In most of my classes, it was difficult to distinguish international students from the German students. This was because most of my classes were large and conducted in English. However, in my small seminar classes, I noticed that teachers really embraced the international presence and used it as learning examples. I took a class called Media and Democracy which was a very small seminar of 5 students. There were 3 American students, one Dutch, and one German. The class was focused a lot on American politics and media. However, most classes left plenty of room for discussion. Hearing from the two non American students was really interesting. I felt as though I already knew a lot of the core materials of the class, so hearing how politics differs in the Netherlands and Germany was really cool. We came to the consensus that the US has too little political parties, and the Netherlands has too many (they even have a party for animals.) In another small block seminar that I took used the international examples for learning as well. The class was about service dominant logic management. I was the only American in the class, and had no idea that there was a difference between American service logic, and the rest of the world. On the first day of class, we learned that there are three main types of service logic, Nordic, American, and French. The type that we would be learning about in class was Nordic service logic. At first I thought that this was going to be pointless for me to learn about, but then I realized it was quite a unique learning experience. I don’t know when else I could ever learn about a different type of service culture. Listening to the other exchange students’ experiences was a helpful tool for me to understand this type of management.
In my large classes, I found it helpful to surround myself with other international students in class. Since we weren’t used to the norms of German university lectures, it was nice to have each other to learn with. We were all a bit confused when the other German students either clapped or knocked on their desk at the end of class, but by the end of the semester we were used to it. University life was an interesting conversation to have amongst the international students. I learned that multiple choice Scranton tests are not used everywhere. My exams in Germany were all 90 minutes and hand written. My Norwegian friends explained to me that their exams are usually about five hours long and they are expected to produce a text regarding one question or topic.
