In Swansea, I studied ‘Youth Justice’, ‘Criminalisation of Sex’ and ‘Crime, Drugs and Alcohol’. I was amazed by the fact, especially in the youth justice module, that the lecturer was actually involved in developing a new youth justice system and most of the articles we read for the subject were written by him. Comparing Swansea to QUT, however, QUT comes out on top.
I enjoy having lecture slides available for download before a lecture so I can print them out and this does not happen at Swansea. It took about a week for slides to go up on blackboard on average. Also, I do not believe blackboard is used to its full potential like it is used at QUT. The level of work, however, was similar to my experience at QUT. The exception to this is that two of my modules only had one piece of assessment for each, which I thought was quite odd.
With regards to accommodation, my perception changed quite a lot. I stayed at Hendrefoelan Student Village and at first I was horrified that this tiny little house, with my tiny little room and a tiny little kitchen was to be my home with another 9 people for the next 5 months. However, after meeting my new house mates and getting comfortable, I came to love my little slice of heaven.
Power, water and internet were all included in the rent so we never had to worry about that. We shared two bathrooms and all had sinks in our rooms; though the water looked a little funky every now and again. Every second day someone would come and take out the garbage and every second week cleaners would clean the bathrooms and kitchens, provided there were no dirty dishes in the sink. While the accommodation took some getting used to and could have been better for the price I paid, I would never change it because that house gave me some of the best memories of my life.
I budgeted $15000 for this trip, including for holidays, and came back with just $60, which I think was completely worth it. Accommodation is a lot more expensive, so too is certain foods. However, prepaid phone plans are much cheaper and a lot better value than in Australia. I mainly used a Travelforex travel card which I found to be really good as it doesn’t charge you for converting money and only charges you $2 to withdraw money. The only drawback with this is that you have to Bpay money onto the account and if you’re like me and forget to check the card regularly, you might be low on money until the Bpay goes through.
