As many of you Syracuse University students are probably already cramming for your semester’s first exam, I’m just embarking on week two of classes at Istanbul’s Bahcesehir Universitesi.

At the very beginning of our trip, our program coordinator warned us that among our myriad culture shocks, we should expect even college life to be very different in Turkey. One of the dissimilarities became apparent the moment we used our shiny new ID cards to get into the main academic building: Here, “class” and “fashion show” seem nearly synonymous.

Granted, at Syracuse I was never one to wear sweatpants outside my house often, but I appreciated the fact that I could throw on my oldest pair of jeans and a grungy graphic T-shirt and feel like I looked reasonably comparable to at least one-fourth of any given class. Here, half the female students strut by in high heels, and I’ve never seen so many sweaters tied around dress-shirt-enclosed shoulders in one university hallway.

Bahcesehir also deserves a shout out for taking the concept of syllabus week to the next level. Some teachers showed up late. My advice: Wait 15 minutes before assuming that the teacher decided to extend his or her lunch break indefinitely. Other professors didn’t show up at all.

Midweek, I was sitting in the designated room of an urban studies class I was interested in, trying not to look too pathetic despite being completely alone 10 minutes after the class had “begun.” A woman walked in and shot a quick stream of Turkish in my direction. Once my blank look established a language barrier, she explained in English that that particular class was no longer happening this semester. Oh.

The lack of actual syllabi passed out was striking as well. Turkish professors seem to have a strange aversion to printing things out or using email. You’re on your own for class materials — after half of my classes, I had to wander cluelessly into the school’s copy center to throw down some lire for the double-sided piece of paper that rehashed the same academic honesty policy I’ve read about 100 times before.

Plagiarism: bad. Copyright infringement: apparently not a big deal.

“Turkey is the kingdom of Xeroxing,” one of my professors said with a half smile at the beginning of class. Then, she recommended that we should feel free to borrow her copy of the text and run to the university copy center. For the first time in my college life, I won’t be spending 100-plus dollars on textbooks that I’ll barely read, though I’ll be spending a lot of time in that copy center.

With classes dropping off schedules at the last minute, and teachers who hate using email, the school’s registration process seems like a labyrinthine hellhole of confusion to the point that our Syracuse program coordinator has taken it upon himself to do all of our registering for us. I think they’re trying to cut down on the panic-attack-induced tears. I think I can forgive MySlice for its cutesy name.

When I finally do get officially registered, I’ll be taking about five classes at Bahcesehir. As someone with an admitted tendency to overachieve workload wise back at Syracuse, I couldn’t resist a slight scoff at how little work it seems I’ll need to be doing day to day to succeed at BU.

That’s not because the university is a joke, however. I’ll be taking five classes, but most students take somewhere in the vicinity of nine. The majority of students are Turkish, but since it’s an English-speaking university, they’ll all be pounding through their credit hours in their second language.

That’s almost as impressive as their grace in three-inch platform shoes on the cobbled sidewalks.

Jillian D’Onfro is a senior magazine journalism and information management and technology dual major. Her column appears every Tuesday. She can be reached at jidonfro@syr.edu.

Published on October 2, 2012 at 2:57 am