First day of school in Australia

Today was my first day of school. It was pretty great. On the bus to school, I sat next to this man who was previously interested in my kindle during our last bus ride together. He told me all about how fat people should be put in the desert with only water to lose weight (huh?), how opium wars were started by the British, how chopsticks were invented when silverware was banned, how education is important, and how he enjoys Tolstoy (at which point he started talking in Russian…), how he’s not Russian but knows many languages. Then, found my first class, anthropology of everyday life, and sat next to Becky (another girl from William and Mary) and Abby (a girl from Indiana who I met at orientation) in a huge movie theater room complete with a balcony. It’s a freshman class…the prof was talking about how to think critically…oh boy.

Afterwards, Abby and I walked the very confusing path to anthropology tutorial. Tutorial was great! Ten or so girls and one guy. Apparently guys don’t care so much about studying human behaviour in Adelaide (or in general? I don’t know enough to extrapolate). All freshies except for a second year law student and me. The lady who sat next to me was actually an IT specialist for the government and a mother of four, but just felt like getting an education in anthropology, how cool! We had to sign up for presentations, and I excitedly volunteered for the topic that the tutor said was very difficult (structuralism or something like that), and I felt a bit embarrassed by this, but then the one guy in the class volunteered to do that presentation with me, so I was happy not to be the only eager nerd. 🙂

After class, had lunch with Becky at the cafe, bought my lab coat (I get to wear a lab coat!), then went to the library, pondered printing my syllabi, decided against it, and then went grocery shopping. Got some vegemite, which is some sort of yeast-based spread that australians love like americans love peanut butter.

Lugged my heavy groceries onto the bus, sat by Ian, a guy from my hostel, and we talked about our first day of school. He told me that he was taking environmental management, so I went home and looked that up. It seemed to fit in my schedule better than anthropology and was a more challenging class and more relevant to my life, so I dropped anthropology for it. I feel bad because tutorial today was really nice. I liked my tutor and classmates and was excited about the presentation! Ah well, I’m sure this class will be more interesting to me. I really like the structure of classes here, with the lectures and tutorials. The tutorials are like seminar classes at William and Mary, and the lectures teach you what you’re to be discussing, which is a good system. A lot of times at my seminars at William and Mary, I felt like it would have been nice to have some lectures for background instead of just readings. This way, you get the best of both worlds!