After your first week here, what comparisons and contrasts can you make between UWEC students and students in your country's university

After my first week here I perceived already a lot of differences between UWEC students and students in my country's university.

First of all there’s a big difference in how the campus here and in Austria looks like. In Austria you don’t have a campus like here, where people live in dorms and have so many spare time activities, like sport activities, joining a group association or working on the campus, only to mention some of them.
American people love living together in these dorms and most of them are really involved in the campus-life.

In Graz, the city where I am studying Business Administration as major, you have all the faculties and university buildings on the campus and people live off campus in flats, apartment-sharing communities or at their parents' home. We have some student residential homes in Graz, but all of them are situated off-campus.
The professors at our university are very reserved and you would never be allowed to address him with his first name, like it is common at UWEC. Another difference is that we usually don’t get assignments like it is here. Of course, we have group projects and papers to write or to do a research for instance, but most of the time you have a midterm exam and a final exam or only a final exam to pass. That's why the American university system reminds me of the Austrian school system.

Moreover we have a cafeteria and some other eating opportunities at the Karl-Franzens-University, but you can’t compare our cafeteria with the ones here on campus since our cafeteria is significant smaller and has not such a great variety of food. Constitutionally you can’t compare the eating habits of Austrian and American people. Furthermore we don’t have the possibility to get an all-access meal plan like it is possible here.

American students are really open-minded towards exchange students and they are really interested in other cultures. They start talking with you, no matter if you are at the campus, at a supermarket while you are paying or at the Minnesota State Fair at a snack bar. They act in such a friendly, affectionately and collaboratively way with each other and they like to talk with anybody. Austrian students can also be explained as friendly and cooperative, but usually they wouldn't start a conversation with anybody. They would never start asking foreign people at a snack bar why they are here and where they come from.

American students like having their room doors open in the dorms to get new friends and get informed about what is going on outside their rooms. Austrian students wouldn’t act in such a way since they like having their privacy.

All in all you can see that there are differences between the Austrian and the American culture, but I think that this is the interesting point of living in another culture and trying to do somebody’s best to get involved in the unknown culture.