<p>I am studying abroad at the University of Edinburgh (which seems quite popular in this forum) from the beginning of September to the end of December and I've never been more excited for anything in my whole life. A major reason for this is because a lot of my friends from the states are going to studying abroad as well, and I wanted to travel to them. So my random question is, are there any three day weekends or academic holidays at the University of Edinburgh that would make it easy to travel? If so, when?</p>
<p>Going to Uni in the UK is pretty different from what I understand going to uni in the US is like, the only compulsory classes you’ll have are tutorials, and you have one of those a week for each class you’re taking (here in Edinburgh, you take 3 classes/semester - each semester is 60 credits, each class is 20 credits) - ie, you can miss the rest if you want to travel! Say you had tutorials on Tuesday and Wednesday, you might have lectures on Monday and Friday, but missing one weeks worth of this literally does not matter. All the info is online on our LEARN system and people do it all the time. As long as you attend your tutorials, you will not be marked as absent, and even if one week you chose to go to Europe for a week and missed your tutorials, it would be fine because you’re allowed to miss 3 from each class before they start asking questions. We just don’t study 9-5 here, most people will only have 9-12 hours of contact time per week, and only 3 of those hours are compulsory, the rest of the time is yours do travel, chill and do as you will.</p>
<p>Also, there are no public holidays with the university. We have bank holidays here, for example, today is Witsunday, a bank holiday in the UK, but all university buildings are open (though classes are all done for the year here), they don’t close the uni or stop classes on public holidays here. It sucks! But seriously, if you missed a week of classes say once in October, then in November and December, there would literally be no ramifications.</p>