An Australian education

My first week of classes has just ended. It's been a difficult week, considering that for the past week and a half all I've had to do was meet people and have a good time. However, I am slowly getting into my classes, and there are some real differences between the way Aussie uni students are taught and how we're taught back in the States. Right now, I'm not too excited about these differences, but I am sure that after a year I will at least get more used to them, if not grow fond of them.

The biggest shock I've gotten so far is how hands-off the teaching style is here. Most students don't go to their classes, and to be honest, there's not much of a reason to: my classes are all recorded and uploaded on the internet within minutes of class ending. My environmental studies class held 200 people on its first day; by the second class, the number of students who showed up to the lecture was cut in half. Since the professors are mostly teaching for students who aren't in attendence, lectures tend to get a bit dry. Students don't ask questions, nor are they asked questions by the professors. I don't think I have ever had a class at A&M where the professor didn't talk to their students at least somewhat often; yet, a few days ago I had a professor who joked about (Heaven forbid) making his classroom "interactive." Oh, the horror of the thought.

If that's not dry enough, most of the classes I am taking have no textbooks. The only text I've had to buy is an English anthology (whoo hoo Norton). The other classes have references, but they're more of a "look at this if you're really bored" sort of reference. It feels weird to have just one point of reference-a lecture- for material that you'll be tested on extensively. I know that there is no way I will be able to feel confident for a final weighted 70% of my grade if I have to go off of what the professor rushingly says/scribbles on the board.

But anyhow, besides those two differences, I am struck by how specific a uni education is here in Australia. There are absolutely no core curriculum requirements. None. When you begin school as an english major or a business major, you start off by taking 100% english courses or business courses. You never take anything else- taking other subjects is almost seen as decreasing the value of your education. In the words of a female maths major I spoke to today, "I'm so glad I didn't study overseas. That's not uni, that's school." I could taste her distain. As a student who has taken (and loved!) my anthropology, chemistry, art, and music classes, I was a bit offended.

I assume it's good for people who want to go into academia or who want to devote an extra six years of their lives into a doctoral thesis, but what happens to everyone else? If I've learned anything about the job market (from what people have told me, mostly), it's that flexibility in learning and connecting ideas from different areas is extremely important to getting things done. I don't know if 3 years of solely working reaction mechanisms or analysing poetry can breed those skills.

Personally, I really appreciate taking classes that fall outside my field of study. I hope I never live in a world that revolves around just mathematics, chemistry, sociology, or art history. If that happens, maybe I will study that one subject alone. Until then, though, I want to make sure that I learn about as many different aspects of the world as I can. I'm going to be here for a while, and so ignoring so many parts of the life I will be experiencing is negligence, plain and simple.

Of course, this rant might just be my reaction to a second wave of culture shock. Just because I am here in Australia does not mean I have to learn by the Australian method. I might just have to put my own spin on things while I'm at school here- if I don't, I think going to school here will become way too tedious for me.

Last Day of Summer :/

I am not as good at this blogging thing as I had originally hoped. I don't know who I was kidding, to be honest- every journal I have ever attempted has failed within the first few weeks. This time, though, I'm going to use the "I've been too busy exploring a new continent" excuse for my tardiness.

This past week, a bunch of international students visited Victor Harbor and a wildlife area right next to it. Even though it's still winter and it barely got past 12 degrees, it was good fun. My group visited some shops, ate some fish and chips (honestly, though, we fed more to the seagulls than we ate ourselves), and then went down to Granite Island. Apparently, there are little penguins on the island, but we weren't able to see any. Robert "saw some penguins" and I got super excited, but it turns out they were just black-and-white birds. Bah.

At the wildlife resort, we saw kangaroos. And by kangaroos, I mean a lot of kangaroos. Kangaroo food was only $1, and so we all got some. My gosh, kangaroos are greedy. You would think they had never been fed in their lives by the way they ran/hopped(?) up to anyone with a bag. They were pushing each other out of the way, and some greedy little buggers even tried to tear through the bag themselves. I can kind of understand why Australians see them as rats.

