The worst part of the learning experience at USYD is the fact that if you are not careful, you could find yourself working with international students unit after unit.
There are international students in every university, more so in popular universities like USYD and UNSW. So this doesn't quite belong in 'what i hate about usyd'. Honestly, I'm not sure why international students get so much crap. I'm not an international student myself nor am I asian, but I have worked with many Aussies (white and ABC) for my commerce group assignments.
Even though there are no communication issues with locals, I have encountered more bludgers with locals than internationals. For example in my IS oral presentation, we had to choose teammates in this first tutorial. I went for an all local team (2 Aussie guys and one ABC girl). Only one of them bothered turning up for the group meetings I organised. It was very disappointing and I complained to my tutor and wrote negatively about them (being bludgers) in the peer assessment sheet.
In my macro and micro essay assignment, I had a mixture of international and domestic students. Even though the grammar of the international students was really bad, the content they gave was really good. They answered their questions well and were interested in getting distinctions. I was impressed and moderately happy to be the 'grammar' and 'sentence structure' checker. We got the 2nd highest mark for the macro assignment in the entire course.
It's hard if you have to pick your groupmates in the first week of your tute. That being said, there are bad eggs in both internationals and locals. But after my first year of uni, I have learnt how to choose my group mates. I don't pick my group mates on the colour of their skin, or the way they talk, rather by observing the tutorial over a couple of weeks. I see who attends class, who always has second questions for the tutor and most importantly, who does the tute work. It's not so much as getting along well with internationals and whether you can have a good time along with them, it's doing the assignment WELL.
Unfortunately, there is only one way to reduce the risk:minimise the number of units of study that are known to have moderate or higher levels of international students (over 10 % of cohort) and require working in groups;
Lol, what about all the white kids who want to be accountants or for that matter, do commerce? Should they avoid commerce/engineering/medicine/pharmacy/law so they won't be grouped up with internationals?
Again, it's most likely the determination of the student who will get him/her HDs, not so much the international groupmates. There are peer assessment sheets to mark down bludgers and these assignments could be redeemable
I'll be carrying my laptop and iphone, just don't want to get robbed.
