Pile up

So when things started to feel like they were getting just too boring and just too slow moving around here, now all of a sudden i'm swamped and have beyond enough work to do to last me a while. A midterm mid-week that sort of snuck up on me, a larger lab report that i wouldn't have preferred to get assigned this week was, and a good thing and bad is that i just got hired at tim horton's so they want me to pick up more then normal amount of hours so that i get a hang of the job right away, which makes sense. I made sure that it wasn't going to be too much and that i'd have good time to study but it'll still be 18 hours in the first week, which also means i can buy groceries too and the book bag that i've been needing to get for a while. So good and bad things coming from that.

I had a talk with one of my first year teachers at dal that came over from australia to ask him what advice if any he could give me about going to uni there and it was more helpfully then i think he thought he was going to be. Most countries other then US and Canada seem to prescribe to a different idea about the university experience. Dalhousie, for example, is about 20,000 students, to me quite a big school. But, most of the international countries that i've looked at, i'm hard pressed to find a school that has less then 30,000 students. But here's what the professor said to me that kind of struck a chord. He never saw the point, when looking at schools, of trying to find a smaller school. This could have culture reasons between it but it also is very true that upper-year classes are going to be small whereever you go, and smaller schools just don't have enough money for the proper research facilities and you make other sacrifices as well. So after considering this advice, i now am not afraid of the big schools, which unfortunately and fortunately opens up even more options if i wanted them. But then whilest in class i considered something else; the place i go to for the first 4 months isn't neccessarily the same place i have to go the second. So after worrying about seeing the country, i decided i'll hit up the east or south side of aus first and then find work, and after 8 months i'm going to go to some classes in perth on the west coast. So now to consider where to apply to first; university of queensland? sydney uni? unsw (also in Sydney)? or a mix of big and small and going to the hometown of my favourite tennis player lleyton hewitt; adelaide? Uadelaide is small in consideration to the other group of 8 universities (aus' ivy league-esque; adelaide, anu, umelbourne, monash, unsw, uq, usydney, uwa) and on the coast, but adelaide as a city is quite isolated from the rest of it all. I think i'm going to stick to either queensland or new south wales, or in uadelaide consideration, south aus. melbourne has appeal but is also a decent distance from the coast, and when you go to australia, where do you really wanna be? And in cost considerations, i'm going to look at anu in canberra, 2 hrs from the coast in the ottawa of australia (political capital, that kind of feel from what i hear) but it might be a good spot to finished their winter and move into summer). Lots of decisions to make soon but not too much time to make them. Great.