Week Two



The main entrance to CSU- Wagga Wagga campus

Hello! Greetings once again from Down Under! In this week's blog post I am going to discuss some of the differences I've already noticed between Charles Sturt University and Missouri Southern, as well as some of the differences between American and Australian higher education in general.

First off, before I get started, I would like to address some things about this blog. I am very new to Blogger and to blogging in general; so I am far from mastering the website's functions and nuances. I expect to have much nicer looking entries by the end of the semester, but until then, I would like to kindly ask everyone to please bear with me. Uploading pictures is still a bit of hassle on the school library's computers and once again, the quality of the pictures is only as good as my iPhone will allow. I assure you the photographs I've taken hardly do the campus or the town justice, but I'll try to do as nicely as I can.

One of the first things I noticed before I even arrived at CSU, was the fact that Australians refer to universities as "uni" rather than "college" as we Americans so often say. There are a myriad of differences between CSU and MSSU, and probably many differences between CSU and just about any other American university. One of the very first things I noticed, and one that stands out to me in particular, is the issue of "timetables". I had heard the term "timetable" mentioned in several of my dealings with CSU officials prior to my arrival here, although I wasn't exactly sure what they entailed. Apparently, at Australian universities, or maybe just CSU, the times and days on which the classes meet are not set in stone until after the first full week of class. This is highly unusual to me and most likely due to the fact that times of the classes are not determined until after students have signed up for them. By the time all of the international students had enrolled in our classes, there were actually many timetables clashes and scheduling conflicts with many of our classes overlapping. As you can imagine, this was highly frustrating to many of the students, as a few of them had to re-arrange what classes they were taking entirely. As for me, I had only real conflict, which was easily resolved by me substituting one history class for another one at the exact same level. As you can tell, such a concept is strange to me, because back in America, the students build their own schedules around when each class is offered, allowing them to eliminate all scheduling conflicts easily (in my personal opinion, the American system is far superior to the one used here at CSU).

Other than this minor difference, CSU and MSSU have a lot in common. CSU is slightly bigger, in terms of both student body size and campus acreage, but the library, the dining hall, and the way the classes are conducted bear strong similarities to what I'm used to back in the States. So far, the lecturers at CSU have been extremely kind and helpful. Every single one of them is very approachable, in addition to be very knowledgeable of their respective subjects and quite good at lecturing in an interesting manner. Most of the lectures here at CSU meet once a week and are scheduled for two hours (though the full two hour block is rarely used). While the timetable system struck me as a bit inefficient and un-organized ( it seems that the school's administration is somewhat inferior to MSSU as well), overall, I have had a good first experience with my classes here in Australia.

A couple more random observations: In Australian culture, it is customary for students upon graduating high school to take a "gap year" where the student takes a year off from school to travel and experience new things. Because of this, most few year students at "uni" are 19, rather than 18 like a traditional American freshman. I assume this is because general education requirements do not exist in Australia, students are expected to specialize in their field right from the start. I suppose more American students who are unsure of what they want to study in college, or whether they want to attend college at all, could benefit from taking a "gap year".

My final observation on the differences between the American university experience and the Australian one is the difference in the spelling of certain words. For the most part, you can read something written by an Australian or an English person, and have no idea that person is not American. However, as I have been told, Australian English is preferred when submitting essays at CSU. Therefore, organization becomes "organisation", color becomes "colour", program becomes "programme" and enroll becomes "enrol". Needless to say, that's going to take some getting used to. I've already had fits trying to decipher the Australian dating system. As you can expect, the date 22/07/14 makes little sense to me. Cheers!

A strange sculpture-like thing behind the CSU Library