G'day, fellow readers! – Nicole

Hello, I’m Nicole, and I’ll be one of your First_year@unimelb bloggers!
I’m super honoured to be a part of this wonderful committee, and hopefully you’ll be enjoying reading our lovely posts about our experiences this year.

Few things about myself!

• Well, I’m a Bachelor of Music student, majoring in Music Performance and Classical Studies on piano.
• My major instrument is, of course, piano, while my minor instruments are voice, guitar and drums. Hopefully, I can get into Cello, or a string instrument one day. But, we’ll see in the future. Haha.
• I’m a very athletic person – I swim, cycle and play Netball.
• I performed in various events such as Choir (from Year 2 to 10), Musicals (from Year 7 to 11), formal and informal performances (from when I started playing the piano).

Why did I choose University of Melbourne?

In the future, I’d like to become a Music Therapist, which is (in a nutshell), helping people regaining their mental and physical state by playing or making music. Which is pretty cool, right? You can search it up if you’d like. It’s a very interesting career for music!

Furthermore, Melbourne Uni has great subjects for Music Therapy and Music Performance. For instance, Music and Health, Music Therapy, Music Performance in Science, Piano Duo and Duet and more, which is really interesting! I’ll be looking forward to study all these subjects in the future!

And lastly, the freedom of choosing breadth subjects. I personally love having a chance to explore subjects from other faculties. This year, I’m taking ‘Mind, Brain and Behaviour 1 and 2’, to tick of one of the prerequisites to apply for ‘Master of Music Therapy’ at Melbourne Uni. So, pretty much, I’m getting the prerequisites done and dusted before things get intense and busier for musicians, as I heard. Then, later on during my degree, I’ll be doing some  Education subjects, and possibly another Psychology elective.

Some people love it, hate it, or have a love and hate relationship doing Breadth subjects, but it’s okay! If you’re finding the workload too much for you, there’s summer and winter intensive subjects available.

How am I doing in Uni?

Actually, I’m doing not so bad. It’s almost half way into the semester and surprisingly, I’m surviving uni pretty well. I’m used to the environment and the atmosphere of our university ages ago, ever since I went to VCESS (VCE Summer School) when I was in Year 12, which was an unforgettable experience I had last Summer.

I started uni with my great, close friends who went to VCESS , O’Week and DM (Destination Melbourne). So, I wasn’t alone hanging out at uni in my first week, or pretty much every day. I had met so many lovely people at one point, I was overwhelmed to learn so many names in the first few weeks. But it’s okay, there’s no harm in asking their names when you forget. Hahaha.

I’ve been passing my assignments, which is a pretty good start. However, I would like to achieve more than a pass, which is somewhat hard to do at the moment. I’ll get there someday. I’m optimistic and hard working person with my assignments, and everything else. I always have a good laugh at my marks whenever I just pass my assignments, because I thought I did pretty well. Hahaha. 

I’ve been very busy for the past few weeks. For instance, I had many rehearsals, leading up my first, ever duo for Concert Class (cue the ooh and ahhs). It’s a huge thing whenever First Years perform, or a harpist (it’s very rare for a harpist to perform at Concert Class)! Melba Hall was probably about three-quarters full when I walked out on stage I believe. It was a little bit intimidating, but I had so much fun performing with a wonderful, talented harpist from first year.

Balancing was a hard thing to do, as we’re all entering a new chapter in our lives, but it’s all good now… For now. Hahaha. I had to reorganise my schedule twice (and still counting), and I’m still having troubles with balancing with uni! (Jeez, Nicole, what is wrong with us, get it right man!)
I’m still having difficulties finding a balance for sports, music, social, and studying life. But it’s okay! I finally have time to do all these during the mid-semester break, which I’m so grateful of. Hahaha.

Alrighty, that’s all for now – can’t wait to update you guys soon!

– Nicole 🙂

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Music to celebrate for our Mid-semester break?
Good Vibrations by Beach Boys