Happy holidays! (Suzanne)

College emptied out yesterday, and I’m one of the 10 people still here. In other words, I can run wildly amok in the college, hog the practise rooms forever, not have to wait in line for laundry or showers, not have to share the TV with people watching McLeod’s Daughters/people vegetating in front of Halo 2/people generally watching shows I don’t watch, and cook my own food.

About half of the people still staying are on my corridor, so we’ve decided to form a cooking co-op. I cook, they clean up afterwards, we split the cost of groceries. We’re making lasagna tonight.

Unfortunately, we haven’t bought the ingredients yet, which is incredibly unfortunate, because knowing this country, everything will probably be closed for Good Friday. Hopefully there’ll be at least a convenience store open somewhere. I’m told that some of the stores in Chinatown are open during Easter too, since there’s always the odd shopkeeper who either doesn’t celebrate Easter or comes from a place like Hong Kong where people work on public holidays anyway.

So, over this holiday I have a nice long meaty to-do list, which I suppose I shall share here:

1. Principles of Public Law Directed Research Essay — 2000 words, on the federal balance as expounded in the Work Choices Case (which, by the way, was in my opinion a step down the slippery slope of saying byebye to federalism and state autonomy. Not that I’m a particular fan of federalism or state autonomy, but I feel that if you’re going to enshrine your founding values in a constitution, you should at least respect those values a century later), worth 50% of my grade for PPL

2. Legal Method and Reasoning Case Note — 1500 words, on a case of my choice, worth 50% of my grade for LMR.

3. Aural Studies test after break

4. Catch up on practise, try bumping up hours as much as possible while time is available.

5. Buy a new mouthpiece for clarinet

6. Watch concerts. Fill out concert reports for them

7. Complete and total cleanover of room

8. Job applications — there’s a couple of emails sitting in my inbox for jobs as a clarinet teacher, random clerical work, and motivational speaking (!). I feel supremely unqualified to teach clarinet, and completely paranoid that I’ll pass on any of my bad habits, but that sounds like a pretty fun job.

9. And of course, since most of the people staying here are either interstate or overseas, we’re definitely going to run all over Melbourne, possibly country Victoria as well, to go sightseeing. Any recommendations?

I should also probably call my parents more. I’ve been completely and totally ignoring them since I came here. *feels guilty*