Welcome to 2016! (Raphael)

A photo of sunny South Lawn, where I sat down to write this post today!

---

Hello First_year@UniMelb readers, and welcome to (one of) the first post(s) of the new year! This year promises to be exciting, challenging and fulfilling in entirely new ways for me and I’m sure the other new 2016 bloggers too, as we start our UniMelb adventure! Right now I’m sitting on the beautiful South Lawn writing this; somewhere I couldn’t have foreseen that I would be 12 months ago, and I’m feeling excited about all the experiences of this year that I will be able to share with you all.

But first, some introductions are in order: my name is Raphael (or Raph for short) and I’ve lived in Melbourne all my life. I’m starting a Bachelor of Science this year, and I chose the degree (and the Uni too) because of the broad range of possibilities it presents – there are 40 majors, after all! I’m one of those people who never had a confident answer for the question “what do you want to be when you grow up?” so I liked the idea of a degree which can take me to so many possible destinations, and let me discover my direction and myself in the process!

However, having said all that, I am particularly looking to study Computer Science and Software Engineering through the B-Sci – that’s right, it covers not only Science, but also IT and Engineering! I hope I can give anyone interested in CS my experience of first year in this blog!

As you might expect from someone who wants to study programming, I am quite the tech head! I’m a massive Apple fan and love keeping up with all the latest tech news. More than anything, I love the creative puzzle solving elements of computing, where you have to put all you’ve learnt into practice to achieve a particular goal. There are so many ways to get to the final result, and it is a fantastic feeling to realise that you’ve created something out of nothing with just a few words and numbers! I hope everyone considers taking Foundations of Computing as part of their degree (or breadth electives) to see what it’s like!

A few other rapid-fire facts about me:

• I love music! While I might not be committed enough to pursue it academically (B-Mus students, you’re amazing!) I enjoy playing Violin and Flute, and singing, for fun in a group.
• In terms of listening to music, I’m a big Swiftie (Taylor Swift fan) and know all her songs. I’m also recent Eurovision follower, and can’t wait for the competition this year.
• I love everything Italian! I’m actually studying a Diploma in Languages at the same time as my Science degree so that I can keep learning the language, and studying so close to Lygon Street has got me very excited about all the lunchtime Italian food that there is to be had!
• I’m a bit of a gamer too, especially of Nintendo. Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, Professor Layton, Animal Crossing and Phoenix Wright are all big favourites of mine! And I’m getting so many Streetpass friend connections on my 3DS now that I’m bringing it with me everyday; it’s great!
• And finally, being the proper Italian that I am, I have developed an appreciation for Coffee over the last few years. There are some great cappuccinos to be had on campus, so that’s a definite plus!

Thanks for reading my first post everyone, I hope you’re looking forward to following the rest of my adventures this year!

Raphael 😊

Next time: the fun side of Uni: what happened during O-Week and before the work started to pile on!