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« Reply #850 on: August 20, 2018, 03:10:13 AM »

Btw, what's "baby gate"? As I understand, it's sth. to keep pets locked. Why it's weirdly called "baby gate" then? What's baby got to do with it? Bizarre.
& what's "flag girl"? Btw, Buckethead, you can shorten NOLA BB Fan as "NBBF". Since you shorten me as RRA1. NOLA's username is long as well. Don't thank me. police

Sonya brought "Fruitella", I said give it to me. She got capricious - no, I won't, no, no, no. Then suddenly says buy it, if you wish to taste single candy, you pay 5 roubles. Ofc I didn't. Ludicrous. But, yep, Sonya's good.
[/quote]

XXXXX

A "baby gate" is a portable gate put up to keep babies from going to certain areas. We would put a gate up at an entrance to a room, or at the bottom step of stairs. People use these gates for dogs as well, although we've never had much luck using them that way - our dogs found a way of knocking them down, particularly if they wanted to chase the cats.
I have no problem with people shortening my user name. Wish I could change it, quite frankly.
After being so gracious as to allow her to borrow your copy book, Sonya should have offered you several candies!
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« Reply #851 on: August 20, 2018, 04:37:09 AM »

Thank you from the bottom of my heart
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« Reply #852 on: August 20, 2018, 05:50:16 AM »

Thanks, Liz. Hope Buckethead sees my reply in previous page & answers the other questions.
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« Reply #853 on: August 20, 2018, 03:59:28 PM »

RRA1 -

Thank for the advice! The only unanswered question I can find pertains to what is a "flag girl." Many marching bands in the US have the usual marchers who play musical instruments plus a "color guard" - those who carry the American flag, some other flag (?) and the school band's banner. Then there are the show girls; some twirl batons, others do tricks with fake guns. I was with the group that carried colorful large flags that were waved around to make the show visually exciting. It was more difficult than it appeared, as we had to count every step, coordinate the flag motions with the music as the band as a whole created different formations on the football field. Marching in parades was much easier because we did everything while staying in formation. I was quite cute, with my white go-go boots with blue pom-poms, blue beret and mini-dress.

Regarding taking notes, I blame teachers for college (institute) students being unable to do so competently. Your poor friend probably fell victim to hers putting such emphasis on neatness, spelling, and complete sentences when, in reality, there are different purposes for different types of writing. I've actually had teachers who gave me low grades on my notebooks because THEY had difficulty reading the content - never mind that I earned top grades on my tests! I have also taught with teachers who write notes (in full sentences) on the board and have high school kids copy them down. The goal is for the students to jot down just enough to remember what is important while still attending to the lecture. 
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« Reply #854 on: August 20, 2018, 05:05:11 PM »

You've got such weird traditions in America - all these parades, show girls, color guard, yada yada. Granted, we got just as weird traditions like yearly at 23 February, national holiday dedicated to (bizarre translation) fatherland's defenders, women must buy gifts to men in fam & friends. Stupid, really, adds benefit to being single.

You're right - teachers should give foundation to kids, prepare them to higher education establishments. What can you say about living in campus? Do you agree that students musn't necessarily live there, can stay live in fam house? The logic behind "students must live with fellow students, in order to study survival without parents etc." is very one-dimensional. I'll never understand kids moving out to live in campus, far away from fam. Why? Fed up seeng the same faces? To change scenery? What's the point? I do not say that they can't freely do what they want - I don't give a fig where students live - but, I'm the curious type who likes to get the answers to nagging questions. I said "1-dimensional" as, even living with fam, students can be independent - just like campus-living students, they go find work to bring in money to fam, can agree in family debate who pays when - say, mother pays house rent in September, the student - in October. It can be worked out inside the fam. So, they learn to be independent within being in the same habitat. Am I right? Interested to hear your views about this paragraph, Buckethead.
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« Reply #855 on: August 20, 2018, 06:30:26 PM »

Wow I would have been in trouble if my notebook contents/appearance affected my grade. My handwriting is horrible, I don’t write in sentences and sometimes use a type of shorthand that I conjured up. Also, if the lecture is boring I tend to doodle lol.

