An investment

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” – Benjamin Franklin

So here I am in Ankara, committing to and investing in my completion of a Masters degree during the next two years; investing in knowledge.

Monday was my first day of school as a Masters student. I arrived 20 minutes late to class (after being stuck in rush-hour traffic for over an hour for a distance, which, without traffic, would only take 15 minutes), which hopefully does not destine me for some sort of degree-long failure. Luckily, I don’t adhere to such superstitions and justified my tardiness  (or at least felt less guilty about it) as multiple other people continued to trickle into the classroom for the next hour. Clearly, I was not the only person who was late.

I attended four classes this week, but only one professor lectured for the whole three-hour block – ironically enough the class to which I arrived late. The other professors merely introduced course subject, syllabus, and requirements. Apparently, this is a university tradition – neither will anything be taught nor will Masters’ classes actually be held during the first week of any semester. Most students who had actually registered for the classes didn’t even appear. Advantageously, this lack of actual classes left copious amounts of time for basking in the sunshine while drinking tea as well as navigating the treacherous university bureaucracy to determine how to register for a Turkish class (and initially, determine for which course Master’s students are eligible) as well as preparing to tackle the government bureaucracy entangled in attaining residence permits.

Luckily, I was not left alone in my struggles towards creating order within (or mere understanding of) these systems. Over the course of the week, I befriended a number of other foreign Masters students and we have created an informal yet highly functional cohort for navigating course readings, university schedules, government bureaucracy, and mere campus dilemmas (Where should we eat? When will we get our student IDs? Are the official letters needed for our residence permits finished yet?). We are looking out for one another, increasing our individual functionality and, together, are able to laugh about the lack of clarity concerning things like for which Turkish course we are actually eligible (Thankfully, this quandary was resolved last week).

The language of university instruction is English, so course materials, lectures, discussions are all in English. Within administration, however, speaking Turkish is essential for communication and I am happy to have the opportunity to practice my Turkish in such situations, even if 'Turkish' then seems to be based on a significant number of hand gestures. Thankfully after the first few days here, my brain has mostly sorted out the fact that Turkish and Arabic are in fact different languages, and I am no longer constantly trying to speak Arabic with people here.  I am hopeful that a language course at the university will be the perfect venue to review and improve my Turkish parallel to my study of all things related to the Middle East. This semester: Geopolitics (a very cool idea of the study of the effects of geography on international politics), Migration and Transnationality (carrying out actions across national borders, usually, in this case, as relates to migrants), 20^th century Middle Eastern History and possibly 20^th century history of Iran.

Confronted with these new topics and course readings, I must admit that I happily spent a good portion of my week in the university library. However, I continue slowly exploring the city and will post some additional photos and anecdotes of my adventures in the coming days.