General

I am studying fashion and design management in Germany at a private university that specializes in the fashion industry. For this reason, I initially thought that it would be difficult to find a university in Australia that would take me and also cover the subjects I needed. However, since you have to pay school fees in Australia, and also because of the generosity of my home university in terms of my choice of subjects, it was easy to find a suitable university. The universities in Australia are very expensive and as far as I can tell, the Griffith is still one of the “cheaper”, but also smaller (even if I found the university to be huge compared to my home university).

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The Griffith

Studying at Griffith was a lot of fun. In general, the Griffith has 5 campuses, 4 in Brisbane (Nathan, Southbank, Logan, MT Gravatt) and another on the Gold Coast. I took 5 classes, 4 were on Nathan campus and the 5th was on South Bank. The Nathan campus was very nice and relatively large with lots of places to eat. Unfortunately, the Nathan Campus is 20-30 minutes away from the center of Brisbane by bus, which can be really annoying if you live near the campus or on campus.

I have the courses Comparative Management (can only be recommended!), Fashion and Art (not a high level), Retail Marketing (the Donzentin and the tutor were not particularly committed and the course took place in the evening from 6-9 …), Intercultural Communication for the Global Workplace (very interesting) and English for Business and Commerce(I thought the course would help me to understand the Griffith system and the Australian system of work in general, such as quoting and essay writing, but the course did not help me at all !!). In general, I found that you had to do and learn a lot at the Griffith, I didn’t expect that, but it was certainly also due to the fact that I had 5 courses. Other fellow students who only had 3 courses could of course enjoy their lives more. I had to write at least one term paper and take tests and exams per course. Only in Comparative Management did I have a mid-semester exam and a final exam, but I liked that a lot because the subject matter was split up in this way. The many term papers that I had to write were very demanding, especially at the beginning, because I did not know exactly how to quote in Australia, and I didn’t know that much about commas, but with every housework it got easier and I was able to expand my vocabulary really well and strongly. What I really liked about the Griffith is that there is the English Help program for foreign speakers, where you can let lecturers look up your work with regard to grammar. There was also a library service that helped you with citation or other questions about the library.In general, I found that Griffith has many offers that you can use to improve your academic performance, all of which are free, which is why you should take advantage of them. Of course, this always requires a certain amount of time. But since you only have 2-3 hours per week in each subject, you really don’t have much university and can use this time well.

I had to buy books in 3 out of 5 subjects, but I hardly needed them all and would have done well just borrowing the books from the library. You can also sell the books to the bookshop at the end of the semester, but if you have written in, you hardly get anything back.

Griffith also has a large number of sports programs and clubs, as well as a gym. I had signed up for the volleyball team, but only for fun, not for competitions, and I was regularly in the gym because I could register there for free because I lived on campus. However, this semester was the first semester in which this offer was available and I don’t know whether the gym will continue to be free of charge. It was definitely super convenient as the studio was right in front of my building.

The Griffith also has a university bar where parties are held every Tuesday and on special days, such as the end of the semester. These parties are always well attended from 6pm onwards, but only go until midnight and it doesn’t get really full until around 11am. It’s definitely fun there and you meet a lot of people!

I found the orientation week at the Griffith more than meager and that is also one of the main reasons (besides the location of the Nathan Campus), why I would not recommend the Griffith. Since I lived on campus, I noticed what the O week looked like for the freshmen. There was a great program and lots of parties. But as a normal, international student, you didn’t notice anything. All there was was an information event on the first day that everyone had to go to internationally, after that there were no more events that would have served international students to get to know each other. Many other universities clearly offer more! But what I can only recommend is the trip to Byron Bay at the beginning of the semester with Extreme Adventours,