The Summit Adventures: Studying Abroad.

After completing my first two weeks of school there is a lot to share.

School is going good I’m taking Fluid Dynamics, Thermodynamics and Organic Chemistry. Some pretty tough courses but it should go good. Classes here are different; it’s an unfamiliar style of learning. Every class has a workshop, tutorial, lab, and lecture. For each class have one workshop, tutorial a week but several lectures and one lab every two weeks. The workshops are where everyone gets broken up into small groups to solve problems, getting help from other students and teachers along the way. Tutorial is where the teaching assistants solve more complex problems allowing you to see each individual step of the problem solving process. Laboratory is where experiments are conducted and 10 to 20 page lab reports are written after each lab. This helps me with what 99.9% of college students struggle with, procrastination. A 10 to 20 page lab report seems bad but half an hour each night for two weeks makes it a lot easier. For some reason this amazing concept hasn’t registered in my mind tell now. Putting together a well written report I know is one of the most important part of being and engineer or just a person in general no matter your profession. You have to be able to communicate in writing. I am the first one to admit that writing is not my strongest subject and hopefully this will help. Finally, the most boring, are the 2 straight hours of sitting in front of the professor and listening to him/her lecture. Pretty exciting stuff if you can pay attention that long. The first thing that jumped out at me when I started class was that a lot less emphasis is put on the theoretical practice of engineering, learning formulas, “plug and chug” problems, and more emphasis is put on communication and writing. Hopefully this will help me improve my weaker writing skills. The campus day by day is starting to become more familiar. I don’t quite feel like a freshman anymore getting out my map and asking everyone where am I?

We have a fall break for a week starting on April 9^th and we are planning on heading up the cost to Cairns for 5 days staying at Hostels. Through our school we have set up a day trip to The Great Barrier Reef with snorkeling. We have also set up a guided tour through Cape Tribulation a rainforest, white water rafting, and the most exciting sky diving over the reef landing on the beach. Should be a fun experience!

The Harbor in Sydney at night.

Last weekend we attended the annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney. It’s supposed to be the biggest festive in Australia. And with no disappointment it was a very interesting and sometimes disturbing weekend. Half a million people flocked to the streets of Sydney for the parade and following celebrations. After being at the festival I imagine it being Mardi Gras in New Orleans, then put half that crowd in speedo’s and or less and you have the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Cody Freddy and I stuck together and kept our distance from anything that looked suspicious. In the end the parade and the festival was a lot of fun and definitely something that I won’t forget anytime soon.