Ready? Steady? PLAN!

Since sometime last year (late 2009, early 2010) I've been thinking about studying abroad. A friend of mine asked me to accompany her to one of the meetings that fall, and while I only thought it would be a neat possibility, she seemed much more keen on the idea. There were a couple hitches that made me wonder if this would be the right choice for me. First, as I'm a science student, the number of locations that offer transferable science classes is really quite limited. I also felt that as many of my classes were two-part continuation courses over the fall and winter semesters, that it would be too challenging to break them up or find another very similar class elsewhere. My other holdup was that it looked like I may be extending my time at school by another year. Somehow I got over this, and accepted that finishing my degree in five years with an awesome experience abroad was better off than finishing in four years and possibly not being able to travel at all. As for the classes, its been decided that I'll focus my time abroad taking the couple of electives needed in both non-science and third year level. This also means that my workload is drastically reduced as I am no longer pressured to take five classes plus a couple labs each semester.

Of course, before deciding all of this I found something that made me change my mind. One of the universities that TRU has an agreement with was in Lismore, NSW, Australia - the Southern Cross University. For some reason I kinda fell in love with the aerial picture of their campus, and decided that I wanted to go there. I even decided that two semesters would be better than one, and henceforth all my planning began.

I don't know what it is about this picture but I fell in love with the campus because of it.

Over the summer I worked out spreadsheets for my costs that would occur each week, checked out all the accommodation options and costs, the local supermarkets for food pricing, any information I could find about the city of Lismore as well as countless other useless facts. This was not only overkill, but totally pointless it turned out since I would not be attending this University. :(

Anyway, as soon as school rolled around again, I asked one of my professors and a Girl Guide leader, who teaches in another department but whom I've known for quiet a while, to be academic references for me. I thought the earlier I tell them then the less hurried they'd be once midterms started up. I also had to pick out as many classes that I could that were reasonable choices to use as electives. This actually worked out simpler than I thought, as instead of finding a direct transfer to one of TRU's classes, made-up transfer classes were used instead. The day the application was due I collected the letter from my professor, who had planned on handing me this on the last possible day for whatever reason, and excitedly submitted the package.

About a week later I got some rather disappointing news. More students than expected had applied to the Southern Cross University, and while I may have beaten them at a placement with my GPA, I wouldn't be allowed to go for two semesters. That sucked!