A Thank You From The Bottom Of My Heart (Lara)

Ahh talk about blog rejection!!

Must have meant I was studying uber hard…or had lots to do… haha sort of. I’d like to think so anyway 😛

Well where do I start :O

I guess the last few weeks of college. Val dinner was lots of fun; it’s always so nice to see everyone at college all together and dressed up! The dinner was beautiful and another beautiful thing was something that Joe said in his valedict speech about how happy he’s been hehe aww. although when everyone turns their heads towards you and goes “AWWWWWW” in unison it’s only a TAD embarrassing 😛 After Val dinner we all went out to Keeper’s and then PA’s and it was really an awesome night, lots of fun but also lots of “good luck”‘s and emotional good byes!

And so began SWOTVAC in the following week, and what a time it was. People were completely sane until, oh, early in the third day?!?! SWOTVAC at college turned into a week of colours, for example on yellow day one girl had sprayed her entire hair with fluro yellow hairspray. CLEARLY this helps with the whole studying process!! And who can forget SWOTVAC soccer, a great way to let off steam after a “HARD 12 HOURS STRAIGHT STUDY SESSION OKAY?!?!” I really enjoyed that, it’s so true that getting out and about and exercising produces so many endorphins and promotes happiness; you just have to take the step of motivating yourself to do so then it’s all downhill from there! Probably the best lesson I’ve learnt on how to cope with feeling down that has had a significant impact on helping the situation.

Of course during SWOTVAC sometimes there were times where I just felt like giving up after drowning myself in notes about everything from how to safely deliver puppies, to why the first mass extinction on earth occurred…Whenever someone came into my room they would be faced with having to wade through a pool of paper, textbooks, journals, folders, clothes and I wouldn’t be surprised if I was shedding hair due to stress too! However I guess that due to studying part-time, I didn’t have as many exams to study for as others. But these were my first ever exams at uni so I really did not know what to expect.

And boy was I surprised on the 7th of November at my first exam. I arrived at the friendly sounding exhibition hall to realise that it wasn’t so friendly looking after all, and the word “hall” does not only refer to the “hall” I was used to going to for school assemblies which held, oh, 500 or so of us? No, this building catered for THREE THOUSAND or something innocent/not-so-innocent students!!!! Yikes. So I go and find my seat number… “Okay…seat 1236340938340952823905848529485234.65″….of course my first seat had to be situated right at the front facing a wall of supervisors which found it time-consuming to continuously walk up and down beside my desk, with me, the paranoid person that I can sometimes be, sensing them staring down at my work out of the corner of my eye every time they stopped near me. I don’t know if it’s just me but that is something that really unnerves me!!

Anyway enough about exams, I’m going to try and make this post flow. I guess biology was OK, and working with animals was fine, I think I left that one about an hour and fifteen minutes early…I also got my mark for that exam the next day and I got a H1, so yay!

The night that I finished my work for the year, I had a water polo game which Mel, Chrissie and Joe came to. It was a pretty good game I guess, we won, and then I went out with some friends from college to celebrate the end of exams and the like at Pugg’s which was lots of fun! Finally, I could let loose and unwind with not really any worries! Much of the next few days were spent sleeping and draining my room of the pools of paper etc. on the floor, so that I actually had carpet again.

I also had my water polo major semi-final which was one of the most exciting games of my life alongside one of the grand finals I played in NSW. Anyway, so it got to the last quarter and we were both at even scores, swimming ourselves silly and trying everything to just get that one winning goal which would secure us a place in the grand final the next week as this was the major semi. Finally, the girl I was facing about 5 or so metres in front of me was passed the ball and held onto it for a while looking around for a safe pass. I started to panic that she was going to attempt some sort of a long-distance lob at goals so a drove at her and all of a sudden found myself with the ball in front of the goals, as she got kicked off for pulling me away!! I screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeamed for someone to come down to shoot, as I was inside the 5 metre mark (you can’t shoot off a foul inside 5 metres). Dom answered my prayers and appeared behind me so I gave the ball to her, jumping out of my skin with excitement…she shoots….REBOUND!! Its okay, we got it back after it hit the post…Dom shoots again…the goalie saved the ball!! (Which was surprising because this goalie usually doesn’t save too many close range shots when there are no defenders) by this time I am squealing with excitement…luckily the goalie batted the ball away instead of catching it…and I found it batted straight into my hands. Yikes. So I sat up and shot and by golly it went in just as the ending siren went and we WON!!!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it was euphoric. We’d won by one goal and gotten ourselves into the grand final! When I got back to college that night it was rather hard to explain/contain my excitement!!

