Issie's Random Musings: Aussie Universities

Was out the entire afternoon and evening with Bec! We planned to go for this seminar on further studies in Australia! I love, love, love Australia (even though I'd only been there ONCE)! So I was planning to go to university there. Turns out it was held at the same hotel we had our prom just months ago for our final year! I had no idea it was the same one till we reached. Slow much?!

Anyways, we decided to eat first before we went for the thing. Ate at Wendy's after we met Bec's mother so she could get some moolah for food! She even returned the money Bec owed me previous! Felt pretty bad though... The portions at Wendy's were so large - I could hardly finish mine - and it cost just $6.65! I got a premium fish fillet (yummers, I love kaiser bread), a soda and fries! It came with a Frosty free, so I chose chocolate! Bec had cheeseburger and got a sour cream baked potato! That one was waaaay exy, and it didn't taste that good (not to me anyways! I don't relish eating it from the skin!). Bec took my Frosty in the end and I could barely finish my fries and burger!

We headed to the hotel for the seminar after that, our stomachs pratically expanding from the food. Usually, all we ever spend on is food. Bummer. We had to fill out some forms before we could go in - we had to write our GPAs too, when we didn't even know what ours was! We wrote any ol' number and got in, thank goodness. The ballroom was pretty much the same, it was even the same room we had our prom! There were different sections and tables for the different Aussie universities!

We checked out University of Queensland first. A guy approached us with the booklets so we didn't have to get it ourselves. Ha. Bec wanted journalism - and apparently, the one at QLD is pretty reputable. I, on the other hand, was looking for something in the terms of theatre studies, or playwrighting (as in writing scripts for plays, musicals, stuff like that!)

We cracked up when we saw a university called 'University of the Sunshine Coast'. Bec commented the man manning the table there was pretty pleasant too. I cracked up even more.

Then, I saw on the papers they gave us at the entrance that there was a talk on Fine Arts, Theatre and Performing Arts in a half-hour by the University of Tasmania! So we checked out the table by UTAS.

We tried to find a way to get the pamphlets at the UTAS table. A woman approached us instead, and asked what courses we were interested in. Bec said journalism, and I said theatre. She got pretty excited and started telling us about UTAS, their courses, the fees and scholarships and stuff like that. Turns out she was gonna be the speaker for that talk I was planning to go to in half-hour and she wasn't a native! She was from the US orginally, and she specialized in sculpting. Lol.

When she finally finished speaking to us, she gave me a handout on the School of Visual and Performing Arts on the Bachelor of Contemporary Arts (Theatre)! Turns out the area of studies included scriptwriting, and even accents, dialects and performance! If I got in, those are gonna be the most exciting ones for me...

...Too bad there's little chance I might be able to get in. All interested applicants had to audition and be interviewed! And in terms of international students like moi, I had to submit a video tape of myself (approx. 6-8 minutes, eh ma gawd!!) about why I wanted to get in this course and proof my interest - in my case, reading out a script I wrote). Too hard.

We went to see a couple other universities in the ballroom like University of Melbourne and stuff, then proceeded to another room for the talk! Her segment on Theatre was pretty short, and she spent a lot more time on visual arts - stuff like ceramics, glass work, sculptures. The talk lasted half an hour, and we left the hotel after that!

We went shopping for books and magazines and walked around for a bit before we went home. Anyways, I'm setting my sights on Tasmania for now. Apparently, we can get a scholarship if we got a GPA of 3.5! Plus, it would be permanent and the scholarship wouldn't be taken from you even if your marks descended! At UTAS only, that is. Still, my mother and aunt said I gotta research further and get more options before I go head-on with a single university. Did some research on Tasmania. It's a pretty lovely island, rather rugged mountains, Victorian buildings and consist of port cities, like Launceston and Hobart!