Week 2 of Classes

There was a break in the rain for a couple of days, but that break has now ceased and it is pouring once again. Hopefully it will not rain enough to cause flash floods again. I have had a busier week since we actually had to attend practicals and tutorials this week, which is nice because I have something to occupy myself with on these rainy days. The course structure is a bit different here than in the states...there are lectures, but they only meet once a week. For each course there is usually a practical (basically a laboratory component) or a tutorial, which is like an hour-long discussion-based period. The lectures here are not mandatory, but it is helpful to attend since in Australia the final exam for any course is usually anywhere from 45-75% of your final grade. The sizes of the classes are basically the same as at Saint Michael's...with my biggest lecture having about 300 students and my smaller lectures, tutorials, and practicals having about 20 students. Generally, most of the professors seem to have similar teaching methods and standards as most of the professors that I've come across at Saint Michael's, but I do have one professor here that is extremely laid-back and told us not to worry about due dates because they are really "more like guidelines." At JCU, since most of the student's grade depends on several large assignments and the final exam, there is a special procedure for handing in assignments. When it is due, you don't just hand it in to the professor, you have to take it to a special office where they will stamp it with the date that it was handed in on and enter it into the computer system so that if a professor loses it, the assignment can then be traced. In Australia, one refers to high school as college, so after many people mistakenly thought that I went to Saint Michael's High School in Vermont, I too started saying "Uni" when referring to higher education. A lot of the students here are quite young though, since they graduate from high school when they are 17 years of age. However, there are 2 16-year olds in one of my courses!

Today was the first time since I've been here that I've really felt like a minority. Although I live with 2 Australians, there are many Americans at the student lodge since most of the Australians that go to JCU commute and find accommodations in or near Cairns. In today's class though, I was the only person who was not from Australia. I didn't really realize this until class started and we all introduced ourselves since you can't determine who is Australian or American just by appearance. The fact that I was the only American in the class didn't bother me at all until we started discussing the indigenous people (it is an indigenous studies course) of Australia and then I started to get a little intimidated because all of the students had grown up with and around the people whom we were discussing, but I knew very little about them and had never actually met an indigenous person. So I felt like I didn't really have a right to state my opinions about any of the issues going on right now with Australia and its indigenous groups. I feel like this is just something I have to get used to though, since I already learned a lot about them even in just this first tutorial. One of the things that just happened that we discussed was that the government decided that they're going to stop giving any person (regardless of ethnicity) money to send their children to school if they spend that money on activities such as drinking. Perhaps I will write more on this topic once I learn about it some more. On a lighter note, we also talked about Australian Idol (their version of American Idol) because a girl in the class made it to Brisbane (like their Hollywood?) when she auditioned for the show. I used to be a fan of American Idol, so I thought that was pretty cool!