Semester Begins and Signing up for classes

The semester began last week, but not much had happened by the time I posted and I wanted to write about my travels. But now it is time to write about more serious things, like classes. It's less fun to write about, a definite need to know if you are going to study in Konstanz. The system for signing up for classes is completely different here than it is in the US, and so is the credit system and many other things

Firstly, I will go into the process of signing up for classes. Each department of the university has its own way of signing up for classes, which is extremely confusing. For example, the sociology department requires that you email the instructor of the course before the beginning of the semester to register for a course, but the international office offers classes that you register for just by showing up the first day and signing up. The language department, through which you will take classes if you study German language, automatically registers you for an assigned course after GO Konstanz ends. Many departments seem to operate like the international office, where you simply show up on the first day, and then email the professor afterward. It is completely a matter of luck which classes you actually get into. I did not make it into several that I was interested, because way to many people showed up. So plan to try and get into more classes than you need. But once you are registered for the class, that does not actually mean you are registered. You sign for exams on another website, called STUDIS, and this is the real registration. If you do not sign up for classes on this sight, you will not get a grade for the class and it will not show up on your transcript. It's quite a mess to get classes through this system, and I think the NAU way of signing up for classes is much better, especially because you know for certain which classes you are going to take to fulfill your requirements. There is the advantage that you do not have to register on STUDIS for most classes until two months into the semester, which gives you a lot more freedom in your studies. Not registering for a course on STUDIS will not impact your transcript, apparently.

The credit system is also quite different than at NAU. Here, they use a system called ECTS, which I think stand for European Credit Transfer System. It is used throughout much of the EU so that it is easy for them to transfer credits, since people move between countries so much. 2 ECTS credits equals 1 from NAU, so a 6 credit class here is a normal 3 credit class at NAU. Many classes offer the option of getting 4 or 6 credits, depending on the amount of work that you want to do. I am planning to go for 6 credits in my classes. I should also note that the language classes are 8 credits, so 4 NAU credits.

Classes here seem to meet less often. All of mine only meet once a week, but German which meets twice a week. But that is still exactly half of what I would expect at NAU. The amount of reading that is assigned seems to be a bit more than at NAU, but really does not equal the work of a whole other day of class each week. So it is possible to take more classes here at once, if you really want.

I have to say that these last two weeks were a total mess in terms of signing up for classes, because I was not anticipating not being able to get into so many classes. This meant that I had to scramble a bit to sign up for other classes to make sure I could get what I needed. So be prepared for that, and don't do what I did.

A view of the inside of the university liberary, which is a complete maze. But it puts the NAU liberary to shame in terms of volume of books, anespecialy in the humanities. It has books in multiple languages and swell. But the best feature is that it has bean bags and couches so that you can take naps.