UBA: The Beginning

Yesterday I got official approval for my course schedule from the Yale study abroad office. (Once again, fantastically unhelpful — the e-mail from my study abroad advisor said something like, “Yeah, I guess those classes look fine, or whatever.” I really hope the credits actually transfer.) Anyway, that means my classes are essentially set.

My schedule is split down the middle, with two easy and boring classes and two that are hard and interesting. The easy-boring ones are a Spanish-language speaking workshop and an Argentine literature course at FLACSO. (The literature class itself is actually pretty good, but it’s all CIEE kids. I’m not all that excited about going all the way to Argentina to take a class with Americans).

The hard-interesting ones are both at UBA, a massive jumble of a university that I am completely, stupidly in love with. One of the classes, Analisis de las practicas sociales genocidas, is in the social sciences school, and the other, Literatura Latinoamericana II, is at Filosofia y Letras (affectionately known as Filo y Letras), the school of humanities.

My UBA classes are in two different buildings with distinct personalities but a shared atmosphere of bohemian intellectualism. (UBA is scattered in different buildings all around the city — the social sciences school alone has four different facilities). The social sciences school, which is close to the residencia, is in a hot, crowded four-story building. Getting to class involves pushing through the students gathered around the front door smoking cigarettes, waving away the handfuls of fliers announcing protests for everything imaginable that get thrust at me when you walk into the entrance hall, and walking three stories up a staircase papered with handmade posters announcing more protests. The staircase gets so crowded with other students that the traffic sometimes stops dead.

Most of the desks in my Genocidas classroom are broken, and the professor is fifteen minutes late without exception. The walls are covered in graffiti dominated by anarchy symbols, liberal political slogans, and stenciled rats whose significance I still haven’t figured out. There's a bathroom right outside, but there’s never any toilet paper, and three out of five of the stalls don’t have doors. Of the two that do, one of them doesn’t stay shut, so you have to get someone waiting in line to hold it for you.

The Filo y Letras building is similar, but bigger. It’s on the outskirts of the city, an hour-long subte ride from where I live. The walls have slightly less graffiti than at the social sciences building, but just as many posters and fliers. On the first floor a makeshift marketplace, where people sell cookies, coffee poured from thermoses, and books, lines the hallway outside the classrooms. I can’t tell if the vendors are regulated by the school or if they just show up and claim a spot. I’ve already learned to wear as few clothes as possible to class, since the combination of massive crowds and no air conditioning makes the classrooms feel like D.C. in August.

It sounds kind of awful. But somehow, even though it's totally overwhelming, I always leave UBA feeling excited and energized. The students are all really political and overtly intellectual. The dirty bathrooms and flaking plaster on the walls don’t feel gross — it’s just that no one has time to worry about mundane concerns like toilets and paint when they’re debating the possibility of representation through literature.

I haven’t even talked about the classes yet, partly because I haven’t been to enough to really get a handle on what they’re like. To be continued once I stop gaping at everything going on around me for long enough to actually pay attention.