New beginnings (Zoë)

University, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Arts/Science student Zoë. Her five year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. Or, should that be to boldly go where millions of other university students have gone before?

Grand entrances aside, my name is Zoë, I’m 18 years old, and I come from country Victoria. I’m living at Ormond College this year, which has been exhausting, exciting, ebullient, educational, and all sorts of other interesting words that start with the letter ‘e’.

I’m in for the long haul with my five year course, the combined degree of Arts/Science. Basically I chose it because I’ve never been very good at making choices. People often decide that they’re either a maths/science person or a humanities one, but I could never distinguish between my love for both areas of study. I think it’s really important to have a balance between the science and the arts, because they use such different patterns of thought and reasoning and together, they give you a really well balanced education.

This semester my four subjects are as follows (two from the Arts department and two from the Science department, in case you’re wondering). Biology of Cells and Organisms, which is so far just a complete repeat of Year 12 Biology, which I did two years ago, and loved. So it’s actually pretty boring, but at least I don’t have to do much study. Chemistry A is my second science subject. I have a love-hate relationship with chemistry. Sometimes it’s absolutely awesome and I understand everything. Sometimes I think I’d rather run up and down the stairs in the Redmond Barry building with a ton of bricks. This subject moves fast, and I’m not sure I’m understanding everything, but I’m not reading to murder it just yet.

The first of my arts subjects is Science, Philosophy and History. I was having second thoughts about this subject before I started, but it’s actually been really interesting. At the moment we’re talking about pseudoscience, and things like astrology and tarot cards, and how we decide whether something is science or not. How cool is that? Finally, I have Introduction to Hollywood and Art Cinema. I was the anomaly in my Year 12 media class in that I was basically the only one who liked the theory more than the prac aspect of the class. Cinema Studies has been great so far. There’s been lots of reading, but it’s interesting, and the films we’ve watched have been awesome. And next week is Psycho!

What else to say about me? I love film and television, general pop culture, literature, the internet, and all things of the geeky variety. Particularly science fiction. Particularly science fiction television, but let’s not go into that today. I don’t know what I want to do when I finish university (except for further study), which is why I’m keeping my options open with my course. I’m enjoying university so far, although today I’m not feeling so great, having come down with the “fresher flu”.

Tonight is one of the many Ormond smokos, which is basically just a big party. I’m not sure if I’m going to attend, as I really don’t want to get any sicker than I already am, and also, I have to get up tomorrow to do my student service at 9, which is basically helping out in the kitchen.

One final note – if you didn’t get to the poster stall this week, you seriously missed out. I had to literally force myself to stay away to avoid spending all of my money. In the end I limited myself to three posters – a Futurama one, a Star Wars one, and a Serenity one. They make me happy every time I look at them, which might just be a little sad…

Okay, that’s it for today. If you’re reading this, feel free to join me on this voyage into the chaos of first year university by adding your comments and/or questions.