Moving abroad to Australia
Right, time to do a bit of time traveling in order to remember the start of my journey to down under. I decided I wanted to move to Australia I believe at the end of 2016. This was probably after attending the study abroad fair with my University and knowing that I had an opportunity to go on a year abroad. I remember when I first started planning a year abroad I wanted to go to Canada. In particular, I was keen on living in Toronto. I actually have no idea why. However, I spoke to my study abroad year tutor and he mentioned to me that the University of Toronto was extremely competitive and hard to get into. They required that all study abroad students that applied had achieved a First Class in their first year of University. Now, as the first year of University does not really count towards your grade I was happy to get an Upper-Class Second (2.1) during that year so I did not really work as hard to gain that first.
So as I knew that I did not have the grades required for Toronto I thought it was silly to apply there. Another thing after visiting the study abroad fair I was convinced that Australia was the place for me. For starters, it was the other side of the world. From someone who did not have the experience of living away for University, I thought what a challenge it would be to move away so so far. My heart was convinced about Australia. I knew that the seasons worked completely different to the UK as Australia was a country in the Southern Hemisphere. That in itself was such a cool experience to think about that I decided to apply to only Australian Universities when it came to filling out my study abroad application.
Now, growing up I was a massive fan of Sydney. I guess watching Finding Nemo and seeing the opera house and harbour bridge looking so beautiful in the movie really inspired me to want to live in Sydney. For the study abroad applications we were told to apply to only two competitive Universities and at least one not so competitive University. Now, this is a bit difficult to explain so let me see if I can phrase it properly. International study abroad students could apply to technically any University outside of Europe that our home University had an arrangement with. So we had three choices. As I was set on Australia I knew that all my Universities would be Australian Universities. The list for Australian Universities had a few competitive Universities and a few not so competitive.
As Sydney was an extremely popular destination for Study Abroad Students both of the main Universities were in the list of competitive Universities. This was the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales. I knew that both of these Uni's would be my two competitive University choices. This meant that I had to choose another University as my third choice and one that was not listed as a competitive destination. I decided to go with the University of Adelaide in Adelaide South Australia. However, I actually had 0 knowledge about Adelaide. I probably just googled it once before I put it down as my third choice. This was because I kept thinking that I do not really need to know much about Adelaide as I will be in Sydney anyways for sure. Oh boy... Little was I wrong....
When my University confirmed that I had been allocated a place at the University of Adelaide I was a bit disappointed to know. This was mainly because I was convinced I would be living in Sydney hence I was checking for all the details in regards to Sydney. This meant accommodation in Sydney, University locations, Facebook groups and whatnot. I did not think that I would be given my third choice. This made me feel a little uneasy as to whether I wanted to continue with this journey or not.
I had told my parents that I did not get Sydney and as they were not entirely happy about me wanting to move so far away in the first place they told me it was best to forget about it and not really carry on. For a moment I also felt the same. Like I said i knew hardly anything about Adelaide. I had not even heard of it before I began applying. We had been given three days or something to think about whether we wanted to accept these offers and had until the midnight of the 5th February 2017 to accept the offers. I was unsure and did not know what to do. It was the 5th February 2017 and I was sat in my room overthinking every possible situation.
Oh but it is not Sydney. Oh Adelaide Law school is not known around the world as much. Oh my parents are not convinced. Bla bla bla.
The clock was ticking it was 22:30 (10:30pm) almost. I was speaking to a girl I had met who was going to Queensland Australia about it. I told her I did not know what to do. She told me that the main thing was not what place or what University it was but rather the whole experience you gain from a study abroad year. Honestly, speaking to her in a way made me realise that she was right and I had to carry on with the journey no matter what. I remember I had just an hour left to accept my place and I clicked that button confirming my place at the University of Adelaide in Australia. Now that I look back I can definitely say that a last-minute decision (hour in my case) was something that ended up transforming my entire life and turned out to be the best decision I ever took.
