In pretty sharp contrast to the way my classes at GW were headed with longer and longer papers I have run into a surprising obstacle, maximum word limits. I've always been a little long winded and I know it, but the fact that professors only gave a minimum page requirement or said x number of pages gave me some free space to maneuver. Of course I wouldn't just fill the paper with hot air, everything I would write would be relevant or it would end up cut out during my revisions, but I still had a tendency to end up with a few extra paragraphs if I wasn't too pressed for time.
A good example of this my final paper for my Nationalism in Eurasia class freshman year which was supposed to be 20 pages but ended up with 23 (or 24? I forget) of writing and an additional two for the bibliography. 20 was an outlier but most of my final papers have been listed somewhere in the 10 to 15 range (I think 12 might be the most common but I don't keep records.) In a different case 3 of my classmates and I accidentally wrote a 53 page paper on social security over night although it was only supposed to be 20 to 30. Luckily none of my professors have punished me for my excessive length(or even asked me to control it the next time) but that's where Edinburgh is a bit different.
At the University of Edinburgh papers are a bit shorter. 1500 and 3000 words seems to be the standard. That translates to about 4.5 and 9 pages of size 12 Times New Roman (double spaced of course.) Now that doesn't sound too bad, I've had one class with very short papers before, but the sheer quantity of information they expect us to condense into that limit is what alarms me. Condensing a 500 page book into 1500 words is just daunting. Even that wouldn't be much to complain about except for the penalty for excess words is what adds the pressure.
Every 20 excess words is a point off. 100 excess words translates into 5% of your grade (and I've been told they grade very harshly here already, 70 is an A.) Another difference from home is when assignments are due. At GW most of my essays have been due either at class time (for small classes) or midnight (for larger ones.) At the University of Edinburgh it appears the standard is 12 noon. Personally I prefer a later time so I can finish (and sometimes start) it the night before and proofread it a few times that day but I guess this is just a good excuse to procrastinate less.
Some other differences in the academic environment that I have found since the last post lie in the Spanish classes. Whereas GW puts the classes 3x a week to spread out the contact the University of Edinburgh Goes with two very heavy two hours blocks. Personally I enjoy the spread out contact strategy of GW more and think it helps me stay more in practice than Edinburgh's system. GW's Spanish department was also much more reliant on out of class graded activities than my class here. I liked that because although it was time consuming it guaranteed feedback from someone who actually knew the language versus me looking at at my scribbled work and thinking "I think this looks right."
Another difference I've found in the academia environment is library usage. Although there are always people at Gelman the library in Edinburgh is operating on a whole different scale. Any day that I walk in I can see it mostly full and parts feel flat out packed. That said, I haven't ventured to the uppermost floors yet but I can safely say that the lower floors will feel like Gelman during finals any week of the semester. Personally I've always been perfectly content to work in my room so this doesn't effect me much, its just an observation I've made. One other thing of note is that Edinburgh's libraries are open 24/7 just like Gelman but from what I have been told this is actually a rarity in Scotland.
Overall all of these differences don't effect me too strongly, I do what is asked and I'm , hoping to get good marks for it, they are just things I've noticed along the way but I'll of course write a new post if I notice some thing drastically different with a huge impact. That's all I've got for now, check back next week for a exploration of Scottish slang or something more fun like that.