My brain hurts so much it’s startin’ to decay

Monday I had to write another reflection paper for my management class. These reflection papers literally give me anxiety and make me wanna hide under a rock for the rest of my life, so it's very hard for me to actually sit down and write it, even though it's only 2 pages, which I could type in like less than 20 minutes if I was motivated. But because I have yet to receive a grade that lives up to my standards, I literally despise writing them and they make me low key wanna bungy jump without the rope. But eventually, I got down to writing it on Monday because it was due Tuesday morning and I was out of time. Once I handed it in, I felt so free. Like I finally understand the expression "a weight has been lifted from your shoulders" or however it goes. I really felt like I had less weight on me keeping me down. Yes, I still have another reflection paper I have to do for the course, but this one was done. It was such a nice feeling I literally skipped all the way back to my flat.
I still have absolutely no idea if I even did it right, because although you would think reflection = opinion, if it's not the teacher's opinion, it's wrong and fails. But you don't know the teacher's opinion on the topic because it's due before the class, so it's kinda like gambling except with less luck or wins. But anyways, I got off on some tangent about Cuba because I go off on tangents a lot if you hadn't noticed. So I did fill up my two pages pretty quickly, but it probably won't get me a good score. Oh well, I don't really care anymore. So in University of Auckland grading scales, a 60 is a B. So as long as I get above a 60 I'll get at least a B+ when it goes back to Loyola because our Loyola grades are one grade higher than our University of Auckland grades. At least I hope that's how it works... Ah, oh well. Grades make me almost as sad as money so I don't like to think much about it. I like America, where I'm smart.
So anyways, I found out why my management teacher doesn't like me and always gives me bad grades. It's because I'm American. She hates the USA and everything in it. She also hates Barbie and when I was little I wanted to be Barbie (that's why I walk[ed] on my toes). She probably sensed that in me and therefore despises me for it. She thinks she's so much better than everyone because her dad came to New Zealand with no job and had to find one when he got here so for two weeks she had nothing. NEWS FLASH THAT'S HOW MOVING WORKS most of the time. She thinks she's so good but she's like the shallowest person ever, just in a backwards way. How dare she judge me for being an American Barbie fan.
Also I'm not sure if I mentioned this in my halfway post but she doesn't plan on teaching next semester or ever again so she literally doesn't care and the school has already yelled at her a couple times for things such as trying to bribe the students but she straight up told us she doesn't care and is still gonna keep doing what she's doing so there's nothing I can even do about her awfulness.
I just thought I would inform you on why she hates me now that she's made it clear to the class.
While I'm on people not liking me...
I thought kiwis were supposed to be nice? Well idk if they're kiwis or not because they're online but people at this school are so mean! For all of our classes and clubs there are Facebook groups that we're part of, right? So since I'm like totally lost when it comes to these reflection papers, I posted a question about it in my management class's Facebook group and the responses were so mean! Also I posted about being unhappy with the dive club in the dive club's Facebook page, and I've never been so bullied in my life. Like I had to cancel the dive trip I was going on with them and remove myself from the group. They were SO mean. Everyone's all like "how did you even get into uni? you're so stupid" and I "need perspective on being an adult" other super mean things. Like I cried. Like they're mean.
Then for my business strategy class, the one we have to be in groups for, we have to peer review every member of our group every couple weeks. I'm always pretty nice with reviews and I thought other people would be to, but we just got our scores back and I got the second lowest score! (I got -11% contribution and the lowest was -35%.) That doesn't even make any sense considering I show up to every single class having actually read the chapter and I contribute every single class and three of our team members never even show up to class. Our peer review score affects our grades. Last time I had a +2% contribution score but it was less than what a lot of the other people in my group got (again I have no idea how when they don't even show up) and it still brought my grade down, so with a score of -11 I can't even imagine how much my grade is going to suffer. It's not fair at all. I've emailed my teacher to ask for an appeal but I'm not hopeful. I just don't understand how they don't even show up and get a higher contribution score than me. Like I legitimately thought they dropped out. And if you look at the group quiz score and my individual quiz score you would see that they're the same because I actually am super smart so I don't understand how a stupid peer review can/is allowed to affect my score negatively like it does. It's not fair. I hate how things get graded here.
So school sucks. Can't wait to get back to good ole American universities.
Oh also, ya know how I've met like barely any like practically 0 native kiwis? None of my professors are even kiwi. I don't really have philosophy professors because it's online so I never engage with any humans, so I have no idea what they are. My business strategies professor is German, my management professor is from the Cook Islands but originally from Sri Lanka, and my marketing professors have been from Malaysia, Australia, and England, so far. So yeah. Still have a lack of kiwi interaction.

