Studying here, in four parts

Hi everyone!

I realised that despite the fact that I've been here for almost four months and I came here to study, I haven't been talking about the studying itself very much, and been mostly talking about other things. I have mentioned my classes every now and then, but I thought now would be a good time for a super-cliché "what is it like studying in a foreign country" -exchange-blogpost. It comes to you in four parts.

Part one: The universities.
To my best knowledge there are three public universities in Manaus. There's UEA, Universidade do Estado do Amazonas, aka. the Amazonas state university. It's located closer to the center and the only reason why I've ever been there is because I had molecular biology class in March half of which was taught by a UEA professor at the UEA.
Then there's UFAM, Univerdidade Federal do Amazonas, aka. the federal university of Amazonas. That one's located close to where I live, and while I haven't been there for any classes, I spent a few days there in also March, because I was hanging out there with this research group who study monkeys and sloths, among other things. I may have put up here a picture of one of the sloths. Or maybe not, I don't remember. I've also been there once because there's a two-day market there once a month, so I went to see that the last time they had it.
The palace I'm studying is the third one, INPA, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, aka. the national institute of Amazon research. So I suppose it's not actually a university, but instead a research institute, but they offer master and doctorate programs anyway. It's also close, next to the UFAM campus. Or I guess depends on what you mean by close. From where I live it takes ~40 min on foot (when you're not in a hurry) and 10-45 minutes by bus or car, depending on the weather and the time of the day.
All my courses are from INPA, although I was told when I was picking them that I could have taken some from UFAM too, had I wanted to. At that point I pretty much didn't know anything about anything and decided to stay in-house, to keep things simple. If I was staying another semester, I might look at the courses they offer at UFAM.

Part two: Things that are the same here.
Well. You pick courses, you sign up for courses, you study on courses. Studying itself is pretty much the same. You sit and read. Or write.
There are some mandatory courses (if I was actually studying here), but other than that you get to choose what you want to take.
It's the same people I see on the courses. Not everyone is on all of them, but it's the same faces that come and go in the classes. I've understood they're the group of new master's students who started in the beginning of March.
How much work a certain course requires (in relation to the number of credits) depends on the person teaching it. That's true in Finland, and that's true here. I complained about ridiculously long days back in April, but it turns out at that point I had happened to take courses where the professors required more. The courses I've had since then have had a more relaxed tempo.
The whole being a student thing in general. Students also here don't really have time, or money. They hang out with the people from the classes, and they hold parties when ever there's an excuse.
So I guess the basics of being a student are the parts that are the same.

Part three: Things that are different.
The registration for the courses had to be done on paper. Well, I didn't actually have to have it on paper paper, but I had to fill a form that was sent to the secretary, who then makes lists of the people signed up for each course. I think our system is easier for everyone.
As I've already said, there's only one course at a time. They go on for a week or two (mostly two), full-day, every day. (Well, unless we get off an hour earlier than the schedule says. Has happened more than once.)
There's a really long break for lunch. This is also something I already mentioned, but it still annoys me. It's a two to two and a half -hour break in the middle of my most efficient working hours with which I can't do anything. I could do some studying, but without a laptop (which I don't carry with me so it won't get stolen), there's not much I can do. I think in Finland, when there there happens to be classes of only one course all day, the break for lunch is about an hour. Because an hour is enough.
There's more field work. Right now I'm in my first course that includes no field work (well, the molecular biology had lab-work, and not field work, but still), and this is my fifth course. After this one I still have two, one of which is a field course.
The lectures are more interactive than in Finland. By which I mean that the people here ask a lot more questions during the lectures. In Finland people mostly listen, and don't have anything to ask. (Well, except when you happen to be in the same course with one of those people who keep asking something every ten minutes and it's really annoying.) So the professor and the students actually talk during the class.
The references are better here, and the reading for the courses is scientific articles. For most of the courses in Finland, if you want something extra to read, it's usually a book. Here the professors dump a hundred articles in dropbox (which is used here for sharing documents) and gives a list of which articles are related to which lesson. So if you want to know more or check something (or like me, have the same thing explained to me in English), you take the stack of articles and start reading. And I do realise reading scientific papers is kind of important if you're going to be a researcher, but it's so hard and takes forever. Even when they're in English. And I don't even know if I'm going to be a researcher. Though I guess the people who study in a research institute are planning on becoming researchers.
The master's program has a lot less classes and a lot more master's project than in Finland. While our project is supposed to be about a third of all the work put into the master's studies, here it's three quarters or something. And yes, their program is two years too, like in Finland. So their project is a lot more extensive. I think I like our way better. I'm not saying that learning to do research while doing research isn't valuable, but I feel like I want to have more general background knowledge, because that is after all what new research should be built on, and the courses are the place to get that. But maybe this is one of those things that since this is a research institute, the students are taught to do research above all else.
It seems to me that the students and the professors know each other better here. Maybe it's the research-institute thing again, but already the master's students seem to be integrated into the research groups, and they know their supervisors and the other professors, and people keep talking about "her students". In Finland there's just students, they're no one's in particular. Or maybe I don't notice this kind of thing in Finland, because I haven't yet started my own master's project. But even the master's students here have their own (well, shared) offices, and that's a thing I don't see happening in Finland, because we wouldn't have the space for everyone to have an office. But I guess this is partly because a significant majority of all the work the master's students do here is on the project, and they need to have someplace to work.
I'd like to say there are less exams than in Finland, since this is only the second course I have with an exam in the end, but based on half a year as a master's student in the Finnish program, I think there are less exams in those courses than there were in the bachelor's courses, so maybe that wouldn't be true.
Apparently there is no deadline for the professors to inform us about our grades for a course. I still haven't heard anything about the course that I had in March. Also, no one's told me what happens if I don't for some reason pass a course on the first try. Not that I'm worried that will happen. I'm not expecting good grades, simply because of the language, but I am expecting to pass all the courses I've had so far.
So in summary: less book learning, more interactive and practical learning. Which sounds great, but honestly, I'm the kind of person who likes book learning.

