Being away on exchange makes it easy to forget the studying part of “studying” abroad. Not to sound cheeky, but I feel relieved when I have a lecture during the day. Living in a college town like Utrecht comes with a paralyzing number of opportunities to explore and have fun. At least during lectures you can focus on a single goal, like listening to the professor and trying to understand what he is saying.
I have class with both Dutch and international students, but mostly with the Dutch. The classes I take are in English, but if no international students are present, then Dutch will be the language of instruction. And just like in San Diego, it’s mandatory for students to participate in experiments if they study something related to psychology. Foreign students are exempt from this since the instructions are all in Dutch. No worries there, because that means I get to take a nice hour-long coffee break in one of the open-air cares around town.
For the most part, the university trusts the students to handle the work by themselves. There’s no hand-holding, guidance, or even much support here — the older students will criticize that at times. Support for international students will often come from the student community and not from the university administration.
The Dutch use numbers instead of letters to evaluate student performance. Grades go from 1-10 with single decimal points in-between instead of an A-F scale like in the United States. The scale goes as follows:
10 is for God.
9 is for the Professor.
8 is for the Student.
10’s are extremely rare. Getting a 10 on anything other than a multiple-choice exam means absolute perfection, and well, most people know that is unattainable.
An 8 is considered an exceptional grade, and a 7 is enough reason for celebration. According to the grade conversion chart offered by my home university, an 8 is just an A-. Tell this to the average over-achiever in the University of California system and they’ll be sure to have a panic attack. If preserving your GPA is your main priority, perhaps a Dutch university is not the best choice.
Keeping in line with Dutch transparency, grades are publicly posted with your student I.D., so everybody can see what everyone else got. Foreign ID numbers have one less number than the Dutch IDs, and there’s a stark difference in the average grades between the two. But it’s almost expected (and dare I say, encouraged) to have grades drop during an exchange year. You didn’t travel so far away just to camp in the library and grind your nose into the books, as gorgeous as the library is. And it seems that the professors are sympathetic to that, although some more than others.
My favorite part about the lectures is that there is a ten-minute coffee break halfway through each ninety minute period, just before your attention starts to wane. Other than that, the lecture format is similar to the public universities in the U.S., with the teacher speaking uninterrupted to a distracted audience. I have yet to see a class size exceed 100.
But lectures are not the main focus at the university here — small group discussions, tutorials, and practicals are. These discussions are usually more interesting than the actual lecture itself. Tutorials and practicals are scheduled for up to three hours, and often involve the students giving presentations and leading discussions. Some classes even have students responsible for leading a two-hour lecture.
The Dutch emphasis on group work takes time to get used to. Here, even written reports are done in your werkgroep. Presentations and projects are all done in groups, and thus, are graded as a group. It’s much different from the American emphasis on individual work, but if you have a lovely partner, then the group work is very enjoyable.
Professors and assistants introduce themselves by their first name, and the students address them by their first name. Just two days ago, after noticing that half the class was absent during the small-group discussion, I asked the professor:
Kasper, did you skip classes when you were younger?
Oh, yes. I skipped gym and would go to the arcade with my friends. I thought it was completely normal until I went out.
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The emphasis on public discussion and collaboration while studying is bound to put you out of your comfort zone if you are used to the American public school system. After years of being told that written reports must be your work and yours alone, the Dutch system takes a while to get used to.
Still, California would do well to borrow some of these practices. At the very least, we would have fewer students falling asleep at their desks.