So the next Saturday came, and unfortunately we were up against the same team we played in the semi, as they had gone onto their second chance game on Thursday and won. “It’s all good” we said though, as we had never lost a game yet. It hurts to write this because I feel so robbed- there was a bit of controversy, so I’ll post the VICPOLO report of the game posted on their website:

“Their previous encounters meant this would be a close one and so it proved. After an even 1st period, it was 1-1 before Essendon went 2-1 up at the main break. The 3rd was Essendon’s as they stormed forward to find the net 3 times and keep the Uni to just a single and set up a 5-2 break. But the Uni girls wouldn’t go down without a fight and came home strongly to outscore the opposition 2-0 to just fall short. Essendon 5-4 at the end. “

:(. The heart breaking thing though, was that I had shot outside the 5 on a foul and been awarded a goal, which caused the coach of the other team to start SCREAMING at the ref, who gave him a yellow card for misconduct, but whilst all this was happening, the table never stopped the clock!!!! We were yelling out to them to do so, but alas, we lost 45 seconds of our game which was really unfair!! But I guess if I’ve learnt a few things this year one is that you really can’t dwell on things! So I’m just going to stay content that I now have grand final placings in both New South Wales and Victoria!! We all went out for a bit afterwards to celebrate a pretty successful year.

And so the next couple of weeks involved spending time with college friends, going to their new share houses (for those who moved out), saying bye to my beautiful new American friends!! :(, and spending some time with Joe before I came back to Sydney on Friday the 1st. Oh and packing up my entire room, how could I forget that!!! I also got interviewed by The Age along with some of the other transition students but I read the paper on Monday and it seems they only included one of us in the interview, oh well!

Another thing happened just before I came back to Sydney, a guy I know who went to my school’s brother school (knew him better before I moved away) fell overboard on a boat on the harbour and went missing for about a week. They found his body on December 2nd, the day I also went to Homebake (which was awesome by the way!!!!!!!)…it was pretty sad (of course)… it’s just so terrible that all of this stuff happens to people so young. Especially lots of people lately around my area, so I’ve been friends with so many of them.

Since I’ve been back in Sydney I haven’t done something everyday, I’ve been a bit of a lazy child at times 😛 but hey. I went to my friend Misty’s Christmas party at her house which was wonderful, I got to catch up with so many people, some of which I hadn’t seen since the same party last year before I moved to Melbourne!! we went out after that to Coogee where I saw even more people (!!!), and also had a bit of a scary experience involving a cab driver throwing a bottle out his window at my friends and I :|.

I went to the Priscilla, Queen of the Desert musical with my mum 2 nights ago which was awesome, we were 6 rows from the front and there were lots of great costumes and singing, and they even shot hundreds of pink ping pong balls into the crowd which was fun, I think I grabbed like 8 of them Haha. They all belong to my dog now though, of course.

Last night I went to trivia and dinner and ice cream with some more friends, and I almost won an iPod shuffle! Grrr! oh well! My iPod is dead beyond repair, I’m thinking of maybe asking/hinting for one of the new ones from my parents for Christmas, or my birthday which is coming up soon in February :P.

And I guess that brings me to today, where I am in the wonderful process of doing nothing, after waking up at 12, and that was only because my friend rang my phone to tell me she was outside my place! Ahh I love summer. It’s a beautiful day here in Sydney and I am feeling the heat inside even though we have air conditioning and all that…perhaps I should start going to the beach now that I am back in beach territory :P, I turned so incredibly white over winter this year that it is quite scary.

Joe is coming up on Saturday till Thursday so that’s pretty exciting! I get to show him around town, got to think of at least a few cool things to do! I think I will be spending Christmas in Wodonga so I might catch a train to Melbourne and stay there a few nights instead of coming straight back to Sydney…maybe I could even be in Melbourne for new years eve, I’ve been in Sydney every year except one, but I’m not complaining seeing as we have harbour views :P.

I also got asked to be an O Week leader at uni, so I have to decide if I’m going to do that…I think it would be alright! Training is in mid-January and it would mean that I can be in Melbourne a week before uni starts for o week, so I wouldn’t have as much of a rush moving back into college as I could do that on the Saturday instead of Sunday the day before uni goes back. And of course it means a lot of fun!!

