Studying at Indonesia Uni vs Australia Uni

G’day mate!

Today I’m going to talk about the differences between studying at Indonesia Uni and Australia Uni. This is based on my under graduate experience at Universitas Brawijaya and currently, I’m studying Applied linguistics at Monash University. I will generalize what’s happen if you study in Indonesia and Australia, but maybe you could have the different experience with me. So if you want to disagree with what I’m saying, you can drop a comment below!

So, shall we start?

1. ‘Thank you for coming’

I have two classes this semester, that is Language and Intercultural Communication and General Linguistics. Before starting the lecture, both of the lectures say, “Thank you for coming today”, “Thank you for coming to my class, I know it is hard for coming this morning due to the cold, rain, and other”, etc. They are always saying thank you every time before the class starts.

While in Indonesia, lectures don’t say thank-you-for-coming-to-my-class. I think it is students’ obligatory to come to the class, and lectures don’t have any reason to say thanks for coming.

I used to be a lecturer asistant. I don’t say thank-you-for-coming because I don’t have to. So, when the lecturers say thanks for coming to me, I feel I’m beeing appreciated a lot. I think if I were a lecturer some day, I will say thanks to my students for coming to my seminar before the class begins.

 

2. Mr. Smith or Smith?

We call our lecturer buy their first name here. I think it is only applied in Australia. In USA, students still have to address their lecturer by adding Mr. / Mrs. / Ms in their first/last name. Moreover, in Indonesia, I can’t even imagine what if my students call me Gadis. Aussie is very laid back for this.

 

3. Attendance list

In my home country, usually, the lecturer will call the students’ name one by one and then tick their name in the attendance list if they come to the class. Or,  the students will have to sign in the attendance list by themselves and the lecturer will make sure that nobody is cheating.

But now in my General Linguistics class, we don’t even have a formal-tidy attendance list. We just have to write our name on a piece of paper given by the lecturer.

In my intercultural class, we just have to tick our name in the boxes. But in the first until the fifth meeting, there was no attendance list. So, we ticked our name 6 times in the sixth meeting, which was today.

(Am I explaining clearly to you guys?)

 

4. Coming late to class

Then, coming late the class is always a problem. But in Australia, lecturers won’t matter whether you come late or not, but they never come late. So there is no strict rule that if you come late, you won’t able join the class or you won’t allow ticking your name on the attendance list or something like that. Coming to the class is your own responsibility, anyway.

However, in Indonesia, there will be always strict rule about punctuality. I remember when I was in post grad, there was one lecturer who was not allowing anyone who came later than him to join the class. Instead, the one who’s not been able to come on time, should ‘close the door from the outside’.

Now I’m thinking whether I should apply strict rules about coming late if I were a lecturer. If I do, what’s the point? What about you, guys?

 

5. Reading list every week

We have what so called as the reading list. Reading list is a list of material that you should read before the class start. Usually, there will be 2-3 journals/articles/chapters each course that you have to read. Basically, I have around 4-7 things to read in a week. This week, I had 5 reading list of Intercultural course and 3 for General linguistics.

The lecturer won’t check you, whether you have read the reading list or not. They also won’t call your name one by one to check your understanding. So actually if you don’t read them, that’s fine

But, by reading the reading list, you might have a better understanding and you will know exactly what your lecturer’s talk about, you won’t get lost.

So, you have to be very responsible.

 

6. Appearance

Last but not least, about the appearance. As I mentioned before, Aussie is so laid-back. It is okay for you going to uni wearing shirts, thongs, even dying your hair, and for boys, you can have gondrong or long hair.

I have seen a video about some boys protesting in a university because they can’t have gondrong hair. For me, it is a little bit ridiculous. Why can’t they just dwell with the rules? They can have their gondrong after graduated. I think they should protest for better causes, for example tuition. Meanwhile, does the rule about gondrong hair really important? I like men with bun hair, anyway (haha).

 

So, that’s the difference, based on my experience studying in Monash university for 2 months so far! Haha.

See you on the next post!