I cannot believe that we are all back to university again. In November almost 4 months of vacations seemed endless. Than in January I started to work with Griffith Mates and did not even notice how uni was back in my life.
Just one year ago I landed in Australia and started my Graduate Certificate in order to continue onto a Master’s Degree. Going back to university after three years off studies – that’s a hard thing to do. I really respect those people who are brave to come back even after 10-20 years without being in classroom, tell me how you do it?
So I got my student id and officially became student again. What an exciting moment especially considering how much I love to buy stationery and now I’ve got approval to do that.
As my first degree was in linguistics and I used to work as interpreter I wasn’t meant to have troubles with people’s accents. But I did. During my first week I felt dumb. You know like those moments in movies when main hero is being told something smart and then we see same scene from his perspective and he hears only some abracadabra. Oh yes that was my case. So please, don’t feel stupid if same happens to you in your classes, it just takes time to adapt to all accents and slang. It will get better, I promise.
I hardly started to understand all business concepts when my first deadlines for assignments were coming closer and closer. First of all I have never ever had to write assignments in Russia, so I had no slightest idea what do my professors want from me, but I was not shy so I went directly to them and asked to explain everything in detail. Thanks to all my lecturers – they were really understanding and all tried to help. Then being almost finished with my texts I came across a very challenging subject – referencing. We did it at home, but all those “APA”, “Harvard”, etc. sounded for me like some alien words. If you feel the same like I did – please go to the library, all that I know about referencing, library search and some other magic tricks I know due to awesome library team and workshops that they offer.
Another big thing in many subjects was group work; ask any student what they think of it and in most cases you’ll get: “I hate it!” For some it’s better to pick team mates with a similar background, as the better you understand each other the easier it will be to work together. At the same time having a diverse team can be the best choice for some of you as you will get greater perspective on your topic. Just always remember to keep calm; even if you don’t like to work with your team mates all of the time keep it all together and make it through, you are not stuck with each other for your whole life.
So somehow I made it through Graduate Certificate and started my Masters. Just one more semester left to go. Seems like eternity now… Well, you know how fast it will end.
Cheers,
– Alina
