10 Cultural shocks a UNSW student will experience at UCONN
1. UCONN is in the middle of nowhere!
Okay,so before we came here we did our research and had an idea that UCONN was kinda in the middle of no where but we didn’t think it was LITERALLY in the middle of no where. At UNSW we’re lucky that we’re a 15 minute car/busride away from the city and have the option to eat and shop at a plethora of hipster cafes, restaurants and retail stores.Whereas Storrs doesn’t have a local bus or train system so our only means of transport are taxis and cars, which is really inconvenient for someone who is on their Ls, like me LOL. Our closest (decent) mall is a 40 min car ride away and there are only a handful of restaurants/cafes within walking distant distance.
UNSW’s tagline “Never stand still” vs UCONN’s tagline “Students today. Huskies forever.” – Pretty much says it all, most of us just come to uni to attend our classes and then carry on with our life’s outside of uni. The student support and pride at UCONN is incredible, definitely a commitment that would never be seen at UNSW. They have a school song,chants and are big on school sports - frankly we don’t even know if UNSW has a mascot or whether or not we have competitive sports teams. But like, it was kinda expected cos you know.. ‘murica
Point two of school pride heavily bleeds into the fashion sense here. Whilst wearing UNSW apparel is only acceptable when 1. you have an exam 2. you’re hung over 3. you really just cbf for class 4. you want to gloat about how you attend one of the best universities in Australia, wearing UCONN apparel appears to be the norm here.
It also appears to be the norm for people to wear gum boots, rain coats, puffy jackets and vests (which is necessary due to the weather conditions here) and i know you need to keep an open mind whilst on exchange but….we just… we just can’t….. !!
Lastly, gone are the days when guys wear suits/button up tops/chinos/loafers to parties :(.
4. Professors spoon feeding students
Making the transition from high school to university, I was told that one of the biggest difference between high school and university is that your lecturers and tutors will not spoon feed you like your high school teachers did – ”there will be no one to tell you what to do and when your assignments are due, it’s all about managing your time and getting organised etc etc”. For some reason, this concept hasn’t been ingrained into UCONN. I spent two lessons learning how to find journal articles on the school’s database and how to read journal articles in my Psych class. I subsequently then had my T.A’s (tutor) help with my homework in class. Now this stuff is unlikely to happen at UNSW, but then again, we’re not complaining here haha.
5. General schooling system
I think it’s safe to say that UNSW has the strictest and hardest schooling system in the state (could be on par with USYD) - our final exams don’t consist of only multiple choice questions (soz UTS) and we don’t get to sit the same online quiz 5 times (soz MACQ).But at UCONN the schooling system is very lenient, let us enlighten you:
- The average is very high here and professors here use extremely heavy scaling when kids get god forbid below an 85% (Angela has managed to score 100% and 99% for her mid term exams which she studied the night before for).
- The layout of exams can consist of true and false questions, fill in the blanks, true and false correction.
- Marking criteria for exams is somewhat illogical. Multiple choice questions can be worth 3 or 0.6 marks and short answers which consist of 2 sentences can be worth 10 marks?
- Professors are not strict on the time limit for your exam. You start your exam whenever you walk into class (professors will make an effort to come to class early so you can start your exam earlier) so there’s no ‘5 minutes reading time’.
- Mid term exams and due dates for assignments can be post poned.
- Professors will not hesitate to give you candy or bake brownies for you to compensate for the hard exam/taking more than a week to mark your exam (turnaround time for exam/assignment results is roughly a week here, UNSW definitely needs to step up their game lolol)
Needless to say, very little studying has been done since we’ve gotten here. And i don’t know if we’ll ever be able to adjust back to UNSW’s schooling system after this…..
Class in 5 minutes? Ceebs. Next class on upper campus? Ceebs. 9am classes? Ceebs. Us UNSW students seriously lack a sense of urgency–Coming to class on time or even a few minutes late is the norm and even then we know most lecturers and tutors will spend the first 5 minutes of class talking about something completely irrelevant.But this would not fly at UCONN. Punctuality appears to be a very big thing here. Students come to their class 5 –10 minutes early, the professors even start exactly on the dot and wait for it….. the buses here come early!
I have never missed my mum’s cooking so much till now, especially her fried rice, spring rolls and chicken!! Here all we eat is dining hall food which 75% of the time is terrible. You know dinner is REALLY bad when you resort to eating cereal / pizza. Some things I’ve noticed about the food here are that:
- The egg yolk is extremely yellow. It’s so yellow that it has put me off from eating eggs here. At home i eat eggs around twice a week and i’ve only eaten eggs once here .
- Similar to the egg yolks, the nacho cheese here look like artificial yellow goo. I’m not big on eating Mexican food but my Mexican food consumption has increased dramatically here since it’s served almost every week.
- The bacon looks like the crispy bacon strips you see on fast food tv commercials!
- Fireball seems like a very big thing here! I personally hate drinking Fireball, it has a very strong, warm cinnamon and spicy taste which makes me want to gag every time.
- When October comes around, there is pumpkin flavour for everything! There’s pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin cake, pumpkin cupcake but my favourite is pumpkin coffee! Sounds and tastes strange at first but it will grow on you – I’ve had it almost every day since the beginning of October (the only times I haven’t had pumpkin coffee is when i’m too lazy to go to the dining hall for breakfast/lunch lolol).
- Grab and Go to the rescue when you’re too lazy to go to the dining hall for dinner/when dinner is bad! Just a plain wrap i eat with chicken, cheese and sweet chili mayo sauce and with no vegetables, just the way i like it! Grab and go is very similar to the sandwich bar we have at the dining hall except it serves chicken, yogurt and potato chips and also costs a flex pass/points/money (not sure why this wasn’t included in our meal plan)
- I’ve saved the best one for last…… WINGS OVER STORRS! Wings over Storrs has got to be one of my best discoveries. Wings over Storrs, in particular the Hanglider meal, comes with approx 4 – 6 succulent pieces of wings that are lathered in sweet chilli sauce (there are roughly 8 other flavours to choose from) and waffle fries. It is best eaten after a night out or when you’ve got the munchies hahaha and it’s something i look forward to eating every week HAHA.
8. Asians being a minority here
As we all shamefully know, UNSW is notoriously known for having a lot of Asians.To reinforce this idea, a girl who we met on our floor specifically asked me and Angela if we were from UNSW because we were Asian and had an Australian accent, now that’s really saying something haha! But coming to UCONN, Asians are the minority group and now we’re the ones sitting in a class room and lecture filled with white people/African Americans which is somewhat refreshing imo.
9. Always being mistaken for a British
Apparently…. British people and Australians sound very similar. Several of our professors and people we’ve met have asked if we’re British. I personally don’t think Australians sound nearly as posh as British people but hey i’ll take that as a compliment.
On that note, not many people here can get my name right on the first go! I always end up having to tell people my name is ‘Dana’ – biggest pet peeve ever! As for Angela, she always has trouble asking for tomatoes on her wrap, here tomatoes are pronounced as to–may–toes.
For those who know me very well, I get cold VERY easily. When it’s winter time, I have and tend to wear three bath robes to sleep (clearly didn’t bring all three bath robes with me because I didn’t want to freak my room mate out HAHAHA). Here at UCONN it’s currently fall and the weather tends to fall somewhere between 5 – 15 degrees during the week. I’ve already started wearing my thermals and stockings underneath my pants and the heater has been on 24/7 since mid September LOLOL so I’m pretty sure i’m going to die when it’s winter.
