La Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

A 5 minute walk to the metro.
15 minute metro ride. I don’t know why they aren’t air conditioned.
A 5 minute walk to Cercanías (the equivalent of the commuter rail)
A 25 minute ride on Cercanías
A 10 minute walk to the Facultad de derecho
And then I get to the LOVELY BEAUTIFUL ORGANIZED HEAVENLY UAM, minus the lovely beautiful and organizd part.

You would think if I had to spend over an hour each way to get to my university it would be worth it right? That the teachers would be organized and responsive? That the classes would be engaging? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Basically everything about this university has proven to be the bane of my semester. As a celebration of finishing my last final today, I will list why I hate this place so much, using bullet-points to keep you in the academic mindset.

• Let’s be honest, people only talk about challenges in a positive light AFTER the challenge is over and easier life has resumed. So let’s focus on that:
• I strain myself for an hour and a half in class.     
• During this time, all the Spanish students in class talk amongst themselves, making it more difficult to hear when my teacher is talking about the theory of rational collective action in a FOREIGN LANGUAGE.
• The teachers rarely, if ever, tell them to stop talking.
• The final exam for my clase de partidos politicos, movimientos sociales y grupos de presión
• Not only did it cover everything we studied the whole semester (including about 30 written pages of notes and the equivalent of a 400 page book of reading), but there were no posing questions to study for, nor review session, nor did my professor answer any of my questions I emailed to him about the exam.
• Before the exam, I experienced every type of stress symptom including: disability to sleep, racing heart, sweaty palms, headache, nausea…
• All of the Spanish students in the class were absolutely freaking out before the exam.
• Oh, and THE EXAM WAS IN SPANISH AND I AM NOT A NATIVE SPANISH SPEAKER.
• The teachers are NOT what I am used to.
• They cancel class about 10% of the time, without previous notice (making me waste 2 hours to go there and back) 
• One of my fellow BU students had a class where the teacher did not show up for the first 6 weeks for no explicable reason, and then a TA took over the class.
• Teachers do not have office hours, do not respond to emails, nor even PRETEND to care about their students 
• They arrive 15-20 minutes late for about half of the classes in the semester.
• I detest my política de la UE teacher.
• I went to his office (after literally BEGGING him to meet with me) and he offered to speak English with me. Excuse me, but WHY THE FAHCK DO YOU THINK I GO TO THIS CRAPPY SCHOOL?? To speak English?? NO.
• When he said a Spanish phrase to me in front of the class and I asked him to repeat what he had said because I couldn’t hear him (no one in class can hear him), he said it in English, I quickly realized what he had said, then he added “it’s a common Spanish phrase”. Ok, fahck you, sir.
• He forced me to do a theme based on the U.S. for my final paper because I am American
• The school, physically, looks like a museum of the WORST examples 1970’s architecture. Everything is run-down, ugly, square, and mustard yellow.
• The Spanish grading system.
• The Spanish grading system is 1-10 in all schools and universities.
• A 10 is “sobresaliente” (excellent), an 8 or 9 is “notable” a 5, 6 or 7 is “satisfactorio” and 1-4 is “suspendido” meaning the students have to take that class again. Keep in mind that universities cost a couple thousand euro, if that, a year, so failing a class is not such a problem
• No one gets 10’s… nor 9’s… nor 8’s. A 7 is basically like an A+, and a 4 or less is failing.
• Upon looking at the grades from last semester in La facultad de Derecho (The law faculty, my school), that are listed by student name, (which would NEVER happen in America) I see that, in most classes, about half of the students received a “suspendido” grade. GREAT. I wonder how well someone will do that is not fluent in the language in which the classes are held.
• Spanish students do NOT care about good grades, they are looking to “pass” (aprobar) and nothing more. Spaniards’ ideas of the importance of grades is wildly different than that of Americans’. Therefore, when my teachers tell me “no te preocupes, you will pass” meaning I will get a C or D, this does not make me happy.
• While MOST abroad students have the luxury of pass/fail grades, I do not. Clearly, our grades should not transfer, yet they do, causing me to be MORE nervous about grades here than back home.
• Hearing about how academically lax other abroad programs are in comparison really twists the knife.
• DO NOT even get me started on the “process” (I don’t know if you can call it a process if there is absolutely no order) involved in directly enrolling into this school for the semester.
• Y EN FIN, despite all this horror, I still have people back home asking “when do you get back to real life?” implying that I am not busting my culo with my 3 classes and 15-hour-a-week internship.

I apologize if you read the whole thing, but hopefully it made you feel better about your life!

The one SINGULAR saving grace that has kept me from my flinging myself off the top of the highest Corte Inglés in the city (apart from knowing I am getting better at Spanish) is my no-credit Spanish for Foreigners class. Why? Well…

• I am the only American in the class (who doesn’t love being a novelty?) of 30
• The people in my class are from Brazil, Portugal, France, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Italy, Belgium, etc.
• Because some people in the class don’t speak English, our teacher has no option but to explain things in Spanish.
• We all get to complain about la UAM together.
• We learn the phrases that people ACTUALLY say, along with a lot of review in the hardest aspects of Spanish grammar.
• My teacher is amazing and funny and vulgar (you can never understand how exciting it is to get a dirty joke in a foreign language until you have experienced it yourself).
• Great moments of class:
• During our oral presentation, three people from Austira, Belgium and the Czech Republic chose beer as their topic and brought some to show and tell give to everyone in the class
• Another group talked about drinking culture in different countries and everyone was OBSESSED with learning about American college-drinking culture. 5-minute celebrity status.

And now… it is all OVER. My final exam for la clase de partidos politicos was basically an event in my home-stay. My host-mom, outlawed Pablo (host-brother) playing with his mini soccer ball so that I could study and my impending academic doom was the topic of all dinner conversation for a week prior to the exam.

Immediately after my I finished the test today, my host-mom called to see if it went well and sounded truly relieved when I told her it did. It is impossible to mention the daily events that remind me why making the change to this family was worth it. It suffices to say that change is good. Change is SO good.