April 15 marked the halfway point in the semester. Then, university life paused for 10 days for the Mid-Semester Break, where I was able to go to Bali and Rotorua. Academic life has now resumed as we are beginning the second half of the semester and my time abroad. (This post will be posted quite late due to Bali and Rotorua posts coming beforehand.)
Being halfway through my time here, I figured I should share some insights on my time here rather than just give you an account of my daily activities whilst I travel.
There's lots I could talk about so if you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments and I'll gladly answer :)
I guess since I'm here for study abroad (technically) I should talk about the study part.
Classes here are much different than what I'm used to. At Loyola (and throughout my entire educational life), the most people I've ever had in any of my classes was 30, max. Usually there's less than 25 people in a class with me. Here at the University of Auckland, my SMALLEST class has 220 students in it. My largest class has 650 people. You're literally just a number. You don't actually have to write your name on anything, as long as you write your student ID on every page (funny fact: I don't actually know my student ID here so every single time I have to get out my ID to look at it). With that many people in my classes, you'd think I'd make some friends, right? lol nope. About 90% (okay that might be exaggerating, maybe about 80%) of the students in my classes are all Chinese and literally do not speak English. Like I don't understand how they're in an English speaking university when they don't speak English. They speak to each other in Chinese and when the teacher asks them something they play the "no English" card; like how are you here then?! The other 10-20% don't talk to me, except for my International Business Strategy class where we have groups so they have to talk to me. As for the teachers, oh boy that's an issue too. In my Marketing class, we have a new professor every 2 weeks. Thankfully, I'm a good learner so it's irrelevant to me, but for others I imagine it must be quite difficult to have a new professor so often. We literally can't stay on a subject because the teacher is gone so soon. And each teacher has different accents and teaching styles and experience and such so it's extremely difficult to figure out how they teach in order to learn best. Then in my Management class, our tutor (kinda like a GA, they help to grade the papers and we can go to them if we need to better understand the course, I think) taught our professor last semester. Our professor is a Masters STUDENT. HOW IS SHE CERTIFIED TO TEACH UNDERGRAD?!?! Shouldn't the tutor be our teacher and the teacher our tutor? Ugh it angers me because she's awful and grades us all like we've already got our doctorates when she doesn't even have her masters. Plus she also works at Hospice in addition to teaching and studying and raising her kids (of which she has more than 1), so she literally has no time for us. I would be okay with it if she wasn't such an awful grader. She said she would "go easy on us for our first paper" and gave me a 1/5 so when I went to her to complain instead of helping me she just told me what to write for the next one so I did exactly as she said and she told me it was perfect, then she only gives me a 4/5 on that one! Plus since she told me what to write instead of helping me I have no idea what I'm supposed to actually do for the last 2 reflection papers. Ugh she angers me. But she said that I'll still get an A in the class, so that's really all I care about, but I don't know how I can do that when the highest grade I can get (if I get a 100% on everything else) is a 95% because of those first two reflection papers. That's another thing I don't understand - they're grading system. I literally have no idea what counts as an A or a B or anything. All I know is, thankfully, when they go back to the States we get a grade higher than what UoA says we got. But like in Business Strategy we have a quiz and two BCR-type assessments each week and one of the first BCRs (Brief Constructed Response) we got back only got a 6.5/10 but somehow that equaled a B? In America that would be a D. So I'm totally lost when it comes to grades, but as long as I "pass"(Get As) than I'll be fine. There was something else about classes I wanted to mention, but I've forgotten whatever it was. If I remember I'll come back to it, if not then oh well.
The second part to study abroad is abroad. So I guess this brings me to my travel portion of the experience. As you might have noticed, I've been traveling quite a lot. In Auckland, I haven't been that active, but I've visited a few beaches around town. Throughout New Zealand, I started in the Bay of Islands then went to Queenstown, the Coromandel Peninsula (including Cathedral Cove), Muriwai, Leigh, Goat Island, and Rotorua. I've also ventured to Byron Bay and Brisbane (both in Australia) and Bali. Looking towards the future I plan on visiting the aquarium and zoo, Piha, Hobbiton, Waitomo, Waiheke, Taupo, Wellington, Dunedin, and Invercargill domestically and Fiji, Samoa, and more of Australia (Adelaide, Perth, Darwin, Canberra, and Sydney) as well. It seems I might not have enough time to go back to Cairns which really upsets me, but I'd rather see more that I haven't already seen than repeat trips when I don't have enough time to do both. People who study abroad in Europe visit all these countries during their abroad and because of the location of New Zealand, that just isn't very feasible for us, but I'm getting to know New Zealand and Australia quite well. I've had to travel to most places by myself which has not made me more independent but more anti-social. So that backfired. Oh well.
lol another hope my mother had for me that has also failed comes via the food front. I do not cook. My mother was hoping that New Zealand would force me to cook because there is no meal plan, but I stick to what I always say "there's a lot that can be cooked in the microwave". Most of the time, I'm on noodles 5 times a day. They like to put "do not microwave" on a lot of the food here, but sometimes when I'm feeling lucky, I chance it. I haven't died yet. I just know my way around the microwave pretty well. On Fridays, I have an hour between my classes so I usually get real food then from one of the many restaurants around town. I also just recently discovered a "USA Foods" website and I just got my package today of goldfish, Cap'n Crunch, poptarts, Cheez-its, and Jif (which I eat out the jar). I'm so excited! Also a lack of high-tea due to a lack of sea days due to a lack of cruises has led me to make hot tea (English Breakfast that I stole from the hotel in Rotorua) and eat salmon (pre-smoked and pre-packed) as much as I can. It's almost a problem but it's soo good. I will also go to mini mart for meat pies when I'm hungry enough to walk to mini mart.
I think that covers the basics. Feel free to ask questions in the comments :)
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| Auckland Bridge in background :) |
Until next time,
xoxo,
Tasha
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