

Screenings are also simple.  The professor screens a movie to do with the module!

This semester I am taking three full courses and one half course.  This leaves me with 70 hours, 20 hours a module.  Transferring to the US, this would equal about 17.5 hours since each course 60 full time hours transfers as 15 standard US hours.  Transferring to Mississippi State was a little more difficult since I had to find courses that these modules would transfer as.  Therefore, in MSU's eyes, I will have taken just three full time course adding up to 12 total hours, but at least I'll get all of the courses!

Power, Ritual and Symbol: the View from Anthropology:
The room that we had was too small for our class, so a couple of the late arriving students had to sit on the stairs at the side.  The professor of this module was a very interesting teacher.  He was energetic and fun to listen to.  The first week of this class, we learned about what anthropology is and a basis of what we would learn about for the rest of this class.  The definition for Social Anthropology is as follows:

"The search for an explanation of people’s social behavior and the search for the consequences of this behavior."

As the title of this course eludes, we will be studying all about rituals, along with everything else that has to do with religion.  We will be studying these behaviors from an anthropologist's perspective, which I have never done.  Also, this course will have tutorials, which I have never had before.  This will be a new experience, for sure!

Artificial Intelligence:
This course is a computer science course.  We will be learning all about what makes up an artificially intelligent machine, and how to create one.  We will be learning the logic based programming language PROLOG.  Using this language, the developer just gives logic to the machine to use to answer various questions.  Let's not get into all the computer jargon though!  During the first week, we learned all about what artificial intelligence is.  Here is one idea of what it can be:

“Artificial intelligence (AI) may be defined as the branch of computer science that is concerned with the automation of intelligent behavior.”

Can we really create artificial intelligence?  Was posed to us.  Different view points give different answers of course, but in this class we just learn the basics of what is currently considered artificial intelligence.


Software Development for the Web:
This class is probably the easiest to explain.  We will just be learning how to create super awesome websites!  We will be learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and ASP.Net 4.0.  This is my half course, so it should not be too demanding.

This course will have practicals, but those don't start until week three.  That gives me a couple of weeks off before I have much work for this class.  In practicals, we will just be creating websites, starting very simply of course, and practicing our skills at creating websites.


Human Nature (Philosophy):
I actually missed the first week of this course, since I did not add it until Thursday.  However, since it is obviously past my first week, I have looked over the module guide, and know what the class will be about.  Here is what this guide describes the class as:


"An introduction to some fundamental philosophical problems arising from theories of human nature in the western philosophical tradition. Reference will be made to the ideas and arguments of many important figures in the history of philosophy, including Plato, Descartes, Hume and Kant."

I believe this class will be rather interesting.  Like anthropology, I have never taken a course from a philosophical perspective, and this course also has a tutorial.  Something different about this module is that there is a module convener, the guy who runs the class and grades everything, and a lecturer, the guy who actually teaches the material.  This is the only course that has many assignments.  Biweekly, we have what are called Friday Questions.  The class is split in half, and each week one half turns in a question with a description of this question, and differing answers to it.  We take what we have learned from that weeks lectures and run with our philosophical ideas.  Here is the blog: QUB Philosophy Blog.




Sociology of Work:
I dropped this class to add my philosophy class when I decided that I did not need both it and anthropology since they both count as a social/behavioral science elective whereas philosophy will count as a humanities elective.  Obviously I enjoyed my first week in anthropology more, but I am mentioning this course since I did spend a week in lecture.  I would have learned all about what happens at work, the behaviors of people, the relationships, and more.  However, I am no longer in this class, so don't ask me to describe the sociology of work to you!

Movie Time!

Bernadette
On Monday night of my first week, Paul took all the ISA students to see Bernadette.  This movie was more of a documentary about the life of Bernadette Devlin McAliskey.  She had a radical role during the troubles fighting for civil rights.  She became the youngest MP at the time (at the age of 21), and went to London to plead Northern Ireland's case.  At one point, because she was a leader of the IRSP (Irish Republican Socialist Party), she was attacked in her home.  During this attack, she was shot 7 times, but she lived.  In 2003, Bernadette was barred from entering the United States.  The State Department declared that she "poses a serious threat to the security of the United States", but she insisted that she had no terrorist involvement.  This was a very interesting film about a very dedicated woman.  Research her, I'm sure you could learn alot!