I stayed at home for college. I had a job that paid for my school expenses with some money left over. I did spend one year at a dorm for graduate school and hated it. I’m a morning person; my roommate liked to stay up real late on the telephone,
My second year I was able to stay in a little place a little over a km from campus. That was wonderful.
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« Reply #856 on: August 20, 2018, 07:25:14 PM »

It's good to see you too didn't like dorm-living (btw, what's the diff. between "dormitory" & "campus"?). I knew there's many students like that.
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« Reply #857 on: August 20, 2018, 08:14:00 PM »

A dormitory (or dorm)  is the place where students sleep (or try to sleep!) if they aren’t living at home or sharing a house or apartment.
A campus is all of the buildings, stadiums, arenas that are associated with a school. Most dormitories are within the campus area but not necessarily.
I guess an advantage of the dorm is that it’s within walking distance so don’t need transportation. Also you pay one price for each term (4-5 months) instead of having to come up with money to pay the rent if you’re at an apartment.

As to what I’m doing now - BooBoo the dog and I are at the country place. I’m about to go to bed.
Must be about a gazillion frogs outside croaking away. We’ve had plenty rain the past few days and they are very happy.
« Last Edit: August 20, 2018, 08:18:56 PM by NOLA BB Fan » Logged

"No White Flags." - Team Gleason

"(Brian) got into this really touching music with songs like 'In My Room', and 'Good Vibrations' was amazing. The melodies are so beautiful, almost perfect. I began to realize he was one of the most gifted writers of our generation." - Paul Simon

 "The best thing you can be 'like' in music is yourself." Dr. John
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« Reply #858 on: August 21, 2018, 03:27:42 AM »

This is tricky - what did you mean by "graduate school"? Here, school (shkola) is used exclusively to mean single place to teach pupils 7-17 (it''s not divided into 3 buildings - elementary, middle, high). & when we studied English till last 11th grade, we'd been taught ditto in English-speaking countries, i.e. Great Britain & U.S.A. But joining here & reading the Internet, I discover that school means high ed too. As well as college (here it's professional education lower than high). Is it informal students' way to say "college"? Uni? What does "graduate" addition mean when joined with "school"? You lived with mother during college, then you went to graduate school you said. Is it "last year of college" then? I'd like to get to bottom of it.
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« Reply #859 on: August 21, 2018, 06:08:41 AM »

In the US, regular education is 12 grades, the last 4 grades being what's known as High School.
After that, people can choose to go for more education. I went for a four year program at a college. People go to a college to spend time concentrating on a specific area - accounting, music , biology, languages, engineering, etc. When they complete the program they receive a Bachelors Degree. If they want or need more training they will go to Graduate School for a two year program leading to a Masters Degree. If wanting or needing even more after that  then it would be three more years to get a Ph.D.
Many get Ph.Ds because they are needed for permanent teaching positions at a college or university (a University is a college that has the Masters and PhD programs).
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"(Brian) got into this really touching music with songs like 'In My Room', and 'Good Vibrations' was amazing. The melodies are so beautiful, almost perfect. I began to realize he was one of the most gifted writers of our generation." - Paul Simon

 "The best thing you can be 'like' in music is yourself." Dr. John
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« Reply #860 on: August 21, 2018, 02:33:27 PM »

NBBF - Agree about the notebook issue. I saw many fellow college students struggle mightily with professors whose stressed lecture. I learned very quickly to, like you, develop my own "shorthand." This might stress some people, but I was, by then, used to my horrible handwriting and avoidance of unnecessary work (such as writing out whole words and articles). With my own students, I give very brief lectures supported by the main points on a PowerPoint. I purposely write a bit more than is necessary to provide an opportunity for them to narrow ideas/notation down to that which is essential. For example, I'll show, "Kaiser Wilhelm II was exiled to the Netherlands in 1918." If we know the topic of discussion, why not just jot down, "KW exiled Netherlands 1918." Alternatively,"Kw" is not needed if he is the subject, "Netherl" suffices (as there is no other nation that would be confused with this), and "19" is already understood by the end of a unit on WWI. Still, most painstakingly write each word on the screen, not really grasping what is being said because of their laser focus on copying each word neatly. A five minute lecture thus turns into fifteen, a situation that most professors would not permit.

