My first week of school at the University of Queensland has already passed. This first week has been exciting but hectic at the same time, as I am still learning how to submit my homework and get to classes. During the first week, I made many discoveries about the school and was very surprised by the differences between UQ and Northeastern.
Campus Facilities
The major thing that surprised me about UQ was its size and the number of facilities it offered. I consider Northeastern as a really big school already, but UQ is even bigger. UQ has a total of 53,696 undergraduate and graduate students, and not just one, but three campuses in Queensland: St. Lucia, Gatton, and Herston. St. Lucia is the main campus for undergraduate and graduate study and research, while Gatton and Herston are “specialized” campuses for certain disciplines. Gatton campus is home to agriculture, animal, and veterinary sciences and is also a working farm with more than 2000 acres of diary, pig, crop, and grazing units. Herston campus is the medical campus, which consists of the schools of medicine, dentistry, public health, and nursing. Since my major isn’t under the schools at the two specialized campuses, all of my classes are located in the St. Lucia campus, where I’ve spent most of my time during the first week. With the vast number of services and facilities, UQ’s St. Lucia campus is like its own city. You can pretty much do anything you want without leaving campus, from studying to getting errands done and to finding entertainment. For studying, UQ has six libraries just on the St. Lucia campus. All the libraries have group study rooms, quiet floors, kitchens, and nap pods. Because there are so many libraries, you can always find somewhere to study. You can also find any service you want on campus. There’s a bank, a post office, a barbershop, a pharmacy, as well as several health clinics and childcare centers. There is also entertainment on campus, which includes art and antique museums, a bar, and a theatre. Even though you never have to leave campus, it is extremely easy to leave campus and travel to Brisbane city if you choose to do so. There are several bus stops and a ferry stop on campus so you can get to anywhere in the city by public transportation.
Course Structure
Another major difference I noticed was the way courses are taught and structured. At UQ, there are multiple professors teaching one course. Each professor is usually in charge of a different topic. Every course also has a course coordinator, who is the professor in charge of designing the course. Sometimes, the course coordinator doesn’t teach the course and he/she may only show up to the first lecture of the semester to explain the course structure and syllabus. I did not know this during the first week and got very confused when the course coordinators disappeared after the first class. The courses here are also structured differently. Besides having lectures, each course also has a practical/ tutorial component. The practical/ tutorial is usually a 2 or 3-hour recitation class, in which you work on practice problems with a TA to learn how to apply the concepts introduced in the lectures. I found practicals to be very helpful in testing and solidifying your knowledge and understanding of the lecture materials. There have been times when I thought I fully understood the lecture content but was proven otherwise by the practical problems. But I was able to fix my mistakes and get my questions clarified with the TA’s help. My only “complaint” about the practicals is that it is tricky to figure out when they are scheduled. The practicals might not happen every week. For some courses, there might only be 3 or 4 practicals that are scattered throughout the semester. So for me it took a little bit of organization to figure out when I have to attend them. The final thing that surprised me was UQ’s flexibility in its course offerings. UQ allows you to take courses even if there’s a time conflict. You can choose to enroll in one of them as “delayed viewing”, which means you can watch the lecture recordings online on your own time. And even if you are in the delayed viewing section, you can still feel very much like a part of the class since you can still attend practicals, which are usually offered in multiple sections during different times of the week.
Student Life
UQ has a very vibrant student life. The first three weeks of school are filled with free food, concerts, giveaways, and fun events. What’s really interesting is that each week has a different theme. The first week is Orientation Week, which has events centered on introducing new students to college life and classes. The second week is Connect Week, which has events to help new students make friends, find mentors, connect to student clubs. The third week is Empolyabiliy Week, which has workshops and networking events to help students find jobs and internships. The student clubs on campus also contribute to the vibrant student life. There are more than 220 clubs and societies on campus. But in order to join a club, you have to pay a membership fee, which can range from 2 to 90 Australian dollars. Clubs that require high budgets are more expensive to join. The surfing club, for example, costs 90 AUD because it provides members with professional surfing lessons and organizes surfing trips every week.
Wildlife on Campus
Coming to Australia, I expected to spot some wildlife on campus from time to time, but I did not think I would be seeing bats, crows, and parrots flying over campus every day. Other frequent campus visitors include bush turkeys, possums, lizards, and Australian white ibis (or bin chickens). After my first week, I got used to seeing the birds and possums. But I still need to control my urge to jump and scream whenever I see a lizard.
