A Few Words on College Life and Australian Uni

So as I have been documenting my travels throughout Southeast Asia and Australia, I figured that I would take a moment to shed light upon the experience that I have been having at my home-base at St. Mary's College and the University of Melbourne.

ST. MARY'S

One of the best decisions that I have made in this whole going abroad process was definitely choosing to live in one of the residential colleges at the University of Melbourne.  This not only granted me the ultimate welcome experience during O-Week and super fun turns, but there are also many more experiences that are very particular to living in a college as opposed to an apartment complex.  

Robing up and Meals

Meals at Mary's really enhance the community experience in the college.  Every meal of the week runs on a schedule and it is awesome for everyone to get together and catch up.  Also, the students and faculty have special about three times weekly where we wear our black academic gowns, or "Accys."  These dinners take place on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights.  This may sound ridiculously similar to a little franchise called Harry Potter where student wizards constantly dawn black cloaks for meals and classes at Hogwarts, but it is actually pretty fun.  It was a bit hard to take the these dinners seriously at first, as we cracked all kinds of jokes and even played some Harry Potter tag throughout the hallways.  However, robing up for dinners surprisingly soon became like second nature and normal believe it or not.

On the Tuesday and Thursday Accy nights, we have what is called High Table.  At High Table dinners, the faculty sits at a higher table and there are various forms of fun entertainment such as  guest speakers, student singers, and performers.  I really appreciate these frequent cloak dinners because it unites everyone at the college and totally structures our week.  Who else gets to have Harry Potter-style dinners in their lives?  It is such an awesome culture!

Work Scheme or Work Scum?

This is one of the parts that I did not recall reading about before coming to Mary's.  At the beginning of the semester, every student was asked to submit their weekly availabilities for Work Scheme.  Here is our college Handbooks portion that defines Work Scheme:

"WORK SCHEME 

Each student is required to contribute up to two hours each week to the Student Work Scheme which assists the College to contain fee increases. Students are responsible for co-operating whole-heartedly with the organisers of the Work Scheme and fulfilling the work assigned to them or if unavailable to arrange to swap with another student. "

Work Scheme is really not as bad as it seems, and it is one of the reasons that St. Mary's is one of the less expensive Colleges on the College Crescent.  Although it often feels like a drag, it too is slowly becoming part of the routine of living at Mary's.


Foods

I have definitely noticed differences in common foods since coming to Oz.  One of the major ones is Sweet Chili sauce.  This sauce is a tangy yet zesty condiment that can pretty much go on anything here in Australia (think the equivalent to American ketchup or "tomato sauce").  The BEST thing I have eaten with Sweet Chili sauce has been over seasoned potato wedges with sour cream.  Another food that is very common in Mary's is cordial.  Now I had never heard the word "cordial" before in my life, but I have definitely learned to, not necessarily like, but accept it.  Cordial is a concentrated sugar syrup that you mix with water to produce a cheap and easy-to-make "juice"-like drink.  I learned this simple recipe after filling a jug with straight cordial concentrate and serving it to a table at lunch... Oops! It's not a personal favorite of mine, but I have gotten used to it here at Mary's.  Another common snack food here is meat pies.  These things are NASTY! I am uncertain as to what they put in these things in addition to meat, but whatever it is oozes purple from your mouth after the first bite. That's an Aussie food that I often pass on haha. 

PUTTING THE "UNI" IN UNIVERSITY

"Uni" is the abbreviation here for University-- if you haven't noticed from my lingo descriptions in previous posts, Australians love to summarize their common jargon.  After many questions regarding the differences in University life between the states and here, I have discovered that there is not really too much to say.  FYI, the classes I am in are "Global Marketing," "Brand Management," "Business in Asia," and my personal favorite"Australia Now."

They have a different marking system which includes H1's, H2's, H3's and other random letters; but the fundamentals are all pretty similar.  The business school here is super modern and and exciting.  The building where I have most classes is called The Spot because it has tons of spots all over it, resembling a metallic leopard-speckled cube.  I often spend time in there at a modern cafe, quickly cramming before tutorials.  Oh yeah, for each class you have one 2-hour lecture a week plus a 1-hour tutorial.  What is different here is that we often have TWO 2-hour lectures in the states, so there is a little more free time during the week at Melbourne which is excellent! 

Class sizes certainly vary.  Most of my commerce classes are pretty small, but my Australia Now class is HUGE!  This class is filled much like a GE at USC, but it is definitely my coolest class here.  We have learned so much about the brief Australian history including topics such as politics, Indigenous Australia, religion, sports, music and cinema.  Who knew that Australia was first colonized by Britain a prisoner retention base? Wild...