Besides the kangaroos, there were wallabies, dingos, crocodiles, koalas, lots of reptiles, and chickens. Most of the animals were pretty chill since it was so cold outside (the crocs looked like they were dead), but some of the animals were pretty lively. The echidna was my favorite animal out of all of them. I mean, just look at it:

Isn't it adorable? Its tongue comes out through its nose. It's weird, but endearing.

Speaking of weird but endearing, the people I've met here have been really great. So far I've mostly been meeting international students, but everyone here has been very nice to get to know. I've met people from Germany, Italy, Greece, the UK, Kenya, Malaysia, China, Denmark, Holland, France, Canada,  and Sweden (this is probably short of one or two countries, but it's all I can remember right now). It's amazing how many Germans and Malaysians are here in South Australia. They might be able to annex the state for their own if they really wanted :)

School starts tomorrow. Blech. I finally figured out my schedule, so I will definitely receive credit for all of my classes, whew.  I only have 4 classes, which ends up being about 14 hours in American credit. It doesn't seem like much now, but I've been told that Australian classes are a bit more difficult than their American equivalents. I really hope I can keep up my GPA, but I figure all I can do is try my best and learn as much as I can while I'm here.

On the bright side, I get to see the Batman movie tomorrow! I have also gotten the go-ahead from my parents to go shopping (thanks, mom and dad) so I will finally be able to have more than 2 weeks' worth of clothes. In a place where the washing machine costs 3 dollars, I am really looking forward to that.

Aussie Movie Night!

Today the ISC hosted this movie (loosely) based off a true story about a dog named Red Dog. Apparently, Red Dog is famous for travelling all over western Australia.

It's a good movie, if anyone is interested. I was originally worried that I wouldn't be able to understand a lick of dialogue, but it actually wasn't bad at all! Plus Josh Lucas was in it and that helped... because of his American accent of course :)

One thing though- this movie is sad. If you know me, you know how I am with sad movies. They don't even need to be sad overall, but if there is a sad scene I am gone (Finding Forrester?). So, the biggest challenge for me was to keep from crying like a baby. I doubt the other international students would have been fond of that.   

Some quick notes about Australia

1. Their paper dimensions are totally different from ours. Apparently the international standard sheet of paper is an A4, which is about 1/4" skinnier and 1/2" longer than the usual 8 1/2 x 11 sheet we've all come to love. You would think it would be easy enough to standardize (standardise?) paper, but apparently it's not. So that means new notebooks, new binders, and less money for me.
2. The cost of living is really high here. Our dollar is right on parity with the AUS dollar, but what all the conversion places don't tell you is that minimum wage is $20/hr over here. Thus, all the basics like food and toiletries (don't even get me started on clothes) are loads more expensive here. As an Australian, it's no big deal because I'm pretty sure things balance out. As a student with a very American income, it's a problem.
3. Driving on the left side of the road causes more problems for pedestrians than you would think. Trust me on this one.
4. I am paying way too much for rent. I will definitely be looking to live elsewhere after this semester.
5. Jet lag is horrible! It doesn't help that the sun sets around 6:30 pm here. It's a little after 9 right now but it feels like it's 2 in the morning. Time zones are a bugger. I feel a lot better than I did originally, but it's still rough. I guess it just takes time.
6. I think I found a gym, a bank, and a bike. I should be good to go after all that, right? I originally wanted to keep up with Muay Thai here, but the only place in the city charges $110 a month + $110 a year membership fees + $130 for a Muay Thai t-shirt and shorts. I would end up paying more than a thousand dollars for classes, so I think I'm going to go to a place closer to my apartment that offers kickboxing classes. It won't be the same thing, but at least I have the ability to keep up my fitness for whenever I come back to Texas.
7. People really aren't vegetarians here. Vegetarianism is apparently a very American thing to do. I scheduled dinner with some distant acquaintances and they were going to prepare lamb. Once I said I didn't eat meat, she replied, "Oh, hm, I don't think I have any recipes for that. We don't really have them over for dinner." It's not much different from Texas, I guess :)
8. Living in a city is a bigger shock to me than living in Australia. I have not gotten used to city life yet. I walk a lot (7,8 km a day) and I really enjoy that, but the people watching is completely different. So many people in heels and tights and black clothes- and most of the people wearing these are high schoolers! Transit gets a bit fussy too, and people do not smile to each other. These seem like they're all typical traits of cities, but it still strikes me as really different from anywhere I've ever lived before.

