Uni

The university system in New Zealand, or at least in Christchurch, seems much more lax than it is in the United States. I know for fact that part of this perception comes from my unusually light course load. However, several people I have come across have been intrigued by the pace of my home college. In a sense, university seems to be less of an “institution” that students are tied to while they are enrolled. There are no meal plans that make students feel like they should always eat in the dining hall, student housing is run by an external company, and more often than not, students choose to rent flats with their friends/whānau off campus. When an American student is in college, they live and breath it until winter or summer break. Kiwi students are less bound to the place; many have jobs and spend a lot of time off campus. Of course this amplifies when lectures are recorded and many students choose not to go to class and just watch it later.

I know my experience at Canterbury was not representative of the typical kiwi university experience, but I felt like a lot less was expected of me ON campus, and I was given the opportunity to complete the vast majority of assignments OFF campus if I chose to do so. My American college experience led me to still go to class in person every day (I admit I skipped one or two and watched them later). Some days there would be 10 students present out of 40 enrolled in the class (especially in lower level introductory classes). Aside from that, I spent much less time on campus and would often do work in a coffee shop, in my flat, or somewhere outside if it was a nice day. At Wooster, I would camp out in an academic building or library if I had a lot to do.

The final exam period is much, much longer at UC than at most American schools. I am used to having one weekend after classes end to study and then taking finals Monday-Thursday the week after. At Canterbury, there were 11 days between the end of classes and the start of finals, and the examination period lasted another 11. I had an exam on the last day of the examination period, so that means I had more than 3 weeks between the last class and the exam. This is conducive to an entirely different method of studying than I was used to. If you’re looking for advice on how to manage that kind of schedule, look not here.

This is a little thing, but it made a significant difference for me when I first started going to classes back in July. Professors aren’t as concerned with behavior or the respect students have for the lecture. Students will be on their phone and whispering to each other during a lecture, especially if there are a lot of students in the room. This confused me very much, I am used to lectures where every student is quiet until it is appropriate to ask questions, and where no phones are being used. The more I think about it, this is probably less of a New Zealand-USA thing and more of a big school-small school thing. New Zealand only has 8 universities, so by default they are all of decent size.

I have noticed a multiplicity of little things that make university in New Zealand different than in the United States, for better or for worse. All I know (or opine) is that the system here is just as good as ours. New Zealand produces graduates in a wide variety of fields, many of them choosing to pursue postgraduate degrees. Oh, and it’s much cheaper.