I wasn't going to cover this today. Instead I was going to write about the challenges of caring for puppies in the tropical heat of the Baixada Cuiabana, the Cuiabá Basin of Mato Grosso. But I am a man of conscience and am aware that, as a blogger, I am supposed to blog most days. Having not blogged for a while, here is my excuse. It has been an eventful few days.
When you do university in the UK you have two events at the end of the course: the Graduation Ball and the Graduation Ceremony. For the former, many male students hire a dinner jacket - a DJ. In Brazilian this is rather endearingly known by the English word 'smoking'. So you have to hire a 'smoking'.
In Brazil things are rather less straightforward if you are a guy like me - sickeningly older than the bright young things that are my classmates. And, sadly, quite unable to understand the jokes and slang. And, for the record, it's probably quite a good thing that I was unable to understand any irreverancies or swear words.
Here there is semesterisation. Which I think is similar to the American system. Each semester is some five and a half months long. Expect lots of public holidays in the first semester of the year. Right now we are in the middle of Carnival. Soon it will be Easter. Then Labour Day. Then the Day of the Dead, which I believe is the opening scene to a James Bond film. By the way, I may have got the sequence of these public holidays wrong, which is entirely my fault. Here in Mato Grosso there are private universities and public ones. The private ones demand a monthly fee. The public, or federal, ones are free. There seems to be a high level of strikes at one of the federal universities in Mato Grosso. The private ones are expensive. The tuition fees match those of any British university. However, when you consider that the cost of living today in some places in Central Western Brazil appears to be similar to that of some Western European cities, if you are a student who has to wait while your university ends its strike, that can render the word 'free' a little hollow-sounding.
I paid a lot to my Veterinary School, but still consider it a privilege to have studied there. I graduated a week on Friday. There was a rehearsal in the morning and Graduation Ceremony in the evening in which we swore an oath.
At the beginning of university life, apart from the practical jokes in the first week, there will be the organising of a Comissão de Formatura, a Graduation Committee. This will be composed of students who, during university life, will collaborate to raise money for the graduation. Graduation itself is not one or two events. In my case it was five. I attended one, which was the graduation ceremony itself. This is because the other four events would have cost me about two thousand pounds sterling. The other events included the Aula de Saudade ('Goodbye Class' would be a rough translation), church service, uncovering of the class plaque and ball. In our university, when you graduate a plaque is put up with the photo of everyone in the class and the year you graduated.
Last week I had my first interview and the recruitment process occurred in two phases. The first phase was a test, the second, an interview. So now a new chapter begins. I await my result.
Take-home message. Studying is a private affair and you must work out what method works for you.
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