By: William Malone

Student life

The student life in America has been one of the biggest differences for me for far. There is a huge sense of community through sports, activities and clubs constantly going on. The sheer amount of people on campus has definitely been a shock, with almost 200k students versus the 13k we have at Waikato. Walking around campus always feels vibrant and bustling. It seems like there is always something going on on-campus, from students practising lightsaber battles on the grass areas to tailgating: parties that happen in almost every parking lot before the big football matches.

The first week I was here, it was O-Week, which was awesome. There were constantly events going on, with sports, music, clubs and activities. Most of these events had club stalls located around for different student-run clubs that the university offers. Some of the ones I took an interest in were robot building/fighting, software organisations and an outdoors club. It felt straight out of an American movie, like Pitch Perfect. Additionally, there were lots of things at these events for meeting new people and getting familiarised with the community.

In terms of partying and social activities, the school is fairly against partying, especially the fraternities and sororities. Most of the nightlife happens at the clubs, which are a short 10-minute walk from campus. But remember, America is +21, so I have found that many of the people I have met cannot go to bars/clubs. 

I have found that Americans are very peppy, especially in football games. The games are very loud and the atmosphere is very energetic. I personally love it, but have international friends who find it overstimulating or over the top.

Papers

In terms of the papers I’m taking, I have found it extremely hard. This will differ from person to person, but being a fourth-year software engineer near the world’s biggest software industries, I have found the content of the papers a lot more difficult than the content at UoW. I am taking 4 papers, but it isn’t uncommon to see people taking 7. I am taking:

• Cybersecurity
• Human-computer interaction
• Crypotography 
• Machine learning

The difficulty is subjective because I was required to take the hardest undergraduate computer science class in a field (cybersecurity) that I know nothing about. So a lot of my time has gone into that class. The other 3 are manageable, but I put upwards of 20 hours a week into the cyber class, which I am not used to doing compared to Waikato. 

However, I have been going to all the in-person lectures/workshops/tutorials that are available, which has been awesome, and I feel like I am learning so much.