Crunch Time

So my time in Aussie is dwindling and it’s all setting in that I’m leaving soon.  I only have a week left in Weerona!  In a week I will be setting sail with Alyssa on a two day, two night sailboat cruise through the Whitsunday Islands!  Then I’ll be traveling for a week and a half with my friend from home who’s flying up to visit me!  We’re going to go to Hamilton Island and then up to Cairns.  Can’t wait to snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef, it’s going to be amazing!  I don’t have any finals (amazing) so I have the ability to travel but that means that all of my work is due by the time I leave.  It’s crunch time. 

Compared to the lack of work I’ve been doing all semester, the past week and the next week has/will be overwhelming.  In Australia, I don’t have assignments due every week. In each class, I have about four assignments for the semester and it’s up to me to allocate my time to get them done without waiting til the last minute.  That didn’t quite work out because I had to stay up practically all night last Thursday finishing my Aboriginal Studies 2500 word paper.  WARNING:  They give you all the information you need for a semester ahead of time for a reason.  Take advantage of the weeks where you have nothing to do but go to the beautiful beach.  Although I don’t regret all my days spent at the beach, a few hours of time towards these papers earlier in the semester would’ve saved me a lot of headaches and stress.  PS. RWU IS NOT PASS/FAIL.  Compared to UMASS Amherst and a lot of the other schools who send students to University of Wollongong, RWU students’ grades transfer directly back and are counted as any other semester and factored in our cumulative GPA.  Luckily our grades are bumped up a bit before being processed because the grading system is so different here.  Receiving an 80 here would give you an A- at RWU; but that’s not to say that it’s easy to get an 80 here because it definitely is not.

So, besides the work load of the last few weeks, I’m really enjoying my last days here and I’m going to be very sad to see it go.  I’m very excited to go home to friends, family, summer, and AMERICAN FOOD but I know most of that will be short lived and I’ll be wanting to return veryyyy soon.  Right now it’s seems to be pretty bittersweet.