Let Us Get Oriented

Date Written: 24 January 2011

Bright and early, the group trooped onto the IPO bus (International Programs Office) to orientation at K. A. Bursia lecture hall. While each study abroad program runs their own orientation, UG does an orientation as well over two days, taking up most of the morning. It felt like summer camp combined with freshman orientation as the lecture hall reminded me of summer camp at Camp Russell and some of the information was almost spelled for people.

My group already knew about much of what was discussed as our program director and guides have given us a fairly solid foundation and thus far, I probably could have skipped the orientation and would have been okay. However, in talking with kids from some of the other programs (there are about 6 major programs), quite a few had only just arrived and this orientation was their primary one. Those students also seemed to have less support from their director too.

One interesting topic that was brought up is that many lecturers have complained that a certain portion of students seemed to consider themselves tourists first, then students. The orientation speakers spoke ill of this and strongly encouraged us to be students and then tourists. I thought the comparison was a false one as four months is too long to be a tourist, at least in my mind, one should be branded a traveler if one is staying in one place for more than say a month. Not to worry, studying will not fall by the wayside but certainly one should be encouraged to travel too.

According to the Bradt Guide, Ghana is the best place to travel independently due to the plethora of tro tros, state run buses, and the ease of chartering a taxi to take you to longer haul destinations. Plus, many students have never been to Africa and having the ability to travel six hours to Kumasi for 30 cedis ($15) on a nice state bus is rather tempting. Accommodations are easy to find and also cheap so long as one does not expect amenities beyond the reach of the dorms here at ISH (Int’l Student Hostel). Therefore, I will certainly travel so long as my studies are able to be suspended at a less than precarious point. Thus, the point that UG hammered in seemed invalid at a level as I would imagine a vast majority of us would be huddling under the traveler umbrella than cowering under the tourist map.

One thing that was stressed during the orientation was that no special accommodations can be arranged with lecturers (professors) to take the exam at an alternative time even if it conflicts. If you are sick, the examination will be carried out in the UG hospital only which led to an entertaining image of me in critical care for whatever reason with someone pushing a pen into my hand urging me to put something down before the time was up. One broad thing I pulled from the orientation is that because UG is not yet fully digitalized (although we were told this process would be so next semester), deviation from the system is difficult to do and as international students, we were already deviating from the UG structure a rather lot.

One final grip I had with orientation is that students (and it always seemed to be American ones) did not listen and asked questions that were either weird, answerable via Google, or were covered verbatim in the orientation. Listening would be a nice habit to get into over here.

Class Registration

Afterwards, we met up with our guides to go look for classes. It occurred to me that UG uses a system for registering for and scheduling classes that predate the computer similar to what I assume my parents used. All information is posted on notice boards at each department. Thus, one must walk to each department to figure out what classes are being offered, what time, and day of the week. We then register with IPO on Thursday in order to get ourselves into the UG system and to obtain UG identification cards which are the only ID that gets one into an examination. Once completing that step, we then go back to each department to register for the courses we want to take. For the dance class (arts general education requirement), they did not yet post the times, only that the class was being offered and we found this was not uncommon. Thus, it will be an interesting process.

In terms of my own classes, I will take two history classes on African topics, one or two Arabic classes, a dance class to satisfy my art general education requirement, and either a political science course or an international affairs graduate course at LECIAD (The Legon Centre for International Affairs and Diplomacy). I have to talk to the dean there before proceeding.