It bothers me a great amount.

All of the professors talk about what we need to do as students to enrich our university experience as it's all up to us and how it's all independent studying, so everything relies on us. But the whole university side of this education is SO DRY. NBS is quite big, most of my lectures are >200 people. During lectures, there is no participation or discussion at all. It doesn't even matter if you read the material before hand. I understand that it may not be possible to have people participate in a crowded lecture but then you have the seminars where the only thing that matters is you show up. People are so hesitant to participate most of the time, so again, you don't get a discussion going. You also do not gain anything by doing the worksheets beforehand. Basically, you do not gain anything by being a responsible, good student. All that matters is that you show up and you don't fail at your exams. How low are those standards? How do they expect to have passionate students who care about their studies when students don't have an incentive to do anything until finals time?

I know this must sound like a nerd's complaint, but after my university experience in my previous school, I really can't help myself. There we had smaller classes, teachers knew our names and we got participation points, which effected our final grades. Everyone was more passionate and it showed, because everyone wanted to express their opinions. Classes were actually fun, even though we had to do 50-100 pages of reading for each class twice a week.

By the way, that is not to say I don't enjoy my studies at the UEA. I've learned so much and so many useful things this year! My only issue is that it's very one-sided and not very community based. This was quite a big rant, sorry about that but I hope what I say makes sense.