There's a Lesson to be Learned Here

Whether I wanted to or not, it was inevitable that in my time studying abroad here in Japan I would compare my home university (UCA) and my host university (NUA). So today I thought I'd take a little look at how the classes differ between the two unis. Obviously, I can't compare everyone's timetables and lessons so I'm just going to compare my timetable in UCA with my friend Kato's timetable here at NUA. The reason I'm not comparing it with my timetable here at NUA is that I only had to take five classes in order to get enough credits to pass the year back in England and I wouldn't be able to take a lot of the classes due to my pretty shaky Japanese.

So here is Kato's timetable:
By comparison, my timetable at UCA goes as follows:
Monday       9.00-12.00 Illustration
                      12.00-1.00 Lunch
                      1.00-4.00 Illustration
Tuesday       9.00-12.00 Illustration
                      12.00-1.00 Lunch
                      1.00-4.00 Illustration
Wednesday  Free day/work on my briefs
Thursday      Free day/work on my briefs
Friday            9.00-12.00 Lecture

As you can see, it's vastly different. Kato's timetable consists of a combination of compulsory lessons, not necessarily related to her course, and lessons that she has chosen from a list of relevant options. If you're wondering what that sounds a lot like, it's GCSE's. This seems to be the general formula for university students in Japan; lots of structure and a jam-packed schedule, as opposed to the general formula for university students in England; Lessons for half the week and then being left to your own devices for the other half (which lets be honest, results in either Netflix or drinking). Whilst I think that it's important for university students to be given more freedom than their high school counterparts, so as to learn how to handle their own time, I know that I definitely thrive under structure, and I think I'd enjoy being able to take a variety of lessons as opposed to just one subject all week long, not to say that I don't enjoy illustration, but it's fun learning different things!

What do you guys think?

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