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My first day in Dunedin, I called Otago "another vision of academia" in my journal. At the time, I didn't realize how right I was. The University of Otago is another vision of academia, which means of course it's different from the one I know. Should I have expected anything else? Probably not. But I think it's good to see that academia is a vision: someone or a group of someones is visualizing this, and it ends up a sort of hybrid of what the students and the administration see. With a bigger student body and without the unification of a shared religion, there are more visions to be realized. And that's not bad--but it's different.

So there are things I'm enjoying here: I love how many of my courses are team-taught, so we can glean information from lecturers in their areas of expertise. I like, too, how international everything is: the professors, the students, the perspectives we're taught. I've seen samples pulled from Chile, America, New Zealand and Indonesia all in one lecture. Then there are the things I enjoy less: I'm not sure how I can write a paper about why we should value our resources and conserve them without bringing religion into it. I know I did it in high school, but I seem to have forgotten how. And sometimes it seems like the entire student body is here to party, not to think--living from night to night rather from day to day. But the size of the student body, and the variety of their visions (which results in some incongruities--one of the proud old buildings houses a bar, now), makes me believe that I simply haven't encountered the deep thinkers yet. I'm looking.