Coming into this program I had a lot of expectations. I wasn’t sure if they were going to be fulfilled. For the most part, they were. In this blog, I want to go over my academic, professional, and personal expectations.

When I got here I wasn’t sure how the teaching style was going to be. I wasn’t sure if it was going to be like it was in Pittsburgh, were we learned material and then took exams on it. When I arrived, I quickly realized it was going to be like that. My sports marketing class was nothing like how I imagine it would be at school. In this class, we were taught through lectures and then at the end of class we would do case studies to show how what we just learned was applied in the real world. We also didn’t have any exams which I loved. Instead of exams, we had projects were instead of having to memorize PowerPoints, we would take what we learned and apply it. These projects gave us real insight into how sports marketing works. I really enjoyed how this class was taught.

Professionally, I really had no idea what to expect. I thought I would be doing work in the marketing/advertising field but I didn’t really know exactly what I was going to do. I also didn’t expect to work that hard since we were told that Australia’s work place culture was very laid back. I ended up working extremely hard, as I was busying every single day from the second I walked in until the second I left. It was an awesome experience, as I got to see many different aspects of the marketing field. I worked with the communication team, advertising team, digital design, and even budgeting.

Personally, I expected to travel a lot and I knew I wasn’t going to feel that out of place. I think Sydney is a mix of about 5 different American cities. I didn’t feel like I was a foreigner. I felt like I could have passed as someone who lived here. I also ended up traveling a ton. I went to Cairns (The Great Barrier Reef), Blue Mountains, Bryon Bay, and am going to the Gold Coast. I got to see a lot of Australia. I feel that on this trip my expectations were matched and really didn’t change that much from start to finish.