Sydney Life

Now that I find myself an aging third year student at the University of Sydney (represses panic attack…my god where did the time go?!!??!) my first week of uni seems a bit like ancient history. Though there are a few memories that remain particularly vivid – the masses of people, the mind numbing boredom of sitting through a second year econometrics tutorial because I was too afraid to announce that I was in the wrong place and more than anything, the overwhelming sense of culture shock. While that was a few years ago now, my first week back at uni after 7 months away on exchange and traveling has been culture shock all over again – to the extent that I feel so much empathy with the poor map-carrying first years that I’ve actually been giving the right directions when they ask.

I think that maybe this all has something to do with the fact that my reunion with uni was hardly gentle. With barely enough time to shake off the jet lag I was launched into my first day of classes – which happened to be a six-hour straight block of Government and International Relations lectures. Now while I’m sure if you added some fire and a pitch fork this would be some people's picture of hell, I have a naughty thing for politics so for me it was somewhat unpleasant, but tolerable. The true horror of the situation came when all my lecturers kept using the dreaded R-word.

Yes.

Reading.

This week alone I had close to 350 pages of required reading, plus some “highly recommended” stuff that I’m not counting because I don’t want to start crying. While for a student of Government this is fairly run of the mill, the longest and most complex thing I’ve read over summer is a toss up between a menu and a celebrity magazine – and with the celebrity magazine I mainly just looked at the pictures because I didn’t understand the language.

By Monday night I was in a bit of a state. I had reading, textbooks to buy (that cost more than I’d spent in a month in South America) and an assignment due by Friday. A lot of the rest of the week continued in the same vein. For instance I was starting to realise (with alarm considering I study politics) that my knowledge of current affairs over the last few months was woeful, that is if you can count knowing that Anna Nichole Smith died as a “knowledge” of current affairs at all. By Friday however I’d somehow managed to finish my assignment and get some reading done, I’d even figured out that we’re about to have an election. Go me.

So I guess the only good thing about university culture shock – or in my case reverse culture shock, is that it fades. Old study habits die hard and Sydney has about a million different things to distract you at the start of the year– Societies, Beach-ball, not to mention those crazy new fangled digitally printed student cards (to be honest I kind of miss the laminated ones with all their rustic charm.)

So speaking from a rediscovered appreciation of how hard starting uni can be, I can only offer the advice that has probably been offered to first years and prospective first years over and over again. Get involved; make the most of the opportunities out there. Hopefully after a while you’ll feel like I'm starting to – that returning to Sydney isn’t just coming back, it can be like coming back to somewhere you belong.