belonging at college

A few weeks ago, a nespresso machine turned up at college; students can now buy coffees (not great coffees, but there are slim pickings at Burwood anyway) for $1.00, without going off-campus. Partly, this was to raise money for the SRC (Student Representative Council) to buy stuff for students, but the other part of the motivation surprised me.

The idea was that with a coffee machine for them to use, students would stay on-campus more. So I decided to give it a go, and stay on campus more in the breaks.

As a part-time student, college life is quite different to the experience of the full-time student. Most students (it seems) are full-time, and most of them are headed towards ordination – that means that the degree is a vocational one for them, and that they spend most of their week at college.

For me, I spend two half-days a week at college, and the rest of my weekdays I’m working. This means that my focus is somewhat different, and it also means that it can be hard to relate to the other students. Oddly, in such a small college, there are people who don’t seem to get along with me: fair enough, but it’s not quite what I expected from college life.

It’s not all bad, of course: I’ve also managed to have some great conversations with people: even the occasional dinner invite, which has been good.

I guess I thought there’d be more of a sense of belonging to a community. When I did a Masters at UTS, everyone was part-time, and so it was rare to even have occasional conversations outside of class, so college is a little better, but not quite what I had hoped.

On the positive side, I’m a few months away from having finished a whole grad-dip worth of subjects: I certainly know a lot more than I did when I started!

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3 Comments

  1. It might be unavoidable when doing part-time study at college. I noticed when I was trying to pick a college that you can only study at Moore (at degree level) full-time: maybe it’s that sense of community that they’re trying to push for.

  2. It sounds like a few churches I’ve been to. Not too friendly. It does make it easier being full time and I think the coffee machine was a better option than a coke machine or xbox360.

    So when are you inviting me to dinner heh?

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