World Record: Quito, Ecuador

I'm about to hit the two-month mark, and time is going by way too fast. I have fallen in love with Ecuador, and I can't imagine leaving. My friends who are here for only one semester are realizing that they are almost halfway done, and even for me, a quarter seems like too much. If I didn't have such an amazing family, outstanding friends, and an excellent degree to finish up in the United States, I would consider staying here forever.

I've noticed in these last few weeks just how positive I feel about everything. The scary and depressing stages of culture shock have seemed to pass, and I feel content all the time. I have a great relationship with my host family; I am forced to witness unveiled poverty, but I have also been given the chance to help in a small way with my community service. I am starting to know the city, my Spanish is improving rapidly, and I'm doing quite well in school - noticeably better, in fact, than I do in the United States, and I'm actually enjoying what I'm learning.

Teaching techniques in Ecuador are extremely different than they are in the U.S. There are thousands of different techniques (that my friends in the Lynch School of Education could tell you all about) but I have never been able to differentiate between them. I can't tell you exactly what works best for me, but I know that I do the best when I get along with the professor and when I enjoy the material. Luckily, that all falls into place in Ecuador.

Boston College professors, and perhaps professors at all universities, are extremely fond of assigning the dreaded "busy work." Maybe it's not their fault, and they just want to make sure we stay on top of our material, but for me, unnecessary work makes me want to be lazy. Assigning thousands of worksheets and a paper is just going to make me dislike that class. At BC I always have mountains of papers to read or complete, while here, all I have in my notebooks are the things I need.

For example, my class with probably the most homework is an art history class called Vanguards of the 20th Century. It's a riveting review of Romanticism to Impressionism to Surrealism to Expressionism and beyond. My professor is a small, enthusiastic woman named Trini Perez who speaks quickly and loudly. She likes to run around the room, pointing at slides and getting excited about a Van Gogh painting or the new Andy Warhol exhibit. We have a 30-page reading once a week with a page-long reflection. Though 30 pages of dense art history in Spanish were at first very difficult, but it's an easy and relevant task now.

Trini also just tells us what we need to know. It's a class based on lecturing, or what I like to call "actual teaching." She doesn't give us a hint about an answer and then expect us to go home and research it. She is an expert on 20th century art history, and she explains to us everything that she knows. We take notes and learn the material. It's very simple.

Classes are Universidad San Francisco de Quito are based on group discussions and lecturing, not out-of-class research. Teachers here don't try to trip you up on test questions or make papers particularly difficult to ensure that they won't be giving out too many A's. The university's professors set their students up to succeed, never to fail. When everyone in the class gets an A on a quiz, the professor praises us instead of questioning the difficulty of her questions.

In some of my classes at BC, if I miss a day, it's the end of the world. I have had many nasty encounters with professors who can't believe that I may be asking about something we learned the day before. As they say, everything here is muy tranquilo. I miss a class? No worries.

Learning in a different language is very efficient. You pay more attention to a lecture in order to pick up every word, and by paying such close attention, you can learn the material quickly. Here in Ecuador, there are numerous high schools that teach only in English. These students are becoming fluent in another language while also learning math or literature.

At this point in my life, I really don't need to learn English anymore. I have been speaking it for 20 years, writing it for 10 or so, and any grammar problems I may still have are probably a lost cause. It makes so much sense to continue higher learning in a different language.

Though very difficult at first, it is the most rewarding and most successful form of learning in which I have participated.