NBBF and RRA1 - I was not a happy dorm dweller. I was in a different place, mentally, than the other young women, who wanted the "college experience." This meant a lot of drinking, finding boyfriends, needing to go everywhere in groups dressed in college jackets. Yikes! I had to work nearly full time in order to support myself and pay whatever tuition was due after scholarships and grants. My happiest year was my senior year, spent living in my own room in a seedy hotel with hall bathrooms. I soon learned that it housed prostitutes who worked from "home." I didn't mind, though, as I learned that they were even more damaged than I and didn't believe that they could do anything else. Kept my door locked tight, though. No Johns in my room! 
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« Reply #861 on: August 21, 2018, 02:43:11 PM »

RRA1 - If home is a healthy environment, I think that it is usually a waste of money not to live at home for the first two years and attend a local college or community college (where students can complete first and second year coursework of get an associates degree). It can also make sense for all four years, but many kids want college experiences that are easier to have living on campus. Honestly, a lot of students go primarily to party and goof around. Many can balance their responsibilities with their academic demands, but  many  flunk out or graduate with a very low grade point average that, in my opinion, makes me ask why the person bothered. I know of some families in which their kids lived at home for part or all of the college years. Most of them expected that the student pitch in around the house with laundry, yard work, dishes, and work enough to at least make their own spending money. Of course, the money issue depends on how much the parent(s) have.  I expected my son to contribute enough to cover his own food, and he paid for his own clothes, books, entertainment.
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« Reply #862 on: August 21, 2018, 05:24:44 PM »

2NBBF: "graduate school" is clarified. But what do they say when they say singular "school", without "graduate"? Is it the same? I'd seen young 20-yr students saying "I'm working at ... for school". It's not usual school since you don't finish it at 20. Yet it can't be *graduate* school, as they can't be studying there at 20 if we do the math. Then, school differs than graduate school? School isn't casual way to say graduate school? I'm curious about specifically "school", without "graduate" bit, what does it mean?

2Buckethead: To want "college experience" is lame if you let me tell you this. Now then. Is your bottom line that you agree with me that youth can be just as independent living in fam house? Work, payment etc.? Basically, they don't differ than dormitory students right? This bit is puzzling "pay whatever tuition was due after scholarships and grants." - do you mean when successful students get scholarship & grant, they pay sth. called tuition? What's it? Here, students who pass each semester exams with good (4) & excellent (5) marks get scholarship, special money to student credit cards. If it's 5s around, the money will be obviously bigger than 4s & 5s. They will not be paid scholarship if next semester's results end up with satisfactory mark (3) & exam failure (2). If students, besides being good studies, join various university activities such as conferences, volunteering, readings, public speeches, quizes, intellectual & sport games, show creativity etc., they'll be candidates to get grant which is bigger money than biggest scholarship. It can be even size of the average worker's salary. I gather by that bit about tuition, scholarship/ grant definition differs in the States?
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« Reply #863 on: August 21, 2018, 08:08:05 PM »

2NBBF: "graduate school" is clarified. But what do they say when they say singular "school", without "graduate"? Is it the same? I'd seen young 20-yr students saying "I'm working at ... for school". It's not usual school since you don't finish it at 20. Yet it can't be *graduate* school, as they can't be studying there at 20 if we do the math. Then, school differs than graduate school? School isn't casual way to say graduate school? I'm curious about specifically "school", without "graduate" bit, what does it mean?

