Bocconi and Esselunga

The beginning of classes at Bocconi brought lots of discussion of classes, timetables, textbooks, exams, and many other issues. I have to take 5 classes at Bocconi to get credit for 4 classes in Melbourne, and I am fairly restricted by what I had approved before I left. My five subjects are:


European Economic Policy
Foundations of the European Economy
Management of Fashion and Design Companies
Development Economics
International Trade


The last two are in Italian (but I can do the exams in English); the middle subject is a classic exchange student subject (like 'Australia Now' at Melbourne!).


Each class typically has two one-and-a-half hour lectures per week - and nothing else, no tutorials or any other form of learning. Assessment is typically only by exams; for most, you can choose to take a mid-semester exam, or leave it all until the end-of-semester exam. There are several sittings of each exam, so you can choose your exam timetable like you would a class timetable at home. That part took a LOT of explanations - most of us come from different systems!

Class timetabling here is a basically a nightmare. There are four time slots for classes each day: 8.45-10.15, 10.30-12, 2.30-4 and 4.15-5.45. Only in Italy would you have a two-and-a-half hour break for lunch (as I may have mentioned earlier, lunch is traditionally the main meal and workers often return home for lunch. Most services are closed over lunchtime). Compared to Melbourne where there are about 8 slots per day this means the timetable is very inflexible with clashes fairly likely (and there is usually only one stream per class). On top of this, it is quite common for subjects to change their timetable part way through the semester, or have a week of different class times to accomodate a visiting professor (something common to almost all my classes). Because of my limited choice of subjects I am stuck with a timetable which means that while I should have 10 classes per week, I can usually only go to 6. The first week of May is particularly bad - I should have 13 classes and can only go to 7.


As we were warned, the Italians have a very different culture with uni matters. Most Italians don't work while they're at uni. In class once a lecturer asked how many people worked, and I was the only one who raised my hand in a class of about 50 (that was quite a shock for me!). Lecturers are spoken to in the formal 'you' address of Italian (using 3rd person, not 2nd person).

There is absolutely nothing to do on campus here except for a few sports teams. I guess this could be partly attributed to being such a small university (not sure of the size exactly but it's definitely smaller than Melbourne!), but there is definitely a different culture regarding uni - while at uni, you study. I can't figure out what all the Italian students do all day, but there are always lots of them (especially around exam time) sitting in the cubicles outside almost every classroom with their laptops out, studying together.


As we discovered during the language course, Bocconi classrooms seem to be heated regardless of the outside weather. During winter the classrooms are unbelievably hot, so winter coats and scarves are very quickly removed; when the weather is warmer the classrooms retain the heat and get even hotter than outside - opening windows is not common practice but it doesn't seem to help anyway!


Timeliness also appears to be very important (ironic in a country where otherwise timeliness is not a major priority!). We have one lecturer (although he is definitely not the norm) who gets annoyed if someone is even a minute or two late to class. He will continue to berate everyone who comes in late and has even told people to leave. Once he started class about 3 minutes early and was STILL telling people off who came (in theory) on time. He considers it an interruption but we just find it irritating - he's the one interrupting the class, the rest of us can quite happily ignore latecomers. The worst part is that he himself is often late to class.



Another major component of my life in Milan is Esselunga - the haven of food, only a 5 minute walk from here. Supermarket prices are very cheap here, almost all basic food supplies can be bought for less than 2 euros. Esselunga is enormous, it seems much bigger to me than any supermarkets we have in Geelong or Melbourne, and there is a wide variety of food (except things like sour cream, maple syrup, chips with flavours (not even salt and vinegar!) and a few other basic things that really surprised us!) My favourite part is that the pasta section takes up an entire aisle, both sides. You can usually find a kilo of pasta for less than a euros and there are SO many different types, I don't think I've even tried half of them. I think that generally the food is presented much more carefully here - lots of the fruits, vegetables, salads etc are set out nicely in baskets with greenery decoration everywhere. Almost makes you feel like eating some ;-P