It is the wet season

Sorry everyone for the delay of a new post.
My school work as finally caught up with and as a matter of fact right I should be writing an essay but I figured this is important to..well anyway.

Last night I experienced the effects of a cyclone! Meaning LOTS AND LOTS OF RAIN! The underpass where I walk to UNI is now flooded and a bunch of guys last night decided it would be fun to mud wrestle each other. I did not participate! With all the rain we have been getting sadly I have no new adventures to talk about.

However, I did make plans to go to New Zealand for my break in April. A group of 7 of us are renting campervans and driving across New Zealand! I am so excited! We will be camping our way through the South Island and I cannot even imagine what we will see! I am definitely going to be thinking of LOTR the whole time! We do not have a set plan yet but I know we will see Fox Glacier and visit Queenstown, where I hope to go bungy jumping!

Also,  my roommate, Ruth,  has invited me to come back to her home near Brisbane for a couple of weeks after the semester is over! It will be so exciting to see how she lives, although it wont be that different, but still it will exciting to meet her family. Her parents are so nice for letting me come visit! I could not have picked a better roommate!

PICTURES!

Hey everyone!
I made by Australia photos public on Facebook in case you wanted to see more!
Check them out!
https://www.facebook.com/amanda.styers/photos

My UNI experience so far..

So I have had a request to post more about my classes  (cough cough Grandma) in Australia. I have been meaning to also post about some of the main differences in higher education here than in the US so I am so just going to combine both into what my overall experience has been like at James Cook University in Cairns, Queensland Australia! WARNING: This is LONG!

So just to start off with some basic understanding of what I mean by UNI. The term UNI obviously is short for University but rather than calling it “going to college” like the US likes to do, here you say “going to UNI”. For example; “Were do you go to UNI?” or “How was UNI today?”.  It is not only the word UNI that is different but more importantly the idea of going to UNI. UNI is in fact not the same as our American colleges. Unlike in the USA, first year UNI student do not take what we call basic studies classes or general education courses. They jump right into the core classes that are required for their degree, this means that they do not waste time or money on classes that have nothing to do this their major/degrees. However, this also means that first year UNI student do not get time to mess around. They have to know exactly what they want to study and what they want to specialize in. People who want to study law go right into law classes, people who what to be dentists go right into dentistry classes. That being said there are a lot of first year UNI student who are not straight out of high school. It is fairly common to go do an apprenticeship or go to trade school after high school before going to UNI. Unlike in the US where it is expected for every single young person right out of high school to spend thousands of their(or the parents or grandparents) money on higher education in the form of College. In case you cannot tell by the way I am typing this out I like the Australian idea of higher education a lot more then what we as young Americans are expected to do.

In addition most standard degrees only have course work that last for 3 year instead of the US standard 4, classes are called subjects, grades are called marks, and overlapping of your subjects times is accepted as long as you confirm with you professor. Also, the subjects are based more like what we would call a graduate/masters level. For example, in every single one of my subjects I have to write at least 1 2000 words essay. It might make more sense when I tell you that two of my subjects are environmental science courses not liberal art courses. Well at least this is new to me. We also have what are called tutorials. Basically an hour or two after our lecture for that subject we break up into smaller groups lead by a TA to discussion and go over what the professor spoke about in lecture…again new to me. But with all the differences I have to say I still like this system better.

Now more on my subjects aka classes. Well every Monday I have my Australian History subject which is taught by the TA that I spoke about earlier in my blog. True outback explorer! The lecture is broken up into 2 one hour lectures with a break in between for the first group’s tutorial. I am in the 2^nd group’s tutorial which is after the 2^nd hour lecture. Yes I know strange but somehow it works out. So basically I have a 3 hour subject with an hour break in between. In my tutorial for this class I have to do an independent research project on bushrangers (more about this when I actually start so called research project) and present in to the class via PowerPoint. It has to be ten minutes long but simple enough. So far in lecture we have gone over Captain James Cook (who my UNI is named after case you didn’t catch that) who named almost every single town, creek, bay, etc along Australia’s east coast. Also talked about British’s first contact with aboriginal people, some good some bad, and how the Australian Commonwealth country was founded by British convicts in Sydney. FYI: commonwealth meaning that they still recognize the British Queen as their Queen.  So that is subject numero uno!

Subject numero dos is Conservation of Tropical Rainforest ever Wednesday! This subject seemed fitting seeing as how my UNI is in the middle of the Wet Tropics, one of Queensland’s 5 World Heritage Sites! ( Google the others…I’ll give you a hint to one of them…you can dive it!) This subject last for four hours straight!!!! Two hour lecture and tour tutorial right after! But I have to admit very important! So far we are going over the basics of what is a rainforest , why are they being destroyed, and why we need to preserve them. Tutorial for this subject has not yet been underway but I feel it may be more discussion based. The awesome part about this subject is the 2 day field trip we are all are going to take together into the Daintree Rainforest in the heart of the Wet Tropics region! Well known for its biodiversity and awesome waterfalls and gorges! This I cannot wait for and will happen in about a month! PICS WILL BE UP! PROMISE!

On to subject numero tres! Tourism and the Environment! This subject is on Thursdays and consists of a 2 hour lecture followed by a 1 hour tutorial. Again tutorial in group discussion based and so far in the lecture we have talked about briefly the impact that tourism has on the environment. Is it good or bad? What is eco-tourism and why is it so popular? What makes a good eco tour? Etc… Again for this subject we go on a field trip as a class to Green Island. Which I have already been to but nerveless I will take any opportunity to have my classroom be the on the Great Barrier Reef!

Now before you go on saying that this doesn’t sound hard, this does not sound like school, blah blah blah. May I remind you about the graduate level expectations, the papers I will have to write, and the class presentation that goes with most of them.  Not to mention that the only exams I have throughout the WHOLE semester are just the finals that count for 50 PERCENT of my grade! Yeah so I DON’T want to hear it! As much as I say that I am living it up here and posting about all this awesome stuff I am doing pretty soon it will be crunch time and I will become a hermit! But until that time comes….. Australia you will explored!