Pablo de Olavide University, Seville

To continue then, I'll tel you a little about my experience at Pablo de Olavide University during the three years that I've been studying there.

The UPO - the Pablo de Olavide University - is located on the outskirts of the city (near Montequinto and Dos Hermanos). This means that it's quite far away from Seville city centre, though it's connected to this by a bus which takes almost the same amount of time to get there as the metro does from Prado de San Sebastián, and which will save you a few euros. The only problem with the bus is that you have to memorise the timetable, as they come much less frequently than the metro (obviously).

One of the advantages of the UPO is that all its faculties are located on one enormous campus. Once you've been there for a few days, you'll know your way around, and won't need to worry about getting lost.

The faculties at this university with its corresponding courses of studies are:

• Faculty of Business Science: Bachelors in Management and Administration, Economic Analysis, Finance and Accountancy, Double Bachelor in Management and Administration and in Finance and Accountancy Law.
• Faculty of Experimental Sciences: Bachelor in Biotechnology, Environmental Science and in Human Nutrition and Diet.
• Faculty of Social Sciences: Bachelor in Social Education, Social World, Sociology, Double Bachelor in Social Word and Social Education and in Political Science, Administration and Sociology.
• Faculty of Sport: Bachelor in Sport Science.
• Faculty of Law: Bachelor in Political Science and Administration, Criminology, Law, Work Relations and Human Resources, Double Bachelor in Law and Political Science, and in Work Relations, Human Resources and Law.
• Faculty of Humanities: Bachelor in Geography and History, Humanities, Translation and Interpretation, Double Bachelor in Humanities, Translation and Interpretation.

Aside from this broad range of courses, another advantage of the UPO is its extensive cultural and training-based offers. You can attend daily conferences, workshops and extracurricular courses which will add credits to your degree as well as being interesting.

On the campus, you also have an enormous library at your disposal which includes lots of resources linked to the degree programs I mentioned before, plus other titles which are unrelated but equally as interesting.

There are also three cafes and a pizza place onsite, a stationery shop, two photocopying shops, a bookshop, a driving school, an optician, a gym, and a Santander branch (with cash machine). Additionally, all buildings on campus are connected by an elevated walkway which includes tables and seats, making up an eating area (there are six microwaves), a group work area and a study area.

Everything sounds great so far, though it's not all a bed of roses.

Yes, the UPO offers an extensive and attractive range of studies (above all the double bachelors, which aren't available at most Spanish universities), but the management there is awful.

To begin with, every faculty is managed differently, meaning that all students are on different timetables. While some only have classes during the mornings, others only have them during the afternoons. Some are able to choose between mornings and afternoons, and there are even others who don't get to choose at all and who have classes both in the mornings and afternoons.

This isn't even half the problem though. The UPO is made to sound fantastic with its innovative and progressive methods of teaching, when in reality, it seems like the teachers don't have a clue what they're on about in their classes. Classes are always good when they've been properly planned and evaluated in the manner which would be most beneficial for the students. Instead of this though, teachers set work willy nilly, without explaining what exactly you're meant to learn from it or what its objectives are (real learning, not just the useless words you read on the PowerPoint on the first day of classes and which they themselves don't know the meaning of).

On the other hand, it's worth mentioning the pathetic management of the faculties, too (some more than others, but all of them, at the end of the day). Every time you have to do some paperwork, you encounter problems. Whether it's your matriculation papers, papers for your internship, your timetable... there's nothing you can get done easily or quickly. Two things will probably happen to you: they'll blame other people, or they'll blame you.

In terms of the university services I listed above, yes there are a lot of them, but they're also quite bad. There are six microwaves now, but there were only two until last year (between over a thousand students? You'd spend over an hour waiting to heat up your meal... ). The photocopying shops are the same: there are only two of them between the thousands of students on campus. When you finally get back to class with your papers, you'll get told off for not having printed off everything you've done every day, or that text which you've probably read for the third time in your degree. At the end of the day, it's always going to be your fault.

Finally, I admit that no university is utterly perfect, but the UPO is very conflicted, and everything moves very slowly and painfully... the professors pass who they want to pass and mostly by the skin of their teeth, the departments string you along, the deans and junior deans turn everything round on your when you criticise their management skills, the information services don't answer your questions, and if they do, they answer them wrongly...despite all of this though, the optician's very good.