If they are going to school at age 20, then they are in college.
I didn't want to confuse the issue for you, which is why I just mentioned the four year colleges earlier.
However, there are other schools that one can go to after graduating from High School.
For some areas of concentration 4 years are not needed. There are many 2 year Community Colleges where you can get training in basic accounting or business, some health professions , etc. When you complete the program you would receive an Associates Degree.

Brian and Al were at El Camino Community College. If they would have stayed in they could have gotten Associates Degrees. To make things even more confusing for you, some people finish the two year program and then  transfer what courses they took to a four year college so that after 2 more years they will get a Bachelors Degree. The reason many times is financial. The tuition at the Community Colleges is a lot less than at the four year schools. Sometimes they are tuition free.

Yes, "school" and "college" are the same thing.
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"(Brian) got into this really touching music with songs like 'In My Room', and 'Good Vibrations' was amazing. The melodies are so beautiful, almost perfect. I began to realize he was one of the most gifted writers of our generation." - Paul Simon

 "The best thing you can be 'like' in music is yourself." Dr. John
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« Reply #864 on: August 21, 2018, 08:17:26 PM »

I went to a Book Club meeting at a local library tonight. We discussed John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, yes, the book referenced in California Saga.
This book club is great. I love that there's men and women in the group, and that no one person hogs the conversation.
For next month Wuthering Heights, followed by The Moviegoer by Walker Percy.
We were also encouraged to get going in reading Anna Karenina; guess we'll discuss that book when enough people get through it.
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"(Brian) got into this really touching music with songs like 'In My Room', and 'Good Vibrations' was amazing. The melodies are so beautiful, almost perfect. I began to realize he was one of the most gifted writers of our generation." - Paul Simon

 "The best thing you can be 'like' in music is yourself." Dr. John
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« Reply #865 on: August 22, 2018, 04:44:58 AM »

I'd like to read "Travels With Charley". "Anna Karenina" is boring. Stupider heroine couldn't be made up.

Confusing indeed. Educational system in America is difficult subject. Is there site with detailed full information about it written in easy, readable style besides banal wikipedia?
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« Reply #866 on: August 22, 2018, 05:53:42 AM »

I want to defend the idea of moving away from your family home after high school and living either in dorms or otherwise elsewhere during college/university. It seems to me that young adulthood is an appropriate time for a person to stop living as his (or her, but for convenience’s sake I’m going with only one set of pronouns) parents’ child and begin to become his own person. That, I believe, requires a certain degree of independence that goes beyond the loosening of parental rules (e.g. “now that you’re in college, you can stay out as late as you want”), but rather actual responsibility and freedom.
 
By living on one’s own, the student has an opportunity to explore the corners and boundaries of freedom, eventually in effect setting his own rules (e.g., realizing that getting drunk results in cloudy thinking if not sickness the next day, and thus deciding that weeknight drinking is a bad idea; or that staying up all night playing video games results in sleeping through morning classes and consequently getting bad grades, and so choosing to get a reasonable amount of sleep the nights before classes).
 
Beyond the practical problems, there is also the space and time to experience other people, other ideas, and basically (to use a cliché) “figure yourself out.” In many situations, I doubt a young person can or will do that in such close proximity to his parents.
 
A few of you have rightly pointed out that many students end up wasting this time by skipping classes, drinking or otherwise carousing too much, etc. I don’t disagree. But that is a potential consequence of independence. There are inevitably small failures and mistakes along the way to maturity, but I believe those are experiences from which a person grows. Living with one’s parents just prolongs the security of childhood and pushes out the weight of adulthood. I think living in a dorm or apartment can help ease that transition.
 
However I also want to be clear that I don’t think there is a single “best solution” for everyone. Different families have different relationships, different kids have different levels of maturity, different colleges place different financial burdens on students, etc.
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« Reply #867 on: August 22, 2018, 06:13:31 AM »

We were also encouraged to get going in reading Anna Karenina; guess we'll discuss that book when enough people get through it.

