Academics!

The two biggest things I worried about coming abroad were schooling and making friends. I’ll ease your mind because, let me tell you, it has been smooth sailing. Maybe it’s DIS, maybe it’s because we’re all in the same major, maybe it’s the fact that everyone is alone abroad, but every single person in your class wants to be your friend.

All nine guys in my class went out for lunch on the first day. I have never seen eight other guys agree to something so quickly. It was like seeing a pop-up farmers market on a road trip: everyone is game. And being in a different country might be the greatest equalizer. Everyone shared a laugh over the Danish names for food, not understanding the menus, and just all the struggles we’d had in the first few days. I even ventured out to Sweden for the weekend with one of my class buddies. 

Just as important is the class itself. I’d like to lay everything out for anyone reading this because all I wondered coming here was, “How the heck am I gonna take a college course in three weeks?”

It’s an extremely loose schedule. I have class four days a week for four hours a day, mostly lectures. From what I’ve heard from others, it’s different with every class, but if you’re taking game development like I am, then most of your work is gonna be outside of class. I work for probably 2-3 hours a day outside of class, just coding and building games. It’s extremely rewarding to see that you’ve built a flappy bird rip-off in just one night.

And if you’re like me and you got excited seeing “Serious Game Development,” just know it’s not what you think it means. One of the first things I learned in class is that there is something called a serious game, which is a game that has a purpose beyond pure entertainment: something like a pilot simulator or a board game teaching you about history. I didn’t want anyone to get that confused. And despite being a bit let down after finding out that serious games are not about taking video games very seriously, it’s been an incredibly informative class.

Most of what we do, besides coding, is analyzing game theory, and how we actually define what a game is. I’m not gonna get into the weeds of it all; I’d rather focus on DIS as a whole. And from what I’ve learned, it seems you’ll get out of the class whatever you put in. The faculty realize you’re not just here for pure academics; you want to explore the city and another culture. So, everyone I know has had field trips in the form of a Field Study at least once a week. So far, I’ve been to a board game café and a children’s science museum (I got to recapture that boy-like wonder for a few hours). 

60 second reaction speed timer. I ended up getting 82. The children crowded around and revered me as a god.

And my professor is a game developer, so he’s eager to stay after class and talk through anything. Most of the time, he’s trying to impart some knowledge that he didn’t get to say during class or just recommending a good lunch spot. 

From what I can tell from my friends, my class has the shortest class time but the longest assignments. And most of the time, people in my class hang out in the facilities to work on stuff together. Overall, the classes have a very relaxed vibe where you work hard as a group, and enjoy your time off afterwards. That might just be the European way.

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