The above are some lovely photographs from my study abroad year. I have not posted a lot yet. This is because I want to try and go through the journey itself slowly throughout my blog posts. For now, I just wanted to provide some background behind my journey into my study year abroad at the University of Adelaide Australia.
I hope you enjoyed reading. I will hopefully continue with the next few steps during this journey and time. Stay tuned.
Love
Aisha x
So as I knew that I did not have the grades required for Toronto I thought it was silly to apply there. Another thing after visiting the study abroad fair I was convinced that Australia was the place for me. For starters, it was the other side of the world. From someone who did not have the experience of living away for University, I thought what a challenge it would be to move away so so far. My heart was convinced about Australia. I knew that the seasons worked completely different to the UK as Australia was a country in the Southern Hemisphere. That in itself was such a cool experience to think about that I decided to apply to only Australian Universities when it came to filling out my study abroad application.
Now, growing up I was a massive fan of Sydney. I guess watching Finding Nemo and seeing the opera house and harbour bridge looking so beautiful in the movie really inspired me to want to live in Sydney. For the study abroad applications we were told to apply to only two competitive Universities and at least one not so competitive University. Now, this is a bit difficult to explain so let me see if I can phrase it properly. International study abroad students could apply to technically any University outside of Europe that our home University had an arrangement with. So we had three choices. As I was set on Australia I knew that all my Universities would be Australian Universities. The list for Australian Universities had a few competitive Universities and a few not so competitive.
As Sydney was an extremely popular destination for Study Abroad Students both of the main Universities were in the list of competitive Universities. This was the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales. I knew that both of these Uni's would be my two competitive University choices. This meant that I had to choose another University as my third choice and one that was not listed as a competitive destination. I decided to go with the University of Adelaide in Adelaide South Australia. However, I actually had 0 knowledge about Adelaide. I probably just googled it once before I put it down as my third choice. This was because I kept thinking that I do not really need to know much about Adelaide as I will be in Sydney anyways for sure. Oh boy... Little was I wrong....
When my University confirmed that I had been allocated a place at the University of Adelaide I was a bit disappointed to know. This was mainly because I was convinced I would be living in Sydney hence I was checking for all the details in regards to Sydney. This meant accommodation in Sydney, University locations, Facebook groups and whatnot. I did not think that I would be given my third choice. This made me feel a little uneasy as to whether I wanted to continue with this journey or not.
I had told my parents that I did not get Sydney and as they were not entirely happy about me wanting to move so far away in the first place they told me it was best to forget about it and not really carry on. For a moment I also felt the same. Like I said i knew hardly anything about Adelaide. I had not even heard of it before I began applying. We had been given three days or something to think about whether we wanted to accept these offers and had until the midnight of the 5th February 2017 to accept the offers. I was unsure and did not know what to do. It was the 5th February 2017 and I was sat in my room overthinking every possible situation.
Oh but it is not Sydney. Oh Adelaide Law school is not known around the world as much. Oh my parents are not convinced. Bla bla bla.
The clock was ticking it was 22:30 (10:30pm) almost. I was speaking to a girl I had met who was going to Queensland Australia about it. I told her I did not know what to do. She told me that the main thing was not what place or what University it was but rather the whole experience you gain from a study abroad year. Honestly, speaking to her in a way made me realise that she was right and I had to carry on with the journey no matter what. I remember I had just an hour left to accept my place and I clicked that button confirming my place at the University of Adelaide in Australia. Now that I look back I can definitely say that a last-minute decision (hour in my case) was something that ended up transforming my entire life and turned out to be the best decision I ever took.
The above are some lovely photographs from my study abroad year. I have not posted a lot yet. This is because I want to try and go through the journey itself slowly throughout my blog posts. For now, I just wanted to provide some background behind my journey into my study year abroad at the University of Adelaide Australia.
I hope you enjoyed reading. I will hopefully continue with the next few steps during this journey and time. Stay tuned.
Love
Aisha x
Comments
Post a Comment