I'll make a more legitimate blog post next time. For now, though, I think this is it. I'm so sleepy...

Transit Adventures!

I'm extremely tired. Miserably, excruciatingly, mind-numbingly tired. It's 8:32 pm here in Los Angeles, and I've been up since 3:00 am. Once I board my plane at 10, I have another 4 hours before I am allowing myself to fall asleep- it's my attempt at getting to a somewhat Australian sleep schedule.

I'm not good at arithmetic , but I am pretty sure that this plan involves 23 hours of being awake. BLURGH.

So far, though, the last 17 hours have been pretty eventful. On my flight to LAX, I sat behind a guy who apparantly liked to take a lot of topless pictures of himself. Don't call me a creeper, but he was surfing through his iPhone pictures and they were awkwardly screaming to me the way those Myspace-worthy pictures do. I immediately thought, "What the...? What is this? Who does this guy think he is?"

Well, funny story: once he left the plane, the girl next to me asked, "Wait, isn't that the guy who played the evil husband in Titanic?"

Yup. It was Billy Zane. The guy thinks he's a movie star, apparently.

Then, after a few hours of tearing my hair out in baggage claim, my mom's friend from Grosse Pointe picked me up to show me around the area. We went to the Getty Museum, which is pretty much the most legit museum complex I have seen. I really like LA's architecture. The gardens were beautiful, too. They had these vines encased by an iron frame so that they grew into a tree shape. It was awesome.

On our way back from the museum, we got a flat. I can now say that I can survive a flat tire change on the 405. Booyah. It took about 15 minutes. I think that was pretty beast.

After that debacle, we all ate at this restaurant in the middle of LAX. It was spaceship themed and had the creepiest elevators I have ever encountered- when you pressed the button to go up to the restaurant, a song started playing, and the elevator wouldn't let you go until it stopped. It wasn't smooth jazz, either- it was psychadelic space funk. Freaky. The rest of the place looked like it was right from the 70s, but the mushroom ravioli was really good.

And now I'm waiting in the Virgin lounge/terminal for my flight. 30 minutes until we board. Virgin has a strange style for their terminals. It makes me feel like I'm a jazz lounge. They have bar lights and backlit signs at their check-in counter, and their muzak involves Gaga/Adele mashups. It boggles my mind. Whoever told Richard Branson this would sell is crazy and brilliant.

I will be so happy to get into Adelaide.

By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?

"Oh, it's a big pretty white plane with red stripes, curtains in the windows and wheels and it looks like a big Tylenol!"

In about 24+5 hours, I will be on the same type of plane- a Boeing 777. These things are MONSTERS. It's no 747, but still! This is definitely not the pond-hopper I take from College Station to Houston. I really hope they don't serve fish on the flight :)

The final stretch

Hooray! I just gave my final presentation for my internship. For all intents and purposes, I am finished with my summer!

I'm really glad to be going to Australia. I've waited for this for a long time. It's unreal that, in a few days, I'll actually be there. Visiting Australia was always on my bucket list, but I never believed it was actually going to happen. I'm so glad it will.

This upcoming week will involve a lot of packing and goodbyes. Both of those are difficult. But I know it's what I have to do. Anything worth doing comes with  obstacles, right? At least, that's what I'm telling myself right now. We'll see if the converse is true this time around :)

Australia vs. Charlotte

(Note- for the graph, I let month 1 be the first month after each city's respective winter solstice.)
Graph time! Can you tell I'm a math major yet?

So, the weather difference between Adelaide and Charlotte is never more than about 9 degrees Fahrenheit. This is a little disappointing, since I was hoping the weather would be hotter in the summer months (I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to getting into bodies of water on days that aren't 90+), but it makes sense. Both cities are at about the same latitude (35 degrees). I was really happy when I found that out because hopefully it means the clothes I have will be good enough :)

Though, this whole thing is kind of a bummer. I'm going to have to be better about going into the ocean when it's not blistering hot, I guess.

7 days until I'm flying somewhere over the Pacific. Eek!