Utrecht and architecture

I sometimes have the feeling that I am too negative about the university. It is just in a Dutchman’s nature to complain about everything. The great things about Utrecht University are eventually taken for granted, which is not a good thing for a blogger like me who is out to give international students a fair look at their possible destination.

Obviously there are many great things I could talk about, but I want to focus on Utrecht’s architecture. Utrecht is situated in the middle of the Netherlands, but it has the Rhine flowing through it. A lot of the buildings next to the river have a lower level just above the water and a main floor where there is no risk of flooding if the water rises.

The Wikipedia page for Utrecht has a lot of pictures and background for those interested. The buildings all look very authentic and most university buildings inside the city center are just renovated on the inside to accommodate a great number of students. One building, Achter Sint Pieter 200, used to be a very big bank and still holds many authentic details while being a very modern building once you get inside.

Inside the city are five churches, which form a Christian cross if conntected on a map. In the center is the Dom, a huge cathedral, with gorgeous details. I believe you are allowed to climb to the top for only a few euros, which is well worth it if you are not too afraid of hights.

What I find really amazing though, is that Utrecht University also has very modern and strange architecture. The university campus, called the Uithof, is just outside of the city, about 20 minutes by bus from the city center. All the university buildings not in the city center are built there and they all look incredibly modern and amazing. The Educatorium, containing two enormous lecture halls, three examination rooms and the biggest cafeteria I have ever seen. It has a slope down for the cafeteria and one up for the lecture rooms. On the right side of the slope is glass so you can look outside, where there is also a slope and several geographical figures decorating the building.

 

 The library, containing more than four million books spread over several floors, looks very modern and is very comfortable to be in. It does not only contain legal texts, but it is shared instead with all departments. If you are anything like me and you regularly feel like branching your research, this library is a gift sent from heaven.

The Minnaert building has a fountain inside of it, which provides a green way of cooling the building. Also, how awesome is to have a fountain greet you between classes? This is a physics building though, so you probably will not spend much time in it. Not that the university minds if you peek inside. If you really get in trouble, say you are doing a case study on laws pertaining to construction provisions.

In short, Utrecht looks awesome. Even if you do not decide to study there, it is well worth it to visit it at least once in your life.

Techno geek FTW

In case you had not noticed, I am somewhat of a nerd. When I introduced myself, I already mentioned that I am always in front of a television or a computer (or both), which has made me very familiar with technical issues. The UU has a computer in every classroom that is attached to a beamer for presentations. It is built into a big box with confusing buttons. Confusing buttons always make me curious.

Unfortunately, it was not until my second year that I really got to play with them. I had a powerpoint and needed to handle the computer. The instruction pamphlet by the machine taught me the basics and the professor present, who was a bit of a geek herself, taught me the finer controls. It is nice to be able to help other students and even other professors when they are having trouble with it.

Anyway, I always carry my laptop with me to classes. This is firstly because I can type much faster than I can write by hand and secondly because digital notes can be distributed much more easily and can be shared online on my blog. Originally I just put them online with the idea of students coming along and discussing and correcting my work. Instead, it seems I am the go-to guy for skipping homework and finding the notes to classes people missed or skipped.

Most classrooms in the UU are fit perfectly for laptop use. Well, as long as there are only half a dozen laptop users. The buildings are pretty authentic and not build with an endless supply of electrical sockets. In fact, I often try to be the first one to enter a classroom so that I can make sure I am seated in one of the four of five seats that have the easiest time getting electricity. Lately I have been bringing an extension cord so that more laptops can be plugged in and I am guaranteed a worry-free class.

I have to say though, the technical assistance is amazing. There is standard documentation for most technical questions (like connecting to the protected wi-fi) and the few times I did have trouble, a quick e-mail to the IT crowd resolved the issues almost immediately. And Wi-fi coverage is extensive; I do not know of even one room in University buildings where I cannot connect easily to it.

Being ill as a student

I went to bed last Sunday with a pounding head ache and a very runny noice. My teeth were hurting and I had a very sore throat. I had not been feeling very well that whole day, but it was not until evening that I really started feeling terrible. The whole of Monday was spent on the couch playing video games to get my mind off of being ill. I still do not feel a hundred percent at the moment, but at least the head ache is gone so I can think clearly again.

I do not know if it is the common cold or a minor flew, but it is very similar to the virus I have been catching roughly annually. It has usually happened at the right time, though I do recall taking one exam with a very runny nose and a slight head ache.

