God willing, I'm looking forward to starting post-graduate studies this year. Here's some advice from a couple of friends:
You want to go to the class with the most number of English speaking students!!! Trust me, there will definitely be group assignments! Bond with the nerds now!
Friend 1
In your first lectures and tutorials (you need to act early) observe who asks questions, prepares for tutes etc - you want to see who is conscientious. It's good to see who is dressed up/mature age, they are likely working and studying part-time so they're pretty motivated and organised.
If you want to be really keen, look up last semester's course notes to see which subjects have group assignments so you can chose your group members in the first or second tutorial. Don't be shy get in early, approach the good students, exchange email & mobile no.s. If you're not pro-active you may end up in a group where poor communication/ English will make assignments even harder to complete.
Friend 2
Well, I've enrolled into the Monday morning class. I figure anyone who's up for class on Monday morning has got to be fairly serious. I shall be on the look out for conscientious nerds with excellent communication skills. I wonder if I should nerd it up too...
Monday morning? Either they are serious, or were lazy and left their timetabling to the last minute, didn't know about UNSW rectangles (http://rectangles.srvr.cse.unsw.edu.au/) and thus are stuck with the dodgy timetable.
ReplyDeleteThe rectangles page failed to load so can't comment on it. The Monday morning class was one of the first classes full! I want to know about rectangles!!
ReplyDeleteMy guess would be that overseas students would be more likely to go during the day, as they have to study full-time. Part-timers are more likely to be at night.
ReplyDeleteBut I agree - you'd have to be a bit conscientious to go on a Monday morning, international or local.
Good point Georgina. Although I'm so paranoid about safety at night at uni that I've decided to avoid night classes as much as I can (I think there is at least one night class I have to do).
ReplyDelete