Chapter One: Freedom (~jinghan)

Side note from the blog author: I, on a whim, decided to write my blog in a narrative style… maybe because there are no TV shows/novels about uni life in Melbourne, and there should be. If its of interest to you, my name is Jinghan and I’m studying maths, physics and informatics as part of a Bachelor of Science, and the rest of me you must discover gradually by reading about my life. Enjoy!

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I woke up. And even though I had been allowed this luxury of waking up naturally without the disturbance of the radio alarm for several weeks, the novelty still hadn’t worn off. It wasn’t until I had lazily climbed out of bed and stared at my laptop for inspiration for something to do that I realised that this was, perhaps, the last day of freedom. Or the first – if university life proved to be everything that I hoped it was.

The computer gurgled into life. I hadn’t had breakfast yet. And as some small voice in the back of my mind kept scalding me for turning on my computer before completing my morning rituals, I navigated to the university portal. I wasn’t sure what I expected. This was finally the day where I would get my timetable, and I would finally have some clue about what my year would be like. My diary, usually filled with commitments and colour-coded highlighting, was strangely empty from the first week of semester one onwards – maybe a pencilled in appointment here or there, but nothing more. As someone who is (perhaps just a little bit) obsessed with keeping her diary in order, having empty diary pages was like being… naked.

The portal site was down.

Typical.

Perhaps I would have persisted refreshing the page for the rest of the day, but there was other things I needed to accomplish during the day; for one, I needed to go to the university (for the first time since enrolment) for a first year bloggers meeting: just another one of those commitments that I had enthusiastically signed up for in the lull of post-vce-exam trauma, often referred to as a holiday. It wasn’t the first commitment I had entered this year. I already had a job (waitressing), or two (tutoring), was learning to drive, was doing ongoing social work, wanted to create art in her free time  – and I didn’t even know what my timetable for the year would be like! I doubted it would be the last thing I would sign up for… Wanting to do everything and be everything would probably prove to be both a blessing and a curse in this year of new things.

Perhaps it was the fact that I had somehow combined breakfast and lunch into something that wasn’t quite brunch and shovelled it down my throat, but there was an uneasy feeling in my stomach as I travelled by train and tram to the university. I wondered if it had anything to do with the impeding commencement of orientation week and henceforth the start of first semester. Academic advice day had passed without much drama, perhaps because it had dropped in almost unexpectedly; but now… it was different. I had talked about the prospects of university with my friends – perhaps too many times. I had repeated the same ideas over and over too many times: about wanting to make new friends, about not wanting to lose old friends, about wanting to study hard, about wanting a job, independence, fun, success… I had expectations. I wasn’t sure what they were, but they were there. I didn’t want to say them straight out – in case they fell through.

Since I was at the uni, I decided I would purchase my student union membership. In retrospect, it was the one thing that I did that seemed to be my baptism into the world of “university students”. For one thing, I was asking the guy at the desk whether I could pay $20 in cash and $79 by card. Leaving me with something around $3 left of expendable funds. Yes, here it was, the taste of freedom, the paying for everything by myself. Living at home didn’t seem like such a doomed existence at that point in time, at least I would get fed despite being short of money. Reading the Union Member’s Handbook rekindled excitement for university and burnt away whatever insecurities had been churning in my stomach (maybe it was my hurried eating after all).

As I explored Union House following the suggestions of the handbook, I morphed into a uni student – every new space was a possibility for a new lifestyle that was starting here and now. Perhaps I would play pool at the bar, perhaps I would borrow films every week from the Rowdan White Library… I recalled my friend who had excited told me about his new wardrobe and had confirmed and reconfirmed and again-confirmed what he would wear to his first lecture. Maybe this was what university was – a chance to create something new with yourself. Part of me had been content with who I was at the end of secondary school, but seeing all the new places… maybe there was still more to life to find out about!

Alas. When I got home the portal was still down. The wait is perhaps the most agonising part.