Friday, July 30, 2010

We're doing things we actually came here to do!

Today marks the end of the first week of classes. Well the first week of lectures really, there's still other classes we haven't started, because of how the Australian Universities teach subjects. Here each subject you take has usually a lecture and either a practical, tutorial or a workshop; sometimes more than one, and each meet only once a week. The whole thing is kind of confusing to explain. But basically the lectures meet once a week and usually have a huge numer of students in them, and then you'll go to a practical and/or tutorial later on in the week (or next week if the lecture is later in the week). There's like 2-4 practicals that you can take and you sign up for the one you want/need so you don't end up with 2 classes at the same time. The whole process seems very confusing and not very efficient, but whatever works for them.
My classes are basically awesome, not going to lie. I'm taking illustration, and it's exactly what you'd think it is, drawing and painting stuff; intro to digital media, which is basically learning how to use photoshop, illustrator and other adobe software; a deviance, crime and society class, which is a sociology class trying to explain why we have crime and deviance in society and whatnot; and science fiction, fantasy and popular culture, which is a film class, and probably my awesomest class, where we just watch sci-fi and fantasy movies and talk about them. So all you people still in school, be jealous of how awesome my classes are.
So far the lectures have been just introductions to the class and going over the syllabus, so I haven't done much yet, expect for my art classes. In my digital media class we photoshoped a "Mr. Potato Head" of various fruits and vegetable. It was basically just cutting and pasting, and I knew all the techniques for that already. My illustration class so far more interesting; we had to paint with egg tempura, and yes it has actually egg in it. The professor asked for volunteers who had to crack open eggs and just pull out the yolk and mix it with coloring for us to paint with. the subject we had to paint was schadenfreude. For those who don't speak German, scadenfreude is happiness derived from the misfortune of other, I know right, how awesome is that? And we had to pick something significant to us and our culture. So what better to paint than the greasy pole? Who doesn't love watching people try and fail to walk across a grease covered pole only to fall and ruin any chance of fathering children? I know I do.
So that's about my classes in a nut shell. Other than that the only really exciting thing is that I'm going the Ultimate Frisbee team here so I can do something active and actually meet people, since I basically know no one here. So I'm looking forward to what JCU has for me to dominate.

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like the two of you are settling in. The Weather here in Gloucester has been unbelievably fabulous! We miss you both. Study hard but have fun!
    Auntie

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