Oooh good luck! Tolstoy is probably my favourite author.
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« Reply #868 on: August 22, 2018, 06:19:38 AM »

Many like him here, cite favorite writer. & specifically name "Anna Karenina" as his crown achievement. Being very curious, I read exactly why people like it - in various reading sites, f.ex. Goodreads, as well as Russian sites. Points they stated - characters behaving as people would in reaal etc. - didn't change the view about it, i.e. boring epic story with stupid central/ titular character.
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« Reply #869 on: August 22, 2018, 06:24:20 AM »

Yeah, it's all a matter of what appeals to you. One of my favourite American novels is The Catcher in the Rye but some people are really turned off by it because of the narrator.
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« Reply #870 on: August 22, 2018, 06:36:33 AM »

Exactly. Hate it when people say things like "If you don't understand [writer/ book], sth. isn't OK with you", "you're idiot, plain & simple", "If you don't like [book title], you've got tishy taste overall". *facepalm*
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« Reply #871 on: August 22, 2018, 06:42:33 AM »

I really liked Anna Karenina but hated War & Peace. Tolstoy was a great writer but I prefer Dostoevsky and Gogol (among Russian writers of 19th century). But definitely as with music, once you are dealing with artists who have technical competence, it truly comes down to taste.
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« Reply #872 on: August 22, 2018, 06:49:28 AM »

This is one of my favourite subjects so I hope you don't mind if I engage it a bit further.

Dostoyevsky was really the author who made me love serious literature when I first read Crime and Punishment when I was 16. Over the next ten years, I read as much of his as I could. Gogol, I also love. I still love Dostoyevsky but the more I read Tolstoy the more I prefer him as an author because, in my opinion, he's dealing with the same sorts of issues in a more thoughtful and nuanced way than Dostoyevsky. I think that Dostoyevsky's early problems with the law made him pretty skeptical about the kinds of radical ideas that Tolstoy would flirt with and then eventually openly embrace. I don't always agree with Tolstoy but I am almost always amazed at his ability to write about something that is thought provoking.
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« Reply #873 on: August 22, 2018, 07:13:35 AM »

This is one of my favourite subjects so I hope you don't mind if I engage it a bit further.


I don’t mind a bit, and interesting take. I’ll reply in a bit in the Reading thread. First I’m finishing up a US education system summary for RRA1, which I’ll post here.
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« Reply #874 on: August 22, 2018, 07:37:09 AM »

RRA1 – I don’t know of a website that explains the U.S. educational system both completely and in easy-to-read format, but I took a stab at it.
 
Prior to specific grades, it is noteworthy that schooling can be public or private. Public schools are either mostly or largely funded by the government via taxes. As such, they have to abide by various governmental regulations and policies. (For example, our First Amendment says in part that the government cannot impose a particular religious belief on people; public schools therefore cannot promote a specific religion.)
 
Private schools generally charge students tuition and are largely exempt from those sorts of regulations. Many private schools have a religious affiliation, e.g. Catholic schools, Baptist schools, Jewish schools. These often mingle required religious training or services into the curriculum. Private schools are also very often viewed as better schools than public ones, with wealthy families sending their children to them. Some private schools—called boarding schools—even have full campuses and dormitories where the children live away from home at the schools.
 
There is a third option that is more recent—the past few decades—called “charter schools.” These are unique because they receive public funding but are privately operated. They typically have teachers who are not members of a labor union, they often have unique curriculums, and are often managed in a different way than public schools. You see them particularly in impoverished or other disadvantaged areas as alternatives to the failing public schools. For example, in New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina, I believe they mostly replaced traditional public schools (NOLA BB Fan can probably speak to that better than I can.)
 
It is also noteworthy that the U.S. educational system probably seems complex because it is for the most part decentralized: local towns, school districts, and states have quite a bit of control over things, so it is different from place to place. I have noted some variations below, but there are always other differences possible from place to place.
 
Kindergarten: For children approx. age 5. While most school is roughly 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday, kindergarten is often a half day or every other day.
 
