By allilopez
Although my time here in Brazil is soon coming to an end, I wanted to reflect upon and talk about what it is like to study in a university in Brazil, since I neglected to address it earlier in the semester. The Brazilian university structure and its bureaucracy is vastly different from its American counterpart. Even though I only studied at a Brazilian university for one semester, I can safely say I prefer the American university system. Nonetheless, it was an enriching experience which exposed to some of the hurdles and problems my Brazilian counterparts go through.
Let me just begin by explaining the basic structure of Brazilian universities. Unlike in the US where the school year starts in August, the academic year starts here in January or February after Carnaval. Prior to starting classes their freshman year, students choose a major –International Affairs, Law (yes Law is an undergrad major here), Business, History, etc.- and they follow a strict curriculum with classes only from that discipline. These classes are already set so students have no choice in the classes (from their mayor or disciple) that they will take. Minors and certificates do not exist here and because of the rigid structure, you can only major in one discipline at a time. For the most part the students who you come in with first semester freshman year are the students you graduate.
Moreover, classes are roughly three and a half hours long and are offered in the morning (8:20am-11:55am) and at night (7:30pm -11:05pm). So for example, a Microeconomics class will be offered twice on Mondays only: at morning and at night. This is done because in Brazil (and in Latin America in general), many people work during the day and go to school at night. Consequently, students are only able to take one class a day.
Prior to starting classes at PUC, the staff at CIEE told us to arm ourselves with patience due to the fact that we might not have classes the first week as most students and professors don’t come. The professors and the students know this because the professors communicate with their students through a class email –a shared gmail account which all students have access to-, but exchange students do not know this because the neither the university staff nor the department staff seem to have any knowledge of how to access these class emails. They know that each grade level has one but they don’t know the email address or the password, so they can’t pass it on to exchange students. This often leads to the uncomfortable and awkward situation –which happened to me twice during the first week of school- of showing up to class only to realize after 30 minutes of sitting in an empty classroom and another 30 walking around the university asking the Office for International Students and the respective Department Office, that class was canceled and everyone but you knew. Actually, the two times that happened to me, neither Office for International Students nor the History and International Relations departments seemed to know either.
Até mais gente! (Until next time everyone!)