Submitted by Lauren Stagnitti on the 2024 Winter BUAD program in Australia and New Zealand…
On The Road Again: Sydney, Australia
On the third week of my trip, my group and I traveled to our third and final program location, Sydney, Australia. This is our longest amount of time in a single location and there are so many sights to see. Sydney feels much more urban than New Zeland, and it gives me a sense of being home.
On our first full day, we did a walking tour of the Opera House and learned about the history of it being built and the story behind its shell design. We saw and learned about the different theater styles and how they are built differently depending on what kind of show it is. For example, the opera theaters are built to have good acoustics and carry sound with an area in the floor for the band. I was lucky enough to see a show during my time here. We saw Gatsby and it was phenomenal and unlike any show I’d ever seen before.
We also were lucky enough to be able to do the Sydney Harbor bridge climb as a group. We learned a lot about how it was built including that it was built from both sides and met in the middle. We did the climb at sunset so we watched the sunset over the Opera House from the top of the bridge. We then got to see the whole city skyline lit up. This was such a great experience and I felt such an adrenaline rush from being so high up.
We visited Walkabout Park and were able to see all different kinds of animals. We got to see (and pet) koalas and kangaroos. The kangaroos are free range on the property and it was very interesting to see how they just wander about and are not really bothered by humans. We also got to see Tasmanian devils, ducks, snakes, and more. Some kids from my group even tried eating termites (I passed on that). This was such a cool experience and we got to experience Australian wildlife.
Lastly, we’ve spoken to many business speakers as well as visited many different company sites. To highlight a few, we spoke to Merlin Luck from Salesforce and he gave us lots of insight on career advice, management advice, and overall life advice. We also got to experience on site visits with 3M and Cochlear. It was very interesting to see the labs and the behind the scenes of the day to day process of making their products.
Overall, Sydney has been such a great experience so far, and I can’t wait to see what the last week here holds for me. (Submitted on January 25, 2024)
Final Days Down Under
In our final week in Sydney, our group heard from lots of important business speakers and soaked up our last moments in the sun! We were lucky enough to be able to visit 3M and meet with multiple prominent workers there to learn about their business process and to explore their wide variety of products. We got to tour the lab and try out different products to see how they work and how/why they were developed. Similarly, we visited Cochlear with the finance ud abroad group and we got to tour their facilities and speak to managers there. We learned a lot about how their implants work and the vigorous process that goes into creating an implant.
As one of our final group excursions, we went lawn bowling on the coast. We got to learn about what the game was and how to play it, and we spent the afternoon in the sun playing against one another. It was really fun and a great experience to bond more with the group and spend time together, outside of the classroom.
We also got to celebrate Australia day in Sydney on January 26th! It is a holiday similar to the fourth of July, and it was really interesting to see how it is celebrated, and to be immersed in the culture. We went to the harbor by the opera house for a firework show on the water. It was so beautiful and it was so cool to be a part of a celebration like this one.
For our free weekend, a couple of my classmates and I had booked a trip to the Great Barrier Reef to snorkel, but due to weather, we had to cancel it and instead we traveled to Melbourne for the Australian Open. When we got to the airport for our trip to Melbourne, our flight was canceled, and we had to quickly scramble to get on another one. Overall, this weekend taught us a lot about traveling and how to adapt and be a good sport when things go wrong. Despite all of the ups and downs of the weekend, we still had a great trip and it was so cool to be able to go to the Australian Open for the final. I’d never seen a live tennis match before so it was really interesting to experience tennis culture and to see such important matches in such a huge tournament.
The rest of our free moments in Sydney were spent at the beach, together as a group. We all were very sad to leave Sydney, but we knew we now had 30 new friends coming back to Newark for the spring. I am so grateful for this trip and all that it taught me and I can’t wait to travel more in the future. (Submitted on February 5, 2024)
