One week in and I have more or less set my classes in stone. Since Wednesday, I have attended two new lectures, Technical Textiles and Introduction to Philosophy, both taught in German.
Textiles should prove quite challenging if the teacher's rapid fire speaking in the tutorial is anything to go by. At the same time, he expected student participation, which made it far easier to stay alert even if I didn't answer anything he asked. Merely attempting to come up with an answer (and how to formulate it in German) kept me more engaged than in purely pulpit style classroom. Alas, I failed to attend the actual lecture offered today. I went to the wrong building, wasted half an hour trying to find a classroom that didn't exist, and finally realized my folly only after getting home to look up it's address again. So...that was embarrassing. On the up side, I have confirmed on the RWTH side of things that I can take the September exam stateside. I just have to figure out who would proctor it.
On a related note, Multi Body Dynamics will allow me to take an oral exam some time in mid to late July. This means that I can drop the class with an August 6th exam date and set about booking a flight back to the US. Hopefully they aren't all too terribly expensive at this point.
As for Introduction to Philosophy, this seminar follows on the heals of a fall course that concerned itself with schools of thought and general history, etc. This class will have more to do with how to read a philosophical paper and write about it. Three rather short writing assignments and active participation comprise the grade. After getting the official details out of the way, the teacher had us take a look at an excerpt from Rudolf Carnap (I was not the only one with no clue who he was.) It was odd having my reading speed set pretty much directly against native speakers. Turns out I'm not all that much slower! That's a comfort.
More on the academic front as it develops.
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