What Surprised Me About the University of Sydney

Everything about my study abroad experience was beyond what I could've hoped for — I made so many new friends, took interesting and challenging courses that aren't offered at my home university, and had the opportunity to go on most of the cultural events and trips offered by my program. One part of my experience that I wasn't prepared to have enjoyed to the degree that I did, however, was the my experience at the university. What surprised me most about the University of Sydney was how comfortable I felt at such a large university. My home university is a small, liberal arts college in rural upstate New York, so I figured that the transition to a large, urban university would be shocking at least. What I found however, was that even though it was a large university, it still had a campus, and even though my lectures were larger than I had ever experienced, I was still able to connect with my teachers and classmates through tutorial sessions. These two aspects of the University of Sydney shocked me the most because they made such a large university feel like more of a community than I could've anticipated.