Exchange Report Name: XU Qili, Cherry Curriculum: LLB Host Institution: University of Nottingham Exchange Duration: One Year Type of Scholarship received: Madam Lau Kit Fong (Sau Chee) Memorial Scholarship
1. University of Nottingham and the city of Nottingham The University of Nottingham has a lovely campus, with large areas of grassland, old grand buildings and even a lake on campus. It is located in the city of Nottingham, a small-to-middle sized city in the East Midlands of London. The university is just 10 minutes by bus from the city center, which, although small, has a quite complete series of shops that you can expect to find in the UK. There is also a small town center within walking distance outside the west gate of the main campus, Beeston, where you can get daily necessities and some Chinese/Thai food. Generally speaking, the weather in Nottingham is above average in the UK, in the sense that it does not rain as much as it is rumoured to be in England, although it does snow heavily every winter. The campus is most beautiful in spring, when countless kinds of nameless flowers all blossom out, making the most beautiful spring. Local transportation is quite convenient. The city is just 1 hour and 45 minutes by train from London and trains run regularly everyday to the London St Pancras station. There are also coaches to places all over the country and a small airport running flights to cities in the UK as well as the Europe. 2. Academic Culture of the University of Nottingham The academic culture of the university is one of open and free-style education. The amount of compulsory reading materials is limited because the lecturers would expect the students to do their own research and think about the issues behind the lecture contents. Partly because of this teaching style, the tutorials are significantly less than HKU they did not start until around one month after the start of the semester and were only conducted once in two weeks. The tutorial questions are likewise designed for an open education in the sense that there are usually so many questions on all aspects of the topic that are plainly incapable of resolution in the short one hour s time the lecturer and tutors expect the students to think about and prepare for each of the questions, but in tutorial, only one or two questions will be discussed. One thing I particularly like about the study experience in the university is that the variety of elective courses they provide, and the large quota given for each of them so that most of the students can get the course that they wish to study, not the course that they have to take just to fulfill the credits required for obtaining their degree, for example, the IP law lecture had more than 200 students and people just do not have to fight to get a seat into the course. They also put much emphasis on looking behind the law into its underlying rationales or historical background, to study why the law is as such, and to compare it with the reality to see if there are flaws/loopholes that can be remedied. The lecturers and students also generally keep a very susceptive attitudes towards the existing law and would always question whether the law should be what it is currently. 3. The courses taken I took six courses throughout the academic year: the Law of Trusts, Principles of Criminal Evidence, Principles in Company Law, Jurisprudence, Intellectual Property Law, and Commercial Conflict of Laws. The most interesting courses, I would say, are the Law of Trusts and the Commercial
Conflict of Laws. Trust law has always been a very interesting topic with many issues that can arouse heated debate. It was a full year course in the University of Nottingham, taught be different lecturers in two terms, who covered different topics. Both of them, although different in style, are very clear and structured about what they are teaching. So, both because the inherently interesting nature of trust law and the great teaching style of the lecturers, I found trust law to be one of the most meaningful and impressive courses that I took in Nottingham. As for Commercial Conflict of Laws, it is very different from the normal substantive laws that we learned in the 1 st and 2 nd years. It is more a matter of procedural law and it has an international aspect, which is very unique and interesting. Also, the lecturer is a very characteristic person who conducted the lecture as well as the tutorials in a very powerful way that makes it easy to grasp the important points. Thus, I also regard it as a meaningful and impressive courses. I did not like the course of Criminal Evidence that much because all the year the lecturer has been talking about rationales without first touching upon what the current law really is all that I know about evidence law I learned it myself by reading the cases, because even the textbook that he recommended does not really explain the real legal position. 4. Experience in University Accomodation I stayed in the Sherwood Hall, which is on the main campus of the University of Nottingham. I have to say that the hall experience in the UK is a very great one, much better than the HKU hall experience that I had. The residents in our hall range from local students, European students, American students, Asian students from HK, China, South Korea, India and some other countries in the Middle-East Asia. So it has a very open and diversified culture. The British likes partying and drinking a lot and they have a lot of student activities, both on weekends and in weekday nights. However, they respect other cultures very well and would never expect someone else to share their views unconditionally, unlike some of the residents in a HKU hall. You would be welcomed to join in any of their activities at any time, however, they would never force you to participate in those activities, again, very much different from the HKU hall practice. They also have a student association, and students wishing to serve in the office of the association have to run for the election. However, the main duty of the association is just to provide welfare and benefits and never try to eliminate someone just because they do not belong to the partying lot needless to say, unlike the HKU halls. There are many aspects that are different, but I do not have to list each and every of them. It suffices to say that the culture is such that you can easily make friends with everyone in the hall, but they would never force you, not even use peer pressure to unduly influence you, to join in any of their activities. Your personal view and values would be highly respected and you can feel free to leave yourself alone. This is what I perceive as real hall culture people get together because they wish, not because they have to, and everyone living together like a big family, without any sort of pressure and do not have to pretend to be a certain type of person that they really are not, people just like their hall as it is, not because it has get what kinds of honours in any sort of competitions, in fact, there are no mentioning of honours, and you would not value a resident on the basis of the honour that he can bring to the hall, which, again, is a ridiculous practice conducted by a HKU hall.
To conclude, as compared to the University of Nottingham s residential halls, HKU halls are just like a naïve kindergarten which offer unpleasant experience while University of Nottingham halls offer a real hall experience where you can have friends and family, and FREEDOM. 5. Personal Experience with local and international students As already mentioned in the previous parts, the local and international students are really friendly and respectful for other s points of views. You have a real sense of freedom in that you take whatever stance you like, even if it is a unpopular one while in HKU, you can only take the anti-government and pro-democratic stance, because taking the other one would denominate alienation by a majority of students who do not really judge right from wrong by their own sense and do not really respect what others think. 6. Local Culture Again, this open, free and respectful culture has already been explained in the 4 th and 5 th parts and there is no traits needed to merge into the culture because they welcome everything. 7. Extra-curricular activities Most of my time was devoted to the Model United Nations Society where we had many conferences. The most exciting one was in Cambridge where we had delegates from all over the world. I learned many things throughout the process and truly felt that my horizons had been broadened. I also took part in some other societies such as the fashion society, the mooting society, the travel society and the pro-bono society. I also made friends in these activities. 8. Personal Development It is an exposure to an international, multi-cultural, open and free environment. I met so many people from different backgrounds and made friends with them. I had opened up my horizons and point of views and had realized what real freedom means. It is, overall, a great experience. 9. Recommendation I actually find the programme to be very complete and has no issues with it so far. I would rather like to thank the University of Nottingham for the very detailed guidance provided for both UK visa application when we were in HK and the visa application for the Schengen areas when we were in UK. I would advise future students to refer to those guidance or otherwise seek help from their foreign students office.