51ֱ��

“My first semester at uni has gone very quickly. I just threw myself at the deep end and signed up for a million different things at the start, so I could gradually thin out the things I wasn’t interested in, and it’s flown past.

“I decided to live in a residential college at UWA, St Catherine’s. The College ran an O-Week [Orientation Week] programme, which was literally scheduled from 6am to 10pm, so there wasn’t time to think about anything. They had us mingling for 15 hours a day, getting to know everyone, which just took your mind off everything else.

“They put on the Freshers Dance, which is a 15 minute dance recital that we all had to learn – it’s a public embarrassment exercise really but you’re all in it together and you get to know people really quickly. They also had a lot of talks about laws in Australia, laws in WA, College rules, friend speed-dating events, just lots of information to get you set up and settled in really.

“St Catherine’s has around 400 people, with what seems to be a 50/50 split in terms of gender. You tend to see the same 200 or so faces. The College is on campus at UWA so right in the middle of everything.

“I found it a helpful environment to go into when I first arrived – I went to boarding school in the UK, so in lots of ways it felt really similar. At my school we had the house system, sports, prefects, and so on, and college is very similar. It didn’t feel like a massive change for me. But there are people here who have grown up in a mining town in Western Australia and never travelled before, so I think they found it a bit more daunting. In some ways it was maybe a smaller step for me to take than it was for some of those Australian students who’d come from a completely different environment.

“Why did I want to study Australia? There wasn’t a particular point or moment that made me want to do it. I just felt that all my schools in the UK had been very close to where I live, and if you travel to go to university in the UK you have to leave your family anyway – which I was already used to from being at boarding school. So I just thought, why not go somewhere else, try somewhere else in the world and do something different? While you’re young and you have the time and the freedom – why not?

“I haven’t found the move from school in the UK to university in Australia to be that big of a jump. The language is the same, many of the cultural values are the same, infrastructure levels are the same. It’s all fairly similar, even though it’s on the other side of the world.

“I’m studying a BA majoring in Applied Human Geography. My courses haven’t had exams – I’ve had assignments throughout the semester instead, which I’ve liked. This semester I took modules in applied human geography, politics, international relations and anthropology.

“I’m enjoying the flexibility to study different things. I feel I’m studying a wider variety of courses, which I prefer to the UK system. I also think it leaves you more well-rounded at the end – you’re slightly less specialised than you would be in the UK, so you have a broader knowledge over a slightly larger area. Which I think is potentially going to be of more use in the workplace in the future.

“Outside of academic work I run the football club at College, which was a bit daunting at the start because people would ask me where we were going to be playing and I literally didn’t even know where the pitches were. You tell me – I’m not local! But I’ve also joined a local football team as well and play for them, which I really enjoy because it’s outside of university, which means that my Australian world isn’t just about being a university student. I also work on a volunteer project that aims to protect the Carnaby’s Cockatoo, which is a bird that is critically endangered, there are only 5,000 left in the world and they are all in Southwest Australia.

“Someone came to speak at the College about the project, and I just got involved somehow. I feel as though I’m quite below the level – everyone else seems to be scientists and conservation experts! – but I do what I can to help. I keep track of a flock based near the university, I help with a newsletter – bits and bobs.

“I have at the weekends and in study breaks – been about two hours north and two south of the city. But at the end of next semester I’m hoping to travel a bit further, to get up to Shark Bay or even further up the coast.

What advice would give someone in the UK thinking of studying in Australia?

“There were times in the application process where I felt as though I was the only person moving from the UK to Australia for uni, and it’s important to know that there are lots of people doing the same thing. You are not the only one! I found someone at my College who had gone to school very near me, was just one year above me – we’d likely played each other at sport without realising. So I would remind people that there are others in the same boat. Australia is a world away, but there are a lot of similarities to home.”