On my first day in Australia, I was lucky enough to meet with my mom in Melbourne and together we spent the first week to do some shopping for my new apartment and get to know the city. When she left, I joined the Deakin introduction period for international students, which was a little different than the Kick-In in Enschede. We went to another city and basically enjoyed a vacation full of Australian activities like surfing, hiking, mountain biking and yoga. This week had really helped me in making friends; the rest of my time at Deakin I mostly spent with people I got to know here.
First day of classes was an actual college experience and nothing like UCT! A lecture hall filled with around 300 students and a teacher showing some PowerPoint slides, not a lot of fun. Luckily, I took classes that also involved lab work (physics and chemistry) and projects (geo-information systems and policy implementation). The classes I took were not extremely challenging, even though I took a semester worth of credits in only 15 weeks, but they were definitely interesting to me. On the other hand, time management was a struggle sometimes as I needed to balance studying with trips, parties and activities.
After 15 weeks of ‘hard’ work, I finally got to the actual fun part: traveling around Australia! I decided to follow the most famous backpack road in the world and met many interesting people there. But the best part still had to come, before I went back to my family in California I went to travel New Zealand for a week. And if there is one advice I could give you; spend more time in New Zealand! The country is beautiful and you can do many crazy activities, like sky-diving, zorbing and even bungee-jumping.
During my stay in Melbourne, I not only had an amazing time, but I also learned that I do not want to travel for my studies again and I decided to stay in Enschede for a master’s. Not because I do not like exploring new countries, but mostly because I want to get to know the Netherlands better and also learn Dutch.
University College Twente offers a unique bachelor’s programme, Technology, Liberal, Arts and Sciences, to top students. Visit the University College Twente website for more information about the college and Technology, Liberal, Arts and Sciences website for more information about the bachelor program. Or visit us during the open day, a student-for-a-day or an insight-day. For more information and stories about personal pursuits visit our personal pursuit website.