Part four: A couple of things I've learned.
Because I just want to share some of the things I've learned in the classes, because I thought they were interesting.
There is a baobab in Namibia with a diameter of ~10 meters. I honestly don't even remember what this had to do with anything, but I just thought it was a super-interesting fact. It's in my notes right after "yes, the trees in the tropics also do have annual rings". That one's interesting too, actually. So apparently people (including me, but also scientists) used to think that the trees in the tropics wouldn't have the annual rings like in temperate areas. That's because the rings in the trees in say Finland is caused by the differences in the growth rates during the year, because weirdly enough trees don't grow very much when it's -15 degrees outside, and then grow a lot during the warm period. But the thing is, it's always warm in the tropics, so that would mean that the trees grow at the same rate the whole year round, and don't have the rings, right? Wrong. Turns out the differences in rainfall and river water levels (vary so much during the year) are enough to make trees grow a lot during some times of the year and very little during others. So yeah, they have rings too.
The Amazon river is responsible for 18% of the water that flows from rivers into oceans worldwide. 18%. Of the oceans' water. Well, not quite, because some of the water gets into the oceans directly through rain, but still. That is a lot of water. About 200 000 cubic meters per second on average, in case you want to know how much is a lot. That's unsurprisingly more than any other river in the world.
The majority of Brazil's electricity is hydroelectric. Which makes sense, at a first glance, since they have a lot of river here. But no. Hydroelectric power is based on the potential energy of water coming down a hill, and the Brazilian Amazon has no hills. (Ok, it has any hills.) Manaus is at an elevation less than 100 meters above sea level, despite being over 1000 km from the ocean. So not much elevation difference there. Sure, the Amazon and a lot of the tributaries start somewhere in the Andie's, and they might actually have a hill there.
But there's more. The hydroelectric dams are not great. Not only do they permanently flood the area right above the dam, which destroys the ecosystem there and releases so, so much CO2 and methane as all that now-drowned biomass breaks down, the dams also even out the natural water level variation downstream from them. And since this area has been adapting to the seasonal floods and droughts for a few million years now, the floods and droughts suddenly disappearing is very bad for everything, because a lot of creatures count on that flood to come every year. And the less intense floods would make agriculture in the flooding areas easier, which would mean turning what's now very biologically productive flooding forests (that would no longer flood) into farmland. So maybe no more dams in the Amazon? Except there are, according to some article I read during the weekend, plans to build almost 300 new hydroelectric dams in the Amazon basin. And someone once (so many times) called hydroelectric power clean and environmental-friendly.
So I have a better idea: how about cover all the surface that is currently useless, like all the roofs of buildings, with solar panels, and see how that increases the energy production. Because in the cities there is a lot of area that could be covered in solar panels. And here at the equator it would actually make some sense (unlike in Finland, where the energy is needed when the sun isn't shining), since even though the sun is covered in clouds a lot of time, it is also not covered in clouds a lot of the time, and even when it is there's probably enough light coming through to get something out of the panels. And also because sun shines year round about twelve hours a day, and the electricity would only have to be stored so it can be used the same day once the sun sets. I feel like I might be getting off topic, but seriously, there is so much heat and light here, turning some of it into electricity would be great.

I think that's all I wanted to tell you this week. I think.
Ok.

~matu