a note on classes

Funny how I'm here for school and I've hardly mentioned it, right?

Well, there's good reason for that. I'm only taking 3 classes while I'm here and I only have class 2 days a week. I'm not quite sure how that happened, but it's pretty amazing.

Each class is about three hours a week, split into 2 parts: a lecture and a tutorial. The lecture is your usual lecturer blabbing on and showing slides. The tutorial, led by either your lecturer or possibly a grad student, puts you into a smaller group for discussion and interactive activities. For most (but not all) classes, tutorials take attendance and you can't miss more than two. Attendance is generally not taken in lectures. Really I don't find classes too different from at home other than the designated times for lecture and discussion. One pretty significant difference is that most degrees are only 3 years. Sure some people take longer, but I tend to get a surprised look each time someone asks me what year I am and I say "4th." Here 4th year psychology students are Honors students conducting their own research. (Mason has a similar program but it happens during spring of junior year and fall of senior - which is why I'm not doing it.)

I'm taking 2 psyc classes: Motivation & Emotion and Personality & Individual Differences. Motivation I didn't really want to take but since I've taken most of my required psyc courses and not many psyc electives are offered here, I didn't have much choice. Unfortunately, it's as uninteresting as I thought it might be. The lecturer (no one seems to say "professor" here) makes his slides directly from the text and his lecture directly from his slides, adding and deleting nothing. In the tutorial, we fill out so many questionnaires that we feel more like test subjects than students. The tutor is a woman who's been teaching the class for years but is not interesting or necessarily accurate in her explanation of concepts. The subject matter is a weird combination of stuff I've already learned in other classes. Luckily, I miss half of every lecture because it overlaps with another tutorial (which everyone assured me wouldn't be a problem - and it isn't. All his notes are online. Oh wait, or I could just read the book.) Also, tutorials are 2 hours but only every other week.

Personality is much better. The lecturer is in her 40s or 50s and is pretty upbeat and spunky - she almost yelled the f-word into the microphone on the first day when she found out the textbook wasn't in the store. She starts each class by recognizing the Ngunnawal people, the aboriginal people who's land we're on (but where are they now? Even though a center on campus is named after them and people keep acknowledging them, it doesn't seem like any of them are here or that the land is being shared with them. Hmm). She is also the tutor and so far we've just done puzzles and taken intelligence tests and talked about them. Not too much new info in this class either, but I'm expecting it to get better.

My third class is Indigenous Politics and the State -- politics. What was I thinking?! But it was the only Australia-themed class that was offered this semester. It's a little confusing since I know nothing about politics and little about Australian history, but Terry (who is aboriginal) gives us such an insane amount of reading that I'm picking up things. That doesn't mean my essay is any good... but I mostly get it. But all this talk about self-determination, sovereignty, autonomy, self-government - all very related terms but with different meanings depending on who's saying it. It's also crazy how abused or excluded aborigines have really been in Australia's history. And how discriminatory a constitution and legislation can be. Maybe I'll get into that sometime, but it also makes me realize how little we're taught about Native Americans. The papers we read keep making comparisons: "The US and Canada did this with the natives, the US constitution did this..." and I'm thinking "Really?!"

I know in some places your grade consists of just a final, or a midterm and a final. Here there isn't any standard like that. I find it like home - it varies from class to class. Mine are 2 or 3 major grades - exams or essays, plus participation. One thing I do have here that Mason fails to ask of me (which is pretty sad) are major psychology essays. The most writing I've had to do for psyc at home, other than research proposals, is critiquing journal aritcles. I've never been asked to write a 2000 or 3000 word essay answering a question. Which is rediculous. So I think it's good that I'm here. One essay is on aggression and the other on - how appropriate - procrastination.

As for grades themselves, 50% is passing. They don't grade A, B, C, D, F. Instead you get a pass, and I know you can earn a distinction and high distinction (above 90%) as well. I tried to ask Angelo to explain the grading system, but he seemed pretty unsure of it and only concerned about getting his 50%. Guess I'll ask someone else. Doesn't really matter for me though because my grades don't transfer back, just my credits. Yeee haw.

Oh, also, they say "mark" instead of "grade." And the term homework is used but more often people will tell me they have "uni work" to do. And the library is a busy place. And the psyc text books are American and the motivation guy is always clarifying that the text says this or that because it's American (miles, fahrenheit, sept 11 research).

Another interesting thing is how they get into college. It seems that there are pretty strict requirements that determine whether or not you get in (the motivation guy clarified to everyone that you have more options in America - that it's not like Australia where you know for sure if university isn't an option for you). By the way, university is definitely NOT "college" here. In some of the states, your 11th and 12th years are called "college." Even the German girl (who said their admissions process is also strictly based on your scores and predetermined career choice) asked some of us Americans why we kept saying "college." In New South Wales (but not in ACT, as I learned in psyc today as the lecturer expressed her distaste for basing university admission on one score), you take subject tests in your 12th year that pretty much determine your entrance to university. Angelo explained to me that his overall score was something like 65 and the cut off for his program this year was something like 62, so he was one of the last people accepted. He thought our system of cumulative high school GPA, essays, extracurriculars, and recommendations sounded weird. He also told me that if you wait till you're 21, you get to bypass the qualifications and just pay to take classes. I also know that Canberra offers a program for people who don't qualify for university to take classes so they can improve their marks and eventually qualify to start a degree program.

I've actually gotten a lot of work done in the past week or so. It hasn't been all fun and games. ;) Although I did go to an amazing concert on campus. An Australian band called Beautiful Girls... you might like them if you like Jack Johnson, or maybe even the Wailers! Friday 2 of the girls and I went to the Canberra observatory. We almost fell asleep during the too relaxing 1989 planetarium show, but we saw Jupiter and some groups of stars through a big telescope. A fun night, but just an ok place.

And now, I realllllly have to go to bed. We're heading up north where it should be in the 70s all week! Byron Bay, Sufers Paradise, Brisbane, Moreton Island - here I come! You'll hear all about it when I get back. :-D