This Is the Way We Go to School

Trip Start Sep 07, 2008

148

Trip End Dec 09, 2008

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Flag of Greece Athens, Greece
Wednesday, September 17, 2008

We've all survived the first week of classes. Students are required to take Ancient Greek Monuments, Greek Language, and Intercultural Communication. They have the option to also take Modern History of the Balkans, my persuasion class, and my rhetorical criticism class.

The classroom is packed during the required courses. Here's a shot of all 26 students just before our first Monuments class began. I also took a few pictures of our professor Indy as he guided us through the Acropolis trip the other day.

I've been walking around muttering "Thucydides, Thucydides" under my breath for two days as part of my homework for Greek class. Our professor, I'll call her Gina because that's close to an English transliteration of her Greek name, has assigned us to pronounce three lines of Greek words, and I am trying to wrestle my tongue into getting both the sounds and stresses in "Thucydides" (which in Greek sounds like "thoo-kee-THEE-thees") right.

Teaching my own classes has gone very well so far. It will be a challenge because instead of upper-division communication majors who are required to have a background in foundational communication concepts before taking my classes, I have students from all sorts of majors with no foundation in communication at all

The whole gang on the first day of school

. Plus we have a library of books about Greece, but not necessarily about communication concepts or modern Greek issues, so I've had to design assignments that are much lighter on research and heavier on eyewitness experience than I'm used to. But one of the things I'm here to learn is how to "roll with the chaos" of Greece. The students seem enthusiastic about what they're going to learn.

I think every single student brought a laptop, and so before class you can see the students hooking into the WiFi in the classroom building. Quite a few have webcams clipped to the top of their laptops so they can chat live in real time with their significant others back home. If you're not familiar with the wonders of Skype, I should add that this international videoconferencing is FREE for both sides of the conversation. Technology is really astounding. Next year, I'm expecting my flying car.

Another interesting iteration of technology is what happens to photographs in the Facebook age. When a student snaps a picture, let's say in front of Athena's olive tree on the Acropolis, you no longer ask him to make you a print or even e-mail you a copy. Instead, you just wait until the photographer posts the pictures up on Facebook that night for everyone to see. And he will also identify everyone in the photo with an electronic name "tag," so that Facebook can use the tagging system to gather all the pictures you're in, regardless of who took them or who posted them. Then of course you post comments on all the pictures of your Facebook buddies, and you can read the public commentary of others. Very convenient but also very scary, as I just lost any illusion of control over my own image on the internet.

The group is big, 26 diverse students. Each student is really a wonderful person. I have witnessed many acts of student thoughtfulness, generosity, and gallantry this week (the sushi restaurant was only the beginning). Yesterday, the students in my Crit class decided amongst themselves to shoulder three times the amount of work in order to solve a scheduling conundrum and have the opportunity to work with each other instead of alone. Astonishing.