Grades 1-12: Often grades 1-4 or 1-5 are called elementary school; 5-8 are called middle school; and 9-12 are called high school. It used to be more common that they would be divided as 1-6 (elementary), 7-8 (junior high school), and 9-12 (high school), but that changed in the past few decades. Those same years are also sometimes called primary school (up through about 8th grade) and secondary school (9-12).
 
Whether these are in the same buildings or different ones depends on the size of the town or schools. For example, I grew up in a town of about 2,000 people and our entire K-12 schooling was in the same large building, and other than a small Catholic school that served kids K-6, it was the only school in town. Now I live in a city where I think there are seven separate public high schools, probably several dozen private ones, and too many middle schools and elementary schools for me to even guess their number (every neighborhood has them).
 
Often, in the lower grades, a student is in a single class with a single teacher all day (with exceptions for things like music or physical education/gym class). Starting in the middle school/junior high range, they often move from room to room to be taught by teachers with more specialization (different teachers for math, English, other foreign languages, science, history, etc.). The curriculum is assigned in the lower grades, with a little flexibility added over time so that high school students can generally choose somewhat in their course of study (e.g., a student who intends to pursue music could take music theory or band, while some other student might take as many math courses as possible). But there are basic frameworks required of everyone to graduate.
 
In public schools, there is no tuition to attend through 12th grade. Everyone is required to attend school (or be home-schooled in the equivalent curriculum) by law, at least until usually the age of 16, at which point people can drop out with parental permission.
 
In the past, people could reasonably expect to be qualified for many basic, working-class jobs after completing school through 12th grade (i.e. obtaining high school diploma). However, this is no longer true. Someone with that education level can work in restaurants, some basic manual labor, some factory or janitorial jobs, but not much in the way of skilled labor, business, etc.
 
Post-Secondary Education / Higher Education: This is the optional education that takes place in colleges, universities, or trade schools. It is almost never free, though publicly funded institutions charge far less than private ones. Costs might be as low as a few thousand dollars a year, or as high as well over $50,000 a year. There are various forms of public or private loans, grants, etc., that help people finance education, with government money going directly to the institutions to help cover costs, to financial institutions to help cover costs, and to students to help cover costs. It is a complex, clumsy situation that in my opinion has resulted in tremendous amounts of unnecessary costs that eventually raise the overall costs. But that’s another story.
 
Some of the main types of post-secondary education are:
-       Vocational school, trade school, technical college, community college. These are usually 2-year or otherwise abbreviated programs that focus on specific or limited subjects intended to get students into the work force. Examples could be auto repair, basic business skills, healthcare, etc. The result is either an associate’s degree or some sort of professional certification. These schools often do not have dormitories and may not have extracurricular activities such as sports teams, bands and choirs, etc. They tend to be “commuter schools,” with students who live elsewhere simply commuting to the facilities to take classes. They are also regularly used by older students, perhaps looking to change careers, to get more schooling after having initially stopped, etc., and they tend to have many options for scheduling as well, such as evening classes, fewer days a week (but longer classes), and so on, to make it easier on (for example) single parents who have jobs simultaneously getting this education.
 
-       College and university. There are technical differences between colleges and universities, but they don’t matter much on a practical level. They have historically been designed for students to attend for four years, after which they receive a bachelor’s degree with a particular focus of study. However, students may complete their coursework in fewer or more years, depending on how many classes they take and how they perform. These institutions typically have a full campus of multiple classroom buildings, dormitories, athletic facilities, and other “student life” facilities such as a student union (which basically comprises bookstores, leisure areas, cafes, and so on).
 
-       Graduate schools. These are often, but not always, parts of colleges and universities, with their facilities on the same campuses. But the students are people who already have bachelors degrees and are seeking higher-level professional or academic credentials such as masters degrees or doctorates. Typical examples are students entering medical school, law school, or simply higher-level degrees in academic disciplines. These students often both pursue their own advanced degrees and teach undergraduates (e.g. the students seeking their bachelors degrees) in their introductory coursework.
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