Second year!

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another year of the blog! (Speaking of blogs, do any of the admins/other bloggers know when we get moved to the Second Year blog?) It’s great to be back on campus again, and so exciting to see new first years and realise how far you’ve come since you were one of them, isn’t it?

So, quick update on life: it’s O-week at university and college. This year, JCH orientation is superhero themed, and the fresher dance song is ‘Grace Kelly’ by Mika (for detailed descriptions of college orientation and fresher dancing see last year’s O-week post). I’m back at college because I have a music competition in Melbourne today and it was most convenient to come back early. I’m not an O-week leader, and since I didn’t pay for O-week activities I can’t participate in them, but I did have fun watching. I spent the summer in Hong Kong, except for 6 weeks where I interned in Beijing. This coincided exactly with the weeks when all my friends from high school came back from the US/UK/Canada, so I didn’t get to meet up with any of them, which sucked a little. Other than that, it was a pretty awesome holiday, and being away from the terrible Melbourne public transport system did wonders for my nerves. I am never, never, never going to get used to the fact that people my age drive to places here instead of taking the high capacity bullet train.

I’m running some of the music faculty O-week activities as part of the MSS, so if you’re a new music student, come say hi to me in the foyer (and sign up for the Music Students’ Society – only $3 in O-week, and you’ll recoup your investment within a week at the first free pizza event tomorrow) – I promise I won’t eat you!

My host for orientation week host groups from last year was hosting again this year – she’s one of the other 12 music/law students in the university and a year above me. I think I must have scared her first-years by randomly going up to them and waxing lyrical about what an awesome host she was last year.

It’s kind of sad that there won’t be any new music/law kids around this year. The awesome thing about doing a really rare combination of courses is that you kind of have an automatic group of friends because everyone’s so happy to FINALLY meet the one other person in their year who does their course. It’s a bit of a special bond, really. But the new music students seem cool, so that’s alright.

It’s been pretty busy already, even before university started. I’m auditioning for the ABC Symphony Australia Young Performer’s Awards today (hah, I’m so unprepared), and on Monday I had my orchestra audition and an editing deadline for the Australian Journal of Labour Law. Then there’s O-week stuff for the MSS, and things like scholarships and internships that have application deadlines within the next few weeks. Plus, I want to get the JCH choir off the ground for the next year and not let it die from want of care this year. And at the end of March, I need to make a recording for International Clarinet Association Young Artist Competition pre-screenings. It’s all interesting stuff and by choice, though, so it’s the good kind of busy, not the bad kind that accompanies swotvac.

Well, hopefully this will be a fun year, and I’m dying to meet the newest batch of first-year bloggers.