As an international/Study Abroad student, it meant I had arrived about a week before any other students so it had been relatively quiet, but the week after was 'O' week, otherwise known as 'Week Zero'. I found the title to be quite flashy- I guess it makes sense, since it's the week before week 1 when the classes start. Needless to say this was the crazy week. There was the academic side of sorting out modules of course, but then there was the other side, the 'let's-party-every-single-night' side! No offense Keele, but you are shadowed by the efficiency and organisation of the induction events for first years! (Yes I know I'm a second year but I get treated officially like a new student... more on that later).
It may just be because I live on the student residences that I get caught up in everything that's going on, but I honestly couldn't believe how many events that Deakin Student Association (DUSA) had managed to plan. There were mentor events, stalls with free food every day, free food in the evening, parties, theme nights, club nights, day parties and events... To name a few there were 'girl's life skills' and 'boy's life skills', traffic light parties (for those that don't know, you dress in green, orange or red to display your relationship status...), a crazy race around campus, a film projected on the green of campus, trivia nights, pub nights at local pubs in the area, local bands playing... The club night in Melbourne was particularly fun- about 60 of us from rezzy (the slang for residences) filled an entire tram, singing most of the way to the city (which is incidentally about a 45 minute ride) dressed in beach wear.
Perhaps now is a good time to mention the 'goon' culture.
If I asked you to guess what it was before I told you, I wonder what you'd come up with... But yes, the goon culture is apparently the greatest and most popular Australian student culture that exists. How, I don't know, but I suppose it isn't too different to what we do in England, we just don't have a name for it... The price of alcohol here is expensive. Super expensive. I'm talking about $8 or $9 AUD for a decent bottle of beer (that's about £6 by the way, and that's for the generic non-inspiring stuff). Draught beer is sold in half pints for about the same price as a pint would be at Keele, and as a bartender at KUSU myself, I know how bad that fizzy water (*cough* Coors *cough*) can be. So to have to pay double for an equivalently bad beer is upsetting, to say the least. This is why, at least I think, why the goon culture exists. How it works, is you buy the cheapest box of white wine you can find to predrink on any and every night out. The goal is to get drunk enough beforehand so you don't have to spend money when you're out. The difficulty is, the wine usually tastes so bad that you have to mix it with something else, usually fruit juice of some kind. And so it is- Goon. I myself have not been tempted to partake. Quite honestly, I'd rather pay the price for a couple of nice beers and enjoy my evening in a less drunken way, but hey, that's just me!
Now perhaps I should talk about the more important stuff...
During this week there were also compulsory faculty meetings in between the fun social stuff. I'm talking welcome meetings... God, so many... This was particularly grueling for me, because they were in fact designed for the first years who had never been to a university before. 'Hello, we are the science faculty, this is what we expect you to do...' etc. I suspect that it's because I am an exchange/international/Study Abroad student that they invited me to attend these- I seem to have been treated as a new student in all aspects, including a mentor scheme (which is kind of cute, since my mentor is a younger student than me...). I guess there's no reason why I shouldn't recap on the basics though, and it HAS allowed me to meet some new people... Finding reasons here... In fact, thinking about it, as much as it wasn't useful to me academically, it DID help me work out how the campus worked, so I guess it could have been worse.
Deakin's module system is actually more efficient than I expected it to be. Even though at Keele it was hinted that, even though you filled out the module forms, it still wasn't confirmed until you fought some kind of battle with the other students on a first come first served basis. This is kind of true, except with their system (online) they are able to 'pre-enrol' a student in a module. I'm not sure exactly, but I got the impression that Australian students had to search a data base for individual modules. For me, the ones I had already chosen were there selected; I merely had to click an acceptance button. I was enrolled in about 5 minutes, honestly.
BUT. There is a big but here for me. One of my modules wasn't appropriate, which I had known from the beginning but had to wait until I was actually enrolling at Deakin to change. I had selected a module which appeared to have a different title when I researched it to what it actually was... and had turned out to be wholly inappropriate. THIS is where your back-up approved modules come in handy, so for goodness sake, choose ones you don't mind doing! Luckily for me, I had a great couple of approved back-ups, so it was just a matter of swapping them around, right? Well, you'd have thought so... Unfortunately I had a bit more running around to do that day. I had to go to the relevant faculty, get a form, fill out the form, return it to faculty- they would send it to Geelong (another campus of Deakin that is about 2 hours away because they processed all the modules there), who would take about another week to process it. This is a scary prospect for ANY Study Abroad student, because there are such strict constraints from Keele on making sure modules are transferable. After chasing them up on the phone a few days ago, they were able to fast track my form to make sure my timetable was all set up for the start of classes the next Monday (I asked them nicely, remember to be polite).
I will take this moment to rant a little about Keele's grade transfer system. Deakin grades will be reduced by an average of 10% when converted to Keele grades, which means if I want a first at Keele I have to achieve over 80% here at Deakin. Some people say that studying in Australia is easier. Well it might well be for those people, but I have just as much work to do here (if not more) than in England. That being said, it is a fair system to convert marks. HOWEVER, the universities of our American friends do not convert the marks. Whatever they get here, is what they get there. If I hear another American student saying they did Study Abroad for a doss, I might kick off...
Anyway, that's just my opinion. It won't stop me working my butt off because at the end of the day, I can only get what I am capable of getting when I'm working as hard as I can. My classes all seem very interesting, and even though each of my textbooks costs about £100, I am excited to finally get on with some learning after so many weeks of build up (and I knew from the start Australia would be expensive).
I don't know what my next blog will be about, probably classes. I've broken the back of all the milestones and administration of commencing my trimester here- I've 'caught the wave' as it were and now I just have to ride it to the shore. Hope I can keep my balance! Super cheeseyness. Super Australian cheeseyness,
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