You Probably Shouldn't Read This Post (Cara)
Well, second semester is well underway, and how very different it is from the first one!
It’s all in how you approach it, I think. This time six months ago, all I knew in Melbourne was uni, and college, and things revolving around academia. Thus I did huge amounts of the set reading, attended every class, and was basically pretty assiduous. How things change! I’ve now sort of woken up to life in this city and it’s incredibly hard to force myself to sit down and work.
Or, y’know, go to lectures.
Please, don’t start fretting that I’m becoming a potential dropout; I’m really enjoying this semester, and my subjects are really interesting (from what I can gauge by my sporadic presence in lectures)- just not quite as interesting as the joys that Melbourne has to offer, plus I have a job and friends and all sorts on inconveniently extra-curricular scenes going on. I’m just not really a great example to any potential students, I guess. I think this is probably a fairly normal part of uni life, though, so I’m telling you about it. And confessing to showing up to a tute hideously hungover, and nonetheless making astute observations about the bleak way in which James Joyce exposes the isolation inherent in modernist cities in Dubliners.
Confession-booth session over!
Being back in college is taking some getting used to, as well. I keep forgetting when meal-times are, or that it’s frowned upon to play the Ramones loudly at three in the morning and so forth. But we have a range of delightful new students, and it’s gorgeous to be back in a community where it’s quite normal to have spontaneous gathering for triple-cream brie and wine, or eight different kinds of tea. To be back in a community where tutors leave snacks and encouraging notes on top of your textbooks in the rooftop courtyard.
And on a final note; I’d stayed at a friend’s house the other night and had to catch a train to uni. I now understand what all of you commuters have to go through. Sheer torture. I will never be flippant about Metro ever again.
Anyone have any public transport horror stories to share? I just had the fairly predictable crammed-against-stinky-armpits scenario. (Seriously, how are people already reeking of sweat at half-nine in the morning?)
It takes me an hour to get to uni, via trams and train and bus. Uuuuugh.
Here is what comes to mind, examples or just things I’ve noticed!
The first day of uni: every single person sitting next to me was drinking, two were already quite drunk. It was 8 in the morning.
The guy literally sniffing paint standing next to me on a crowded tram.
The hilarious guy – to this day, I don’t know if he was putting on an act – who was exactly like crocodile dundee. Starting conversations with EVERYONE on the tram, all at once.
The rather scary guy staring at everything female-ish with his hands god-knows where.
The small child who seems to be barely old enough to walk, let alone be commuting on their own. More of these than there should be, mumble mumble.
And the token people that you can predict – EVERY SINGLE TIME – where they’re going to get off.
PS: *^%%& ME WANT COLLEGE. If only I had the moneeeeey (8)
Sitting past my stop because I caught an express train, and then sitting past my stop AGAIN on a train back the other way… (it was a good book!)
Sitting at the station with other people, reading a book, and then looking up after a chapter and seeing that you are alone on the platform, but having absolutely no recollection that a train came. (It was a good book too!)
Shannon, I’m interested to know how you detect the stops people get off at? Is it just seeing them every day, or is there something in the demeanour of a Melbourne Central commuter than sets them apart from a Camberwell one?