The first day

It hasn’t been all fun though because Monday started the academic year. I had my first class on Tuesday and it could not have been more opposite than what I am used to. At Merrimack, I go to class knowing exactly what to expect. I buy my books before the class meets for the first time, sit down in a class of 20 other students, listen to the professor for 50 minutes three times a week, do weekly readings and essays, and prepare the upcoming exams. In Australia, however, they do things a little different. I am taking four classes at the moment, but they only meet once a week. I have a lecture session and then a tutorial session for the class. They are either 50 minutes or an hour and 50 minutes and usually take place hours apart from each other. To you give you a better idea; I’ll explain how my Cultural Perspectives class takes place today. Tuesday morning, I wake up and go to lecture taught by convener Pat Wise with about 70 other students from 9-950am. Then, from 4-5:50pm I will go back to a different classroom and attend my tutorial session taught by a graduate student with about 30 other students. The meeting schedule is not the only difference that I have found. In lecture, students are told specifically to take notes; there is no time for questions to be asked. In tutorials (or tutes, as the Aussies say), there is plenty of time for discussion, questions, and more one-on-one teaching. It may seem that it is only important to attend tutes, but this would be a wrong assumption. Although the tutes do go over what the lecture has already said, it is important to go to both meetings because the convener and the tutorial teacher may have two different ideas about the same topic. One final difference I noticed was that there were not may assignments for the class. I have a final exam and a final essay, however, the essays I have are only about 1,500 words (about 3 pages) whereas at Merrimack last semester, my final essays were, on average, a minimum of 8 pages long. It may seem that this is easy, but because the essays are not long, they need to have more detail and be structurally efficient. The workload may not be too difficult, but living in such a beautiful climate and having access to travel all over the country is definitely going to make it hard for me to focus.

As I only have class Tuesday through Thursday, Jenna and I are planning on traveling during our extended weekends. We have been looking into a trip to Sydney for the weekend of March 18^th and going to the outback and Melbourne during our Spring Break in April. Both trips seem to have low fares for flights, so we think we should be able to do them. I have been looking on Facebook and it is funny to me how it’s March 1^st and I am just starting school. My friends who are studying abroad in Europe are all ready saying how they’ll be home in a little over a month and I won’t be home until the end of June, possibly July. I think often about how I could have been aborad in Europe traveling the country, tasting the authentic food and wines, but then I look out my window and the sun is shining, the pool is glistening bright blue, and I know that I have made the right choice. This is a once in a lifetime experience and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. There is not a cloud in the sky today and as jealous as I am that my friends are eating real Italian pizza and I get a sausage on plain white bread with barbecue sauce for dinner, I know that Australia is for me.