Now that classes have officially
come to an end and we are well underway with final exams, I have some extra
time to catch up on blog posts about my recent adventures. The last two weekends of April were spent
traveling and visiting some of my “must see” sights before I leave at the end
of May. As soon as I returned from my
travels, I have to get down to business to prepare for my first round of final
exams which I have now completed three of my total five. Because the University of Ghana has a final
exam period that spans from May 4th to May 27th (as well
as a week of revisions from April 30th to May 4th), my
finals have been fairly spaced out and I now have one more on the 16th
and one on the 25th. I was
really nervous for my exams because, unlike at Pitt where I have gotten used to
the process, I had no idea what to expect at a University that approaches academics
quite differently as far as I am concerned.
So far I have been pleasantly surprised at the assumed success of my
exams; however, the grading system here is very harsh and I do not fully know
what to expect in that regard.
My first final was a
practical performance for Traditional African Dance, which took place during
revision week and was by far the most nerve-racking testing experience I’ve had
in a long time. The dance class was
probably my favorite class of the semester and although there were always days
when I felt like I had two left feet, I always tried my hardest to learn the
dances to the best of my ability. For the
final, we had to perform two dances—one was a war dance, the other was a
celebration of life cycles. The war
dance was my least favorite of the semester because it was far less exciting
and interactive than any others we learned, but I still mastered the moves and
felt mildly comfortable about the performance.
Unfortunately, this particular dance requires one to have a keen ear for
the drum patterns that dictate the order, length, and degree of the dance
movements. Personally I found that this
was a real challenge and I could not differentiate the different drumming
patterns for the life of me, like I could with our other dances. My performance group consisted of myself and
3 other international girls, all of whom were apparently in the same situation with
the lack of awareness of the drum transitions, so it was not our best
performance by any means. I was unhappy
about this because I felt like I tried so hard every class, and I really hope
they take that into consideration when evaluating us, but we will see. Despite this, the second dance went
flawlessly and I was even able to throw in some cartwheels during the freestyle
section to “showcase my youthfulness” as the professors asked.
Yesterday, I had two
more finals—one at 7:30 AM and the second at 3:30 PM! The first was an African history class about
colonialism and nationalism and I am confident in my demonstration of my
knowledge, especially because the class had prepared me better than any other
throughout the semester. After 2.5 hours
of writing essays and a few shorter answer questions, I needed a little mental
break before my next exam. The next exam
was on the music of North Africa and I had no idea how to begin to approach
studying or what to expect on the test. Like
most of the courses at the University of Ghana, my music class did not have any
textbooks, but we were also without any photocopied packets of readings which
my other courses did provide. Due to
circumstances which I do not entirely understand, my class only met five times
over the course of the semester, and only three of those times were lectures
taught by our professors (the others were an exam and a presentation). I acknowledge the fact that I did not choose
to study abroad to get the exact same educational experience as I would have at
Pitt, but situations like this are one of my many academic frustrations that I have
encountered here. Overall, I think I did
as best on the exam as I could have given the about of lecturing and
information that we acquired this semester.
Additionally, the style
of teaching and learning here is very different than what I am used to and I do
not thrive in this environment. The classes
are usually quite large, but even in the eight person class I had, the
professors do not engage discussion or promote critical thinking and
analysis. Instead, in almost every
course I took, the professor read aloud to the class from his typed up sheets
of paper which either came directly from a textbook on the subject, or an
encyclopedia. I observed how the
Ghanaian students handled this bombardment of verbatim information, and discovered
that they write down every single thing that the professor reads with no
intention of extracting only the valuable information. This came as a shock to me, because in the US
I have been taught to focus on the critical information since a very young age—much
time is spent on teaching kids how to sift through paragraphs of reading to
highlight the main ideas and we even had standardized testing on the skill. This has been hard for me throughout the
semester (I have even been asked by a professor if I was actually taking notes
because I was not writing as much as the other students), and especially when
it comes to examinations where you are expected to regurgitate the abundance of
information instead of prove your comprehension of the topic.
Like I said, I chose to
study in a foreign country and I have to accept all of the cultural differences
I will encounter, including a style of education that I do not particularly
care for or find valuable. However, part
of studying abroad is to learn things about yourself that you would not have discovered
if you stayed within your comfort zone and didn’t push your boundaries. Even realizing things like how you best
absorb and learn information in school makes this experience worthwhile, and it
is something that I can use to be more successful in the future!
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