Week Sixteen

Locks on the bridge at Federation Wharf

Royal Barracks in Melbourne

Graffitti Wall on Melbourne

Me and some other international students at the Wagga Races

Hello again everyone and welcome to JayceDownUnder! A quick clarification before I delve into this post: this is not my last blog post. My last blog post will in fact be next week, and will be a reflective entry on the entirety of my time spent here in Australia. So, this entry will instead be a brief post about my final days in Wagga, as well as my first experience with final exams here at CSU.

Anyways, last Friday I took my first final exam here at CSU. Fortunately, for the first time in my life I have only two final exams, and have had more time than ever before to prepare for them. So, needless to say, I've been less stressed than ever before during a final exam period. My final exam was held in a gym, which was proctored by volunteers (rather than professors or teachers) without about a hundred other students all taking different finals. I must admit, I think that this method of holding final exams is perhaps somewhat inefficient. As the exams are held in the gymnasium, this requires that the school's recreational facilities be shut down during the examination period. Therefore, students have to wait until 5:30 to use the recreational facilities, which I'm sure many students find inconvenient. I feel fairly strongly, that the way my home university (and probably the way many American universities do it) administer exams is much more efficient. Having the class take their final exam at the usual time and the usual place takes care of the issue of space, and having the professor personally proctor the exam seems far more effective than recruiting volunteers.

Despite these complaints, the exam itself went quite nicely. Very fortunately, the exam was less difficult than I had anticipated, which was a tremendous relief. As I've said before, the Australian grading system (or at least the one used here at CSU) is a bit tougher than the American system; and I've found that a 70 percent is considered to be a good grade, or 'mark' as they call here it in Australia. If you'll examine that last sentence closely, you'll notice that I used single quotes around mark, as is the Australian custom. I'm actually somewhat relieved to be able to use American spellings when I return.

So, as I write this post, I have only four full days left in Australia. I leave the CSU campus at 5;00 Saturday morning (1:00 pm Friday in Missouri) and by the time I arrive in Kansas City, it will be 6;35 pm on Saturday, November 1st (due to crossing the international date line). Nothing like fitting thirty hours of travel within the space of one day!. In spite of this, I'm absolutely thrilled to be going home soon. I've enjoyed my time here in Australia immensely, but I having been away from my loved ones for such a long time is beginning to take its toll. Luckily, by this time next week I'll be with them in person!

As is custom here at JayceDownUnder, I will close this blog post out by saying 'see you next week'! However, when I say it this time, I mean it literally. So, everyone can still look forward to what will actually be my final post next week, and look forward to seeing me in my person. As much as I've enjoyed keeping this blog, I can confidently say I would much rather share my experiences with you all in person! See you all (in person) next week!