A Rough Week

Sunday 8 November 2009 10:27 AM

I’ve officially been in Tanzania for a month as of November 5th and generally I would write up some reflective post about all that has happened since I first left my home in Portland what seems like forever ago but I have been really distracted by so many other things that have going on around here recently. Like I last wrote, classes didn’t actually start on Monday of Week 1 like they were supposed to and even Week 2 got off to a bit of a slow start, but once it got going it started going fast. I have had to juggle my schedule so much in the last few days and struggled with a lot of confusion and disappointment. I’m coping with the realization that my initial hopes were incredibly ambitious regarding the course schedule. When I first saw the course catalog, I had well over 30 classes that I thought would be so cool to take and I thought it would be so hard to have to pick and choose because they all sounded so cool. It’s really hard and a bit idiotic to make assumptions about a course based on only the course title which only about two to seven words long, but I may have neglected this fact early on. When I went to see which courses of those 30 were actually being offered this term, I found out it was probably not even nine of them. Among those nine, there were way too many overlaps and conflicts with lecture times so it wouldn’t even be possible to have some configurations with them. Additionally, we are only released from lectures at five ‘til (or so the official policy says but I’ve had a lot of classes go until five after so far) and this campus is much more difficult to navigate in a short amount of time than UBC or UO. It’s also good practice to arrive to class early to get a seat up front because most of the instructors speak with an accent that can be hard to understand and they also talk really quietly so you’re essentially screwed if you end up in the back. This combination made my “perfect” schedule collapse even further and things were looking much bleaker.

I still actually don’t know which classes I will be taking for the rest of the term and this is a bit bothersome because I can’t even write about all of these schedule woes in past tense. I have until Friday to decide which seems to be approaching at rocket speed because I only got more confused about all of this as the week went on. I know for sure that I have to take Kiswahili and also our special CIEE 1.5 credit class so that has helped narrow things down but my problem now is that my pool of courses to select from is getting too narrow. It’s really hard to write about this and I’m kind of all over the place but there are just so many flaws and difficulties with their system here that I can’t even write about one bad thing at a time because so many problems come to mind at once. For example, the course schedule was still changing on Monday of last week and it only takes one change to create a conflict and destroy your whole schedule. I know I’m going to forget about a lot of things because it’s giving me a headache just thinking about them all and I didn’t just write them down in a list. Things are so easy in the US when they create their master timetable six months in advance and classes are lined up so that they occur at the same time and in the same classroom every other day. Here my classes are held with no specific pattern what so ever in terms of time or location.

One reason for all of this stress is that I’m trying to take a diverse course load with classes from Political Science, Sociology, Kiswahili, History, and Development Studies instead of all in one major. A department can make it so that all of their third year classes are offered at times that don’t conflict but because lectures for classes are just held at random times throughout the week, there are so many conflicting times or impossible distances to walk in five minutes so I can only really get a schedule that works with about three classes. This is so far off from my original list of about 30 classes obviously and I’ve kept searching for more classes throughout the week, probably about another 30 that could be interesting and it’s hard to even get one class of that list of 30 that is actually being offered and doesn’t conflict with the other ones. On top of that, Ken failed to remind us until midway through last week that under the terms of our CIEE contract, we have to take one class explicitly about East Africa or Tanzania which we all thought was going to be much easier than it actually is. Every time we think we have things figured out, some new information comes to the table and then it’s right back to the drawing board. So frustrating. Ken also failed to remind us until Friday that we need to have full-time student status which he says is at least 17.5 credits here. That means at least six classes and we still have his 1.5 credit class once a week too. At UBC which is also on semesters we could only take a maximum of 18 credits in my first year so I find it hard to believe that the full-time student here has to take at least half a credit less than the maximum. I’m going crazy.

That’s actually something I’ve been saying all week. It was a very untouchable week where I just kept saying “don’t test me,” “I’m going crazy,” and so on. It’s been very tense and every time I think I have a new plan worked out, it falls to pieces. I only have until Friday to figure it out too because that’s the official end of the add/drop period for CIEE before they mail our course listing back to our advisors at home. I planned to just take classes that I heard from other students were really good and that has helped me find one awesome class to take – a sociology class that’s better than any sociology class I’ve taken at University of Oregon. However, what I’ve found is that there are very few classes people have gone to and enjoyed or had a good feeling about or they conflict with other classes I have to take. Also, I’m already behind in readings and assignments for this Sociology class which is only causing me more stress because if I go to other classes this late in the game, I’ll have to catch up so I’ve just been wasting time and stressing out this last week. I really hate this and it has caused me immense stress, confusion, and every other negative emotion.

I think I’ve exhausted myself writing about that topic even though there is so much more frustration that I could talk about with it. The reality of my bad week though was that I was already dealing with a lot of other tough things at the same time and it was just too much to handle. I could tell I was entering into the homesick phase of my journey before last week even started and I have been thinking about some other things that I don’t feel like writing about publicly here but were definitely heavily on my mind all last week. They still kind of are but it’s not nearly as bad now as it was. As if that wasn’t enough to throw me though, trying to figure out courses here (even just the format and expectations of classes – I forgot to write about that but I actually did end up in some classes) completely took me far away from the comfort of being here that I was starting to feel. It was different dealing with all of this new stress when I was just starting to get adjusted and so my expectations I had formed were falling apart. There was just too much stuff to deal with all at once. I also have a roommate now and even though I really like him, I no longer feel like I have any personal space anywhere on campus or in this country to just be alone and try and process things. Everything just sort of got bottled up and on Friday I finally just sort of couldn’t take it anymore and I broke down. I was well aware that I wasn’t enjoying my time here and I needed a new attitude fast because this is something I’ve been waiting to do for a long time and I’m going to enjoy it, dammit. So it was nice to just let loose and get everything out which I thought was completely necessary. I’m feeling significantly better ever since I bottomed out and my attitude is once again positive. It’s even more so positive towards some things, like living in a big city, than it was before so it feels like I’ve been reborn in a way.

There’s been so much thought and pressure put into this study abroad year because I feel like I’ve been planning on it for me whole life. Looking back now, I can tell that leading up to my departure, I had so many thoughts about how this was going to be, from wanting to be super prepared and well planned to just winging everything when I got there but being here is really not any different except that I’m here now. I really want to make this count and do this right but I have no idea what that entails or how to make the most out of this journey. Every step is another fork in the road. How am I supposed to act in this situation? How am I supposed to associate with? How do I maximize this trip and make it the most worthwhile and mind-altering event in my life? Is it unfair to even put that much pressure on my everyday life here? I’ve been doing what I usually do when I’m in this situation and just ignoring these questions to just live my life the way that I find myself doing. I prefer to go with the flow for the most part instead of trying to create something significant out of nothing but I can’t help but wondering if I’m just going to spend a year here and not actually feel any differently by the time I’m done. Like I said, I’ve waited for this for a long time and I don’t want to let a second go to waste. When I have bad weeks like I just did, I can’t help but question if I’m squandering my time here because I should be enjoying every second. This is what I wanted right?

I hope all of this sort of makes you understand what it’s like to be in my head right now because there is never a second here where there is a shortage of thoughts in my mind or things to be considered.