The difference between American and English AcademicsAs a person who is new to the whole English system and even newer to the American one I could say that both have their pros and cons. I was just at a talk with some former students from VCU, who were sharing their experience as working people/ freelancing and as a whole what they expected/didn't expect from their life outside university. This made me realize some things about both systems. I will not go in full detail but just going to scrape on some things:
First- American education system in university makes you go to classes every day. This, as it may sound horrible, is rather nice when you get used to the idea of going to bed at 1am and getting up at 7am. Why is it nice? Because unlike in England you can't spend an entire week without getting up from bet but actually motivates you to do work and creates a learning environment and friendly connections. Almost every class you have homework for the next one which again stimulates you to producing more working material. England on the other hand, to me personally, is a place of free will. i am not one to have such strong will to be self-driven and motivated to be left on my own and do work. I understand that this is mostly my opinion and there are a lot of people out there that will disagree with me. I have talked to a lot of students here and they would have actually prefer to have less lectures and be left on their own. This indeed has more pros in the area where students have to go to work and prefer studying at very irregular hours. Again, I am not one of those people. In America you have to travel a lot and because America is 'the land of opportunities' and Everyone knows it's big cities.. where do you think all the hundreds of graduates each year go? To Chicago, New York, Washington, Las Vegas, etc. If you are an artist then you have the right to be frightened by that idea. Knowing that you will be competing with so many more people that would kill to get your job is purely frightening. I do believe that that also exist in England but I have yet to see it. From what I know a lot of artist tend to go to London but it doesn't seem as bad as what it is here. maybe it's all my imagination but on this topic i would prefer to be working in England. As a whole i think that people in america tend to be friendlier which is not something that big but it does help build a better learning environment. Or maybe it's just the weather to blame for the gloominess of the English nation. I can probably continue to talk on this topic but I will stop for now. There are other racial/political/migrational/finantional topics that need to be mentioned but that goes way too deep.
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