Uni

Now that I am well into my second week of classes I thought it might be time for an update. I wanted to highlight some differences between the way that uni here works and the way it works in the states. First of all, the ages are different. People typically graduate year 12 at 17, and then either go to a trade school, into the work force, or to university. This means that most of my classmates are my age or younger. They also graduate typically in three years, although it varies some, and when they graduate they usually are done with school and can go right into working on what they got their degree in. There is no real 'liberal arts' education, it is pretty much studying what you are going to do, with the occasional elective.

My classes are also different, because the university is so big and because it is just different. With rare exceptions, classes usually have an hour or two of lecture or week, and then smaller meetings for various purposes, like tutorials (tutes) or practicals (pracs-australians abbreviate everything, honestly) where you are able to actually discuss what you learned about in lecture and go into it in more depth, and ask questions. My microeconomics class has something like 400 people in it, but the tutorial is only about 25, so you can see how these sessions would be helpful. Another thing that is different to me, but probably not to some other people, is that I have a class on the 8th floor. This is an absurd idea to me. I have never had to take the elevator to class before.

My classes themselves are moderately interesting. Australian Popular Culture is a lot more in-depth and a lot more intense than I was anticipating, but not in a bad way. Developmental Psychology is a lot lamer than I was anticipating lol. Environment, Sustainability, and Ecotourism is going to be really cool I think. That class is actually quite small, and at the end we will get to go to an actual ecotourist location and perform a full environmental audit on the place. Microeconomics is microeconomics.

I realize in retrospect that this post may not have been that interesting. Sorry for that lol.