Things have
slowed down a bit, which is fair because classes have started. So I’ll talk
about uni first and a couple of the differences between education here and back
home. The organization of classes and schedules here are much more simplistic
and I prefer it that way so far. For instance, you only take classes specific
to your major; I think they call it your course over here, but I could be
wrong. This means a lot less busy work from other classes that don’t
necessarily pertain to your major. There are easily both pros and cons to this
but they (college) also have separated sections for one specific class. Like,
all of my history classes have a lecture and a tutorial, which is a discussion
with a closer group of students. I don’t know why we don’t do this in The
States but it forces you to actually pay attention to your lecture and you
don’t need to attend classes like recitations and TA sessions. But if you do
need extra help at all it’s provided when needed. For my advanced organic
chemistry class we have lectures, tutorials and labs but they are well
constructed and are the same time every week to get you into the habit. And my
class has about 15 students in it instead of 150.
Grades are
more intimidating however, because there are only a handful of assignments,
papers or exams. But it makes it the perfect place to study abroad because
there isn’t a lot of repetitive busy work. Another thing is they don’t have
electives like globalizations classes or diversity classes or cultural
understanding, and so on. This has gotten me a lot of weird looks because I’m
taking three “history” classes that fulfill those credits back home but I’m a
chemistry major so no one understands why I’m there. And the last thing I
noticed is that every single one of my lectures and tutorials mentioned the
United States. Don’t really have anything else to say after that though…just an
observation. All in all, I love being the international student. I love getting
looks when I have to explain why a chemistry student is taking Global History.
I love explaining where I’m from and getting picked on for growing up in the
States. I love having an accent and shocking people when I first open my mouth
in class. If I wanted the same shit, I would have stayed back home, but uni
life here suits me well here for now. Also, I have class three times a week, I
like that.
In other
news, I went to a club for the first time. It was something like three floors
with a pool on the top floor and it was real loud and drinks were expensive and
I saw the most douchebags in one collective space than I ever want to see again
and I almost lost my wallet and ruined my life and went broke because of it,
but I had a good time. It’s really the people you go with that make the
experience, and as always, I had the best company. It was packed and hard to
find them but all of that was satisfied at the boat party the same weekend,
because there I let loose and showed the Aussies my dance moves. That party was
fun. In between I learned and played some Australian Rules and my love with
footy and the AFL just grew and grew. Oh, if you want to see pictures of anything I've sort of stopped taking pictures this week and lived vivaciously through tagged photos, but you're always welcome to look at those. That does it for now:
Sincerely,
I miss Mexican food #SendGregBurritos2014
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