its not all rainbows and sunshine

bad #1:
So I realized I don’t write much about experiences that aren't generally outstanding, which makes my blog not entirely representative of my time here. I would say 80% of my time is spent doing wonderful things, 15% doing boring things and 5% stressful things.

So, here's a stressful thing:
I'm taking one class at la Universidad de Chile, which is Chile's most famous, prestigious, humongous public university. It’s also a bit more left-leaning and radical than the other school I'm enrolled in-the private catholic one.
So my only U Chile class is called “Ecology, Ecologists and Social Movements” and is taught by this hilarious, Marxist who wears pointy silver suits and rectangle glasses. It only meets once a week and since it’s in the Agriculture dept, takes place at the agriculture/forestry/veterinary sciences campus which happens to be waaaay south of downtown Santiago, a full hour away on public transportation. Coming from the catholic school, it takes me about 50 minutes and 3 metro trains + a bus to get to this class. Thankfully(?) my teacher announced the first day that he would be consistently 30 mins late to class, so I get there right when he does...when he shows up. More so at the public univ than the private, professors randomly not showing up are a fairly common phenomenon. However, if they do this repeatedly, then they have to report it to their faculty and reschedule classes. This can be problematic for exchange students who generally leave right at the end of the semester, often before the makeup classes occur.

After making my hour-long commute and then finding class canceled 3 times, I talked with one of my study abroad program directors, Elsa, in Santiago. She was really concerned about the amount of class the teacher had missed, and the fact that he still hadn't handed out a syllabus! Which, besides being super-useful to me as a student, is also crucial for my study abroad program to have/send to Kalamazoo as proof I'm taking real classes! She told me to email him and politely but doggedly request a syllabus. However, the U Chile website, like any huge bureaucratic organization, is labyrinthine and difficult to understand and after searching high and low I could not find my Prof's email anywhere. I became super frustrated and as a last ditch effort asked my one friend who goes to the U Chile if she had any suggestions. None of them worked out, and finally, talking on facebook she asked me what his name was. "Sebastian Bastias", I typed bitterly. Not realizing she was saving my life, she replied nonchalantly, "Oh, he's my professor too! I have his email right here".

Yea. that's being in rhythm right there.

But then, he gave us our first assignment (only 2 months into the course) that was basically a 5 page paper utilizing class notes and "obligatory readings". What?! I had absolutely no idea there were readings, since he still never gave a syllabus, nor mentioned a course website. Finally I emailed him and asked if he wouldn't mind telling me where to find these readings, and he gave me a website that only works for Agriculture majors...which I am not. On and on, back and forth went the emails. Finally he said he'd email the readings to me, four days before the paper was due, only to find that the lectures turned into gibberish when he sent them to me! After reporting all of this faithfully to Elsa, who was getting more and more angry w/my prof, I also showed the emails to my host mom who was super indignant. Sometimes it’s just nice to have people be angry on your behalf.

When Elsa called the faculty office to complain, it turned out they didn't even know he'd canceled class, let alone have his contact info or a copy of the syllabus. Because they didn't know about all the classes he'd canceled, Elsa's call basically counted as an allegation of misconduct or something, and suddenly they wanted my name in order to confront him!!! This was so not my goal, since despite all the miscommunication and flakiness, he's a really interesting teacher and (verbally) has been really nice and supportive about my taking his class. Plus, I really don’t want/need to be getting professors fired…

So bottomline, I get to class on Tuesday, when the paper is due, and obviously haven't done it. After class I go up to him and explain, your last email came out as gobbledygook and I still need the readings. I offered to go to w/e library had the texts and make photocopies myself, but he said they were scattered around the city in many different libraries and it would be too difficult to round them all up. OY. He recommended I ask a friend for the texts, which was great considering that's the one class I haven’t made friends in, and even random strangers had already left by the time we finished talking. Plus the class only meets once a week and that’s the only time I'm at that campus, so my chances of seeing them elsewhere were basically zero. I was too nervous to remember to ask for an extension, but I think it was pretty clear I'd be needing more time. So, bottomline, now its 2am on Friday and I still haven’t started the paper b/c I still don’t have the readings. At this point I'm not stressed about it anymore b/c a) Elsa's on it, and b) I just don’t care that much! There are a million other exciting things to think about, and my grades don’t count here (at least not in my GPA) so it’s just not worth the energy.

Whew. Ok, that was a long story, I apologize. But at least now my blog can be considered slightly more realistic, gritty, hardcore...I mean here you have the seedy underbelly of Chilean universities... haha, sort of.