What I want to about today is the policy for ill students. Just like high school, the professors really do not want people to call in sick. Lectures are usually optional, so you are expected to just stay away if you are ill; get someone else’s notes and make do with that. Students are allowed to miss one seminar, though it does not matter whether that is because of illness, tardiness or simply not preparing.

The strangest policy is with exams. You can call in sick and take the test later, but doing so wastes your repair option (the option to take a new exam if you missed all but one seminar and your average grade is between 40 and 55 percent; it allows students who failed the course to have another go at it). Obviously this is still the smart thing to do if you can hardly lift a pen and will not get a grade of at least 40%. But it is a crazy thing to do if you expect your performance will only be influenced a little bit; you are giving up the security of the repair option.

I have always believed that this is the wrong way to do it. These policies seriously hurt the students who are actually ill and feel forced to drag themselves to an examination room because the rules are too strict. It prevents students from getting results that accurately portray their abilities. Then again, it does provide material for a ranting blog post, so there is that.

Being prepared

Last Friday I talked about my master thesis. During the weekend I got an email from my professor advisor to set up a time for the first meeting. I have been fretting ever since about what I should and should not do to prepare for this talk. In two previous blogs I mentioned that it is impossible to be completely prepared for anything, and I wanted to expand on this.

My first year there was a course called introduction to Criminal Law. It was incredibly fascinating and I seemed to have an above average understanding of the material. I summarized the major points and posted the summaries online via the university website and got loads of compliments on how I had helped people pass that course. Meanwhile… I failed with an average grade of just under the minimum of a 5.5 out of 10. It took me a while to figure out what I had done wrong.

Partially it was because I was not used to answering questions in as much detail as was required, but it also had to do with me preparing in a different way. Coming from a background in exact sciences, I had always needed to learn how formulas worked. I had never needed to memorize them. Likewise, I was far more interested in learning how to use particular criminal provision to judge whether a particular behavior is criminal or not, rather than memorizing the names of the four different reasons we punish criminals.

My problem was that I had been prepared to understand the problems without preparing how to quickly and accurately solve them. Even then there is always more to learn and more to do. You can put stickers in your law books to more easily find specific provisions. You can write the names of jurisprudence by the articles and the articles by the jurisprudence. You can memorize summaries of the material and of the jurisprudence, or just memorize the literature itself. But when you get to that stage, where all the information is readily available in your head, you start thinking critically about some of the things you are being taught and, probably out of curiosity, start reading the quoted sources in the literature or reviews of the literature. You might look up other handbooks and start comparing the different points of view. Having an endless amount of time on your hands, you could become more knowledgeable than the professor testing you.

You have to draw the line somewhere. Students do not have an endless amount of time and are allowed to spend time on other things than studying. That may sound like an excuse, but it is the simple truth. A line has to be drawn somewhere and every student gets to decide for themselves where to draw it. As long as they are willing to live with the results, of course.

Master thesis

It has taken me over three and a half years to get here, but I am finally working on my Master thesis. It is weird, because the past years professors and students have told me constantly to prepare for this time. Whenever an interesting subject came up, I was supposed to jot it down so picking a subject would be easier.

It was still hell. A lot of subjects have already been discussed endlessly and specific problems have been discussed to little for a student to say very interesting things about. After thinking about it a lot, I remembered the introduction of a new law that had seemed significant to me at the time: a new law that in a sense introduces animal rights. I could write about how that would alter criminal law.

Except… that is far too vague and practically impossible to investigate exhaustively. After a quick talk with a professor, it turned out I should focus on a few specific aspects, like the legality. That made me also focus on a general provision that unclearly defines a general responsibility to care for all animals. Now that I have started talking with my Professor-Advisor, I have found that I need to focus more on this general responsibility. At the moment I have to change, based on his comments, the introduction and planning I had made. I am having a little bit of trouble with it at the moment because… well, if I knew exactly why I was having trouble with it, I would have already fixed the problem.

The thing is, nobody has ever taught me how to research and write a full thesis. I had some practice with the Bachelor thesis, but that was hardly filled with instructions and not all of the skills are fully transferable. But the more I am planning this massive body of text, the more I am able to cut it up in pieces that I am experienced in writing. I want to know about what kind of behavior becomes criminal according to a certain provision? No idea how to do that. Figuring out whether certain behavior X is criminal… that is Law School 101. So, simply generating a different amount behaviors is the difference between unable to answer a question and being completely familiar in answering it.

I cannot shake the feeling though that I keep having to reinvent the wheel and that a lot more could have been done to show us how to do all this. Then again, that is probably what every student thinks about every situation. If it was supposed to be that easy, there would be a lot more lawyers around.