Coming Home

Lectures, Orientation Week, and student theatre – it’s was all online. It’s like the whole world took a massive Swot Vac and we had to learn the basics again. Everything was transported online, and almost overnight our same-same lives became very different.

Studying at my new virtual learning hub – The University of Melbourne, feels like home. There is great student support, which is what the University is renowned for. Enrolling and starting to study was enjoyable, constant emails from lecturers about readings and welcome to the subject emails. Some lecturers even held special Zoom catch-up sessions for Semester 2 newbies.

Logging on, almost daily, the user-friendly sites instilled a sense of belonging. It’s such an honour and a privilege to be asked to document the first-year experience here, because I feel that it is an honour and a privilege to be studying here. I had a lot of expectations from the University and myself.

Let me leave you with some thoughts about the power of expectations – raise them too high, and you might be let down; have none, and you may be pleasantly surprised; have an expectation to be delighted, and you surely will be.

More importantly, have high expectations of yourself. You can make it. You can dream and reach those impossible dreams. When I enrolled, I dreamed of having great grades, after my first essay, I dreamed of simply passing. After my second and third essays, I almost cracked the H2A. You can do what you set out to do.

Life might look different now, and so do we. That’s because we’re all changing along with these challenging times. Let them make you, the best version of yourself.

 

Yours,

Raspberry & Rocks