I feel like Barbie in this pic

Until next time,

xoxo,

Tasha

Woahhh We're Halfway There

(If you didn't immediately start singing the rest of Livin on a Prayer when you read that title, please leave. No one needs your kind of lack-of-music negativity around. [Actually you can keep reading because I appreciate your interest in my life, but as soon as you're done reading please go immerse yourself in 80s hairbands until they're your favorite.])
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 :)

Auckland Bridge in background :) 

Until next time,

xoxo,

Tasha

First Step, First Day

Once you actually arrive to the country, the first step for actually studying abroad is to go to class. Today, March 1, 2016, I took that first step.
I awoke earlier than I intended to, thanks to the outside world being lively by 10am. We don't have air conditioning, so my windows are always open, even when that means sleep is only for the hardly disturbed. But, no bother. I simply put on Pandora and I've been rockin out ever since.
Although it's my first day of classes, I only have one class on Tuesdays. I left 35 minutes early, to ensure I would make it to class a bit early. I didn't realize just how early that would be, though. I made it to class a full half an hour early. And, on my way, I totally wiped out walking down the steps and got my perfect pants all wet :(
So after waiting forever and a day for class to start, I finally entered the room with 219 other students for MGMT 223. I didn't have anyone sitting directly next to me though, and the teacher gave us lots of time for discussion with those around us, so I still made a friend! I can't remember his name for the life of me, but he's completing a conjoining degree and he travels an hour by train everyday for classes because on campus housing is so expensive.
During class, security came and took our teacher for like 5 minutes, then they came back and took out some kid because he had some girl's phone. He claimed he was just holding it for her until they met up again because she left it at their club table, but security thought he stole it. I don't know what really happened but it was interesting. So they took him out and we continued class, but we were let out 40 minutes early - great way to start the semester!
I headed over to the club fair where I signed up for a lot. I was already signed up for the Cheerleading and Underwater clubs, so I just had to go pay my dues for them. The cheerleaders seem so nice. :) Then I also had to sign up for the Meat and Dessert clubs, of course. No way is this girl gonna pass up free food. I also signed up for the Canoeing and Surfing clubs, and the International Students Network. After having my go through the clubs, I met up with Justin and we headed to Britomart so he could apply his student discount to his Hop card. I still haven't been able to get my student ID card (thanks, Kenny :( ) so I couldn't add my discount to mine, but I have to go to Britomart to get the bus to the beach tomorrow for Underwater Club anyways so hopefully it'll be ready and I can do it then.
Anyways, even though it was raining we decided to walk through the park. I'm glad we did because there were vendors giving out free stuff and a band was playing. I got a free lanyard and bag and some vitamin tablet thing that I'm probably never gonna use because ew, pills. Justin challenged me to collect five high fives before we left the park and I had the first five before we even passed the first five stalls! Then, for good measure, I got high fives from one of the singers in the band. Justin tried to record it, but the first time he didn't even hit record and the second time it wasn't even a good video (and he calls himself a film major, ha) but I'm sure he's better with his professional equipment haha.

Once we made our way through the park, we continued on to Britomart, past the Rock Bar. We're gonna go to there Friday; I'm so excited :) Then we eventually made it to Britomart, where it was like chasing geese trying to get the student discount applied. But now it's done and he can just use his card and not have to worry about it. On the way back, we stopped by the Warehouse in the mall, and of course I had to get a smoothie from the Juice Factory. I think that might've actually been my first smoothie since arriving to New Zealand. It could've used peanut butter. But it was fine. (I didn't get a picture of it because I was too busy drinking it.) 

Then we made our way back to Uni Hall Apartments and I registered my Hop card (without the discount as explained earlier), confirmed my Kayaking with Dolphins prize, and bought my ticket for the Bluesfest on Easter. Still all while jammin' to Pandora. Now I'm typing this and just chillin' until we go for meat pies later. 

Until next time,

xoxo,

Tasha