Hey everyone!
I heard the sun has been shining brightly in the Netherlands the past couple of days. Here on the other hand, it has been snowing.
Luckily, last week the weather was a lot better which gave me a chance to see the Sandhill Cranes. The Sandhill Cranes are birds that, in spring, pass through the state of Nebraska on their way to Syberia. At this moment, there are literaly thousands of cranes in the area around Kearney. Last week friday, dr. Davis took me to the fields outside of Kearney to see these amazing birds. They are a lot bigger than I had expected and they are very graceful. It was just an amazing sight. I put some pictures of them on my weblog. I also included a picture I downloaded from the internet, because it was hard to get really close to the cranes.
Last week tuesday the residence hall next to us gave a blacklight party. It was a great party. I had a lot of fun, going dancing with my friends.
Then yesterday (thursday) we went for donuts again at 1 in the morning. I put some pictures of this weekly event on my weblog too.
Next to these fun activities, I basically spent my time with a lot of studying (2 exams which I passed with 95.5% and 98%) and just hanging around playing pool and watching movies.
Furthermore, my parents told me that they got a lot of questions about the university system here. Because this system is very different from the Dutch university system, it's often hard to explain, but I'll give it a try.
UNK, just like the Roosevelt Academy, works with the Liberal Arts & Sciences system. This basically means that the students have a lot of freedom in choosing the classes they want to take. At UNK these classes range from 100 to 400 level (so 4 levels in total). The 100-level classes are the easiest and the 400-levels the hardest.
Furthermore, the Roosevelt Academy (RA) is a pure Honors college. This means that the students who graduate from RA recieve a bachelor diploma that's 'higher' than a regular bachelor diploma. UNK is not a honors college: it has a Honors Department within the college. This means that the classes at UNK are not automatically honors-level classes. At the 100- and 200-level UNK offers honors classes that are specifically for honors students. At the 300- and 400-level there are now honors classes. At these levels, honors students are given the choice of an Honors-Option. This H-option means that the student will get an extra assignment, that the rest of the 'regular students' in the class don't have to do. This assignment is usually something that allows the student to get deeper into the class material or to work on material that is not discussed in class.
Every professor at UNK has his/her own way of teaching, so it's hard for me to really tell you something specific about that.
I hope this clarified the teaching system at UNK.
If there are more questions, please let me know :).
