Student Bloggers

Currently studying at: UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO, New Zealand

hOMEschool: Denison University

Looking back at all of my friends that have studied abroad, you only hear and see about all the cool things they do-- traveling to as many countries as possible in Europe, sky diving, bungy jumping-- just new experiences. But what you forget, (and sometimes I do too) is that you are actually here to learn and take classes. I will admit my friends and I spend a lot of time planning our weekend trips, and almost everything involves getting away from Dunedin as soon as possible. Even with all of this, I wanted to devote a blog post to school here at the University of Otago since I just wrapped up my 2nd week of classes. Classes here are called "papers" and I am enrolled in 3! My first is a 300-level Chemistry class (Biological Chemistry), which I have to take for my Chem minor back at home, I am also enrolled in a paper called Maori Society, and the History of New Zealand from the 18th Century. Since I was in New Zealand, I thought I should probably take a paper or two about this beautiful country I am in; it helps that the History class transfers back as a GE requirement at home.

At home all of my classes have a maximum of 25-30 kids, it is a super intimate setting where everyone knows you and you aren't just a number. Here, two of my classes have 100+ students in them and are also recorded and put online, so if I never wanted to go to my lectures, I wouldn't have to and could still completely keep up with the material. But as the student I am, that thinks missing class is a sin, I have been present at all of them so far! Along with these large lectures, we are also broken up into "tutorials" once a week which is small group discussion, sort of like TA sessions (but are mandatory) with 10-30 kids from your class. This is where the bulk of assignments for the paper come from, and it definitely felt more like home which I appreciated. I also had my first chem lab this past week in which I was completely nervous for just because I still did not know anyone in the class, had to BUY my own lab coat, and thought there were going to be more differences than similarities to the lab at home. It went by with flying colors where I actually talked to kids in my class and may have made some new friends!

One of the craziest things to me is how the papers are graded here-- for most papers, your final exam is worth 40-80% of your ENTIRE grade. So for my chemistry class, 40% of my grade is lab reports and 60% is the final-- there are no exams during the semester! But then again, the finals "week" here is actually 3 weeks long, so I guess I will be able to re-learn everything in that amount of time.

I hope you enjoyed this little sneak peek into my papers here at Uni, and if you have any more questions feel free to send me a message because I love to talk about it! Until next time (which will probably be a blog about some of my trips)!

Meghan