Classes This Term

I am taking two classes this term—accounting and finance part II (part I was completed last term in London). My accounting professor is a little Asian man who is the most unique professor I have ever had in terms of his physical teaching style. He has these weird, fluid movements where he looks like he is doing a mixture of tai-kwan-do and interpretive dance. He is constantly moving from one side of the screen to the other. The class is a mixture of Globals and older, working professionals who speak Dutch. He makes side comments in Dutch under his breath when people ask questions and I have no idea what he is saying. It’s definitely not my favorite class and I have become quite good at Mahjong Tiles from my hours spent sitting through the lectures.

Finance has about the same mix of students and many of the same non-globals as in accounting. I like my finance professor and am actually learning a lot in the class. I also like the class policy of no exams—we have multiple other assignments, but no midterm and no final. I feel like this is really a graduate level class because you can pick and choose what you want to learn and what is important to you. The only bad thing about finance is that it is held at Webster Leiden’s remote campus in Amsterdam-Zuid, about a 30 minute train ride from Leiden. Webster has a two-room office in Amsterdam’s World Trade Center and that’s where the class sessions are held. It’s much more difficult to get to than the five minute walk across the street to get to accounting.

BUT….the best thing about my classes here is that when we enter each class there is a little table with coffee, tea and cookies for our pleasure. I don’t particularly like the coffee or tea, but the cookies make coming to class worth it. I especially like when the cookie selection includes Oreos.

Picture: Webster's Leiden campus consists of one building which sits on a canal.