USIU (United States International University- Africa)

I have deliberately waited for awhile to give my impressions of the university that I am taking classes at because I wanted to be able to post a whole story. First off I want to address the basic particulars of my visits to USIU. I am only there two days a week, Monday and Wednesday, and I am taking two classes on those days: 20th Century East Africa (A History Class), and International Organizations. International Organizations is taught by a former Ambassador from Kenya to the UN, and I was pretty excited to hear that. Before I get into my first impressions of USIU I also want to mention that USIU's campus is absolutely gorgeous. It is not terribly large; only a little larger than American University's Campus, but the green spaces are very pretty. The buildings have this wide-open feel to them like buildings you would find in tropical regions. Ok now time for my story:

On Monday morning I had a few things that needed to be done besides attend classes: pick up my school ID, check out my textbooks from the library, obtain my computer lab pass and bus pass. This first day was incredibly frustrating because first off the computer system was down, then no one was where they needed to be and come back at x time became a favorite response, and then we were not showing up as in the system at first. Everywhere we went had their own opinion on how to fix the situation and sent us to somewhere else, or back to people we just came from. At first I thought that this was attributing things to attending school in Africa, and had I written this blog post after Monday this is how it would have read...

But I waited for this post and was pleased to find out it was more just because it was the first day of the semester and people needed to get back in the swing of things. After coming back today things were so simple and took no time at all.

My first impression after my first class that I had... International Organizations, was unique to me because we got into a discussion of the US role in certain international affairs: the UN, the current conflict in Gaza, the war in Iraq. I have never heard of my home country be mentioned in an academic setting outside of my home country.. and it was very interesting. I have been openly critical of choices our nation has made before, but this is a different setting and I feel a sort of obligation to defend my country now. I am incredibly happy to have this opportunity to step outside of the majority and see a very new perspective on everything. Today's class was also interesting because our professor posed the very straightforward question "Which form of conflict resolution is better and why... a bilateral approach or a multilateral approach?"... now I sat back and answered as people in my class raised their hands and picked one and gave their reasons... and I was amazed that students would actually pick one. In my objective way of looking at things I did not answer because to me the answer clearly pends on the context of the conflict... and one of my AU Abroad classmates who shares the class with me answered this way, and was the only one in the class to answer in this way. After conversing after class with my other AU Abroad classmate who is in the class she told me she was thinking along the same lines that us other American students were.

This makes me wonder if college students in other countries do not think as objectively and see multiple answers from an abstract point of view, and if this is the case why is this. Maybe American students are trained to think in this way and evaluate situations, or maybe this is an American University thing. I plan to look out for this in the future as well to see if I can get any answers. One thing that I do know, however is that I am really looking forward to this special and unique opportunity to step away from the environment that I am so used to learning in to get a completely different education for this coming semester.