I’m going to keep on writing in here, but I guess I just want to wrap up this post with a bit of a reflection on my year. Whilst I think I’ve had a bit of a bad run, I think I’ve come to realise that as hurtful as some things that happen can be, they really do help you to learn and become stronger for the next thing that you face. I remember when my grandpa died recently at first I was in the state of mind where I basically said “what’s going to go wrong next?” but then I stopped and thought to myself for a bit and realised that when or if something does go wrong next, I have all of this year’s events behind me as learning experiences, as when they happened I was able to see how I react to certain things, what I do to help myself to feel better, and how in the end even if it takes a long time I do eventually move on to a point where I am able to do things almost normally again. I’m definitely not saying that I am glad all of those things happened; I would trade almost anything to see the people’s faces again that have passed away this year.

But what I am saying is that I have learnt a lot of life lessons through what happened, and I’m very grateful that I’m walking away from this year with so much knowledge about the “real world” that we really are sheltered from whilst we are going through school and living at home with our parents all the time. It’s just so interesting how that safety blanket is invisible, and the world has always been right in front of our eyes, it just takes a few tweaks for them to open them up a bit wider and see what we’ve never seen or experienced before.

Some of you may find it selfish when you read what I am about to say, but if you understand what I’ve just written about how much you can learn if you try to make the most of whatever you might have going for you at any given time, you might take it in the way it’s intended to sound:

while this year has been full of ups and downs, when I look back over them all I realise how positive the “ups” were, and how extremely negative the “downs” were; it definitely ran on a very polar basis. BUT, with all that, I still can somehow say that I think this year

was the best year of my life.

The best thing I’ve learnt is that learning in itself is the best experience in life. It’s what gets you through. And that is what this year has been full of.

So to everyone who helped me get through this year- my friends back home, college friends and staff, family, people I’ve never met in my life who commented on my (very revealing and sometimes uber-emo:P) posts on this blog throughout the year, uni people especially my faculty heads who worked so hard to keep me in uni by working around all the things that were going on in my life and sorting out something that would work for me, and also the uni counselors, I thank you all so much and I don’t really know what I did to deserve so much love and support, nor how to express how thankful I really am.

And lastly, this might sound really deep but I have to say it. to the psychologist I saw here in Sydney just before I came back to Melbourne (who will never read this but I still have to thank her so much) who really helped me when I was crying my heart out to her that I wanted so much to try to get back to my normal, happy, laughing self. Thank you. So much. You helped me immensely and it was comforting to know that you were one of the few who understood me when I said I really did not want to be on anti-depression medication after I was told that I should be. you were the only “professional” person (in that field) that I saw who actually believed me when I said I knew that wasn’t going to help me in the long run, and you had faith in me when I told you that I knew being content again was something I had to rediscover in myself, and for me, the answers were not contained in a pill, as I already knew what the problems I had were. I just needed to overcome them and talk more about them instead of hiding myself away. For someone with so much experience to have that much faith in me really means an indescribable amount to me so the least I can say is a huge thank you.

I think I might stop there before I start to cry 😛 so I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer, and I’ll write again when I have a few more exciting things to report 🙂

Before I go though, I had a flashback to when I saw The Boy From Oz a couple of months ago, and how much I think this song represents the year on a whole to me, and how in love with the city of Melbourne I really am:

Peter Allen- Once Before I Go

Once before I go
I want you to know
That I would do it all again
I’m sure I’d make the same mistakes
But I could make it through
The pains and joys and aches
I knew back then
I’d do it all
I’d do it all again

Before I go
I want you to know
That I look back with no regrets
And when our luck was wearing thin
And we were down and out
And still came back to win against all bets
Now when I look back
I still have no regrets

And it’s so hard to say good-byes
When there’s so much that’s left
Unspoken in your eyes
But unless I spread my wings again
I’m afraid I’ll never soar
So hang on to the memories
And hold me close once more

Once more
Just once before I go
I want you to know
That I have loved you all along
And even when we’re far apart
I only need to feel you’re living in my heart
And I’ll be strong
Love you just the way
I’ve loved you all along

And it’s so hard to say good-byes
When there’s so much that’s left
Unspoken in your eyes
But unless I spread my wings again
I’m afraid I’ll never soar
So kiss me for the last time
And hold me close once more

Once more
Just once before I go
I want you to know
That I have loved you all along
And even when we’re far apart
I only need to feel you’re living in my heart
And I’ll be strong

You are the light that shines on me
You always were and you’ll always be
So I had to let you know
Just this once
Just this once
Before I go

:)Lara xx.

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