Saturday, January 20, 2007

Course Registration and the "Shopping" Period

True to Hong Kong's national pastime, the first two weeks of classes have been called the time when students "go shopping" for classes. During this time, we can sit in on as many classes as we like to determine our class schedules without incurring any strange looks from the professor. I used this time to visit a wide variety of courses: a game design course, a java programming course, a Chinese art history course, a contemporary Sino-American relations course, a new media and economics course, a culture in film course, and many others.

Normally, I would not be taking classes, I would be solely concentrating on my research and study of Chinese. However, as an exchange student rather than a study abroad student, I am required to take at least 12 credits at CUHK. Rather than taking 12 credits of independent research/study, I decided to utilize the credits towards courses which I would find both interesting and enriching. The alternative would have been to go befriend a CUHK professor and have him/her agree to be my advisor for the independent research. Since I wasn't so confident that I could achieve such a feat in 2 weeks, I opted to enroll in courses instead, keeping in mind that they are not my main priority here.

Today was the last day to submit our add/drop forms to the OAL office. For postgraduates (that is what they call anyone who has graduated from their undergraduate programs), there is only one deadline at the end of the two weeks.

No comments: