Hiatus (Benjamin)

Hey everyone!

I hope that everyone’s had a good break and have put the letters ‘relax’ in ‘chill’ (a difficult task, I know).

 

Firstly welcome to Emily, Jane, longeeman and Monique!  The ‘Three Amigos’ have now become the ‘Secret Seven’, with the emphasis not particularly being on the secret.

 

I think that I am going to be blogging a lot less this semester.  I’m not stopping altogether or anything, but I’ve just been finding that I’ve sort of been cruising a bit at uni and I’m wanting to pick up my marks a bit 🙂  This means cutting down distractions (e.g. the cat, facebook, chocolate, food in general)  Once I’m feeling a bit more confident in that respect, to quote Arnold Schwarzenegger with a slightly mitigated accent: “I’ll be back!”

 

Actually, it’s occurred to me that I’ve never really talked much about my uni life.  I mean, it’s really just been an emphasis on me more so than anything.  So here’s a little bit of a bigger insight into my uni life thus far.

As you’ve probably picked out, I’m really enjoying university, but that’s not to say that it’s easy.  It seems to be that the general consensus is that once you’re out of school, life’s a lot easier.  Well, yes it is, with respect to the fact that you have a much greater degree of liberty and control over your own work.  However, the content and degree of difficulty of your work/what is expected of you, is far, far higher.  This is complemented by the fact that unlike school, you aren’t told to do ‘Questions 7-9 LHS on p.78’ for your maths assignment.  You aren’t told ‘If you’re having trouble, see me’.  That sort of maturity is expected and the onus is put on you.

I personally believe that because I have already covered a fair amount of my course (excluding Physics) in Year 12, I have succumbed to my own arrogance and hence not put in as much work as I should have been.  Indeed, whilst a fair portion of material has already been learnt in high school, this is not an excuse to assume one can get away with doing the bare minimum.  I haven’t been doing the bare minimum, but I certainly haven’t been working as hard as I know I can.  Heretofore, I have been blinded by this fault of my character, which has turned out to be my own shortcoming.  Now this isn’t to say that I’m doing absolutely terribly/failing, I’m doing fairly well academically.  Fairly well, but not excellently.  When I reflect upon my past work ethic from years prior, I cannot help but feel a twinge of guilt and self-disappointment. 

So now, I am turning over a fresh leaf, and I encourage others to do the same, no matter what degree or subjects you’re studying.  I encourage you to ask more questions in tutorials.  I encourage you to go up to your lecturer at the end of the session, and get help with some of the concepts that you’re struggling with.  I encourage you to put in more effort today, to reap the benefits tomorrow.

 

Well there you go!  I feel glad to have gotten that out of my system and to have painted a more accurate representation of my university life, without getting distracted by my slap stick comedy tendencies.  Whilst they do happen a lot, they don’t encompass my entire life! 😛

 

OH YEAH!  I have not mentioned the results of my Chocolate/Easter/Mass-chocolate-eating-extravaganza/majig thing!  Well, it saddens me to say that I failed.  Why?  Well, because I sort of didn’t use a control in the experiment.  Further to that, I had no ‘control’ over my own voracious appetite 😛 How did you guys go?

 Nevertheless, I am in struggle town and cannot finish my chocolate.  If anyone would like to lighten my burden, I will happily share lest I myself gain the semblance of an Easter egg 🙂

 

You know, one of the greatest things about university I have found, apart from the exciting and fascinating things we learn in class, is the friendships we form.  No man is an island, because that is physically impossible.  Unless it is Isle of Man.  In which case it wouldn’t be… 

Your mates are there for you, and you are there for them.  Whether this be simply helping a mate or being helped with some challenging concept, or playing a thoroughly exciting game of hide-and-seek in the Baillieu Library, friendships are strong bonds that cannot be broken.  Like stronger than covalent bonds and stuff.  Which is pretty strong.

 

So, in closing, what I aim to achieve is balance.  Just to reiterate, I am not abandoning this blog, but the frequency of my posting will be less probably until the end of semester.  I hope that everyone has a great rest of semester and a rollickingly good time, actually. 

 

Toodles!

Ben xx