time skips through my winter hols
*A number of the events mentioned were spread out over a couple of months, but I'm only now putting pen to metaphorical paper; thoughts to coherent words. They're just dated as I've written them. It feels nice to accumulate a collection of writings before publishing anything.
8/6
You know it's winter in Melbourne when you find yourself spinning around in the shower like a shawarma spit trying to warm up.
29/6
The mid winter gloom is settling in, where opening the curtains and keeping them shut barely makes a difference to my dampened spirits. Why do people take seasonal affective disorder so seriously when everyone I talk to is going through the same symptoms? We weren't made to be holed up in small stuffy rooms, to work the daily grind until our finger joints are worn sore, eyes red raw & back hunched over. The poor ventilation doesn't help. Everywhere I go, someone's got the sniffles.
30/6
I've been focusing on being grateful for what I have, and living in the moment: It's the [6th of July] 2024, I'm here, and there's nowhere else I'd rather be. I want to live everyday like I'm still in kindergarten - to focus on what I'm doing, when I've assigned time to do it, with the laser-minded determination of a preschooler. To be so in the moment that half an hour mixing potions in a sandpit can feel like an entire afternoon. To find joy in the simplest parts of being alive. To stop and catch the raindrops on a gloomy winter's day.
1/7
Somehow, it's July already. Time moves fast when you're keeping busy. I grew obsessed with a guy for 10 business days (*not accurate, but it's subjectively funnier to say). I can't keep my head on straight. There's logical processing happening somewhere in my brain, but it's all obscured by a haze of whatever heart-fluttering thing he's done lately. I swear I can see his pupils dilate when he looks at me (blown wide, with just a ring of colour drowning in black). I don't know what to do with myself. It's hard to think straight.
"Every time I come into the city, you're all that I can see." (like a blinkered horse, but romantically)
?/7
Today's good - do absolutely nothing for as long as possible (no screens; reading, cleaning, household chores) until I can't take it anymore. Productivity is bred from boredom. I should really revise some of my sem1 subject content before I don't have time to.
There's something comforting about writing first thing in the morning - the smell of the greasy metallic ballpoint, the ASMR of the pen on textured-paper vibrating through your finger pads. Sometimes it's so quiet you can almost feel every grain of wood pulp.
?/7
"As June runs into warm July, I think of little else but you" - Wendy Cope.
My internal monologue is starting to sound like you. You're suffused into every pore of my being, before I've even said yes to dating you. It's still not enough.
?/7
It didn't work out. It seems some things are doomed from the very beginning.
In a state of idleness for another two weeks and glad for it,
Pepper
Autumn on campus is so pretty!
Of course I know leaves come from trees but it seems like it’s always been leaves on tree -> leaves on ground. I don’t know how this is the first time I’ve ever seen a soft rain of leaves. I also never knew vines could turn red. Red blooms over them like vivid watercolour, taking over their usual lime green, and dusky purple stains their undersides. The brick wall behind them is lit a bright syrupy orange by the warm afternoon sun. Underfoot are gum leaves of pale pink and dusty ochre, coated with a weird sprinkling of stuff that looks like elongated white dust. My brain goes to short skinny little white worms but I shut that image off before it gets too far. (If I had better nature vocabulary I would be able to describe these things better I swear.)
There is one tree that I walk past every time I go to campus that has been growing on me. Its leaves are a brilliant lime green that contrast with the dark trunk, shaped like fat ovals that taper into two pointed ends. ~I am so proud of that description since I can never manage to capture the shape of a leaf and I've written the same phrase in about three different pieces of writing since I came up with it a couple of weeks ago.~ A few days ago when I was walking home from the train station, I saw in the front garden of a random suburban house those same fat oval leaves with pointed ends glowing a brilliant lime green against a dark trunk. I was so excited that it was the same type of tree! It felt like magic.
This shows how disconnected I am with nature lol. But I suppose there are firsts for everything.
Occasionally I feel weird about standing there craning my neck staring intently at something mundane, whether that be a brick wall or a tree. Then I remind myself that no one cares what I'm looking at. If I didn't open my eyes properly in autumn it'd be my own loss anyway.
From your very-happy-with-autumn-on-campus girlie,
Betty
I didn't know uni was going to get this hectic. but I'm enjoying it because I don't have to time to complain about being bored right now. Recently I joined the Softball club and I had a great first game today. Just balancing Dance and Softball with work and uni has kept me on my toes, however I've managed to squeeze in some time for myself as self care time is very important for everyone. With all the MSTs coming to an end, it is now the grace period before exam season begins. I know I'm early but I've decided to start studying little by little from now as I know no matter when I start, I'm going to be stressing and hecticly doing work right before my exams. Also, I had an adventerous Wednesday when my friend and I went searching for a crepe cake shop as we went to the wrong entrance and nearly went up to someone's apartment which was scary. Anyways steering away from randomness I just want to encourage everyone to start revising little by little from now because I feel like the month is going to whizz past, but also be kind to yourselves and have some relaxation time.
Signing off for May :D
I’ve done it. I’ve finally done it.
Today, April 30 2024, marks the day that I’ve finally had a coffee at Melbourne University. It also marks the first time that I’ve ordered my own coffee, strangely enough. I was always scared I would order wrong. Turns out asking for a small chai latte isn’t actually that difficult!
Coffee at least seems to me to be a big thing here. I’ve lived in and around Melbourne my whole life, I should know this. I don’t. Maybe I should. But I liked my small chai latte, so maybe I'll try that some more in the future.
I’ve had this big looming 2000 word essay casting my entire life in a shadow of anxiety, and today I was on campus all day, determined to finish it. I don’t know how to plan an essay for the life of me, so this essay worth half my grade is a long process of finding a source, writing a couple paragraphs about it, and fumbling to tie it back to my argument, over and over again. If I had more time, I’d rewrite it entirely and just use this as a first draft. However I lack that time, and I’m going to just try to polish this one up tomorrow.
Here’s a lesson: actually research before you make your essay plan! I had an essay plan but then I very quickly realised that one of the sources I was planning on using had a much better position than my own and turns out that my new argument means I’m arguing against 95% of the research on the topic.
I had about 750 words when I got to Arts West. I’ve been enjoying sitting by the windows on Level 1 and looking out at the people walking by on Professor’s Walk. I’ve long enjoyed the dark academia aesthetic (although I’m far too unserious to commit to it in any sense) and something about the overcast Melbourne weather dimly lighting the desks is remarkably pleasant to me.
For some reason, the lamps on Level 1 don’t work. I saw them working on Level 2. I flicked the little switch on one, waiting for it to do something. Nothing. I googled it: ‘unimelb arts west floor 1 lamps not working’. Comfort is found in the fact that my forefathers before me have shouldered these same struggles. It’s here I learn about the UniMelb Love Letters Facebook page! I heard about it again today from a Reddit thread (I’m not an active Redditor, I promise). Looking at it now, it seems very cute!
I spent most of the day with one of my friends from my early high school years. We hadn’t seen each other at all this semester and so we hung out in Bailleu just studying together. Eventually she left for work and I left to get gyoza, where I relocated to the Student Pavillion. I stayed there til 8:30.
The buildings at night are very pretty. It was a relatively cold and rainy day (Melbourne, ammirite?) but that only really serves to complement the city lights. I could see people in other buildings studying too, some people scattered across the Amphitheatre. I didn’t expect to see so many other people so late at night– at least, I have to commute for over an hour to get to and from uni, so staying out so late isn’t my norm. Plus, I’m used to local libraries being closed by that time. It was really nice to know that I’m definitely not the only one worrying about deadlines, staying out to study so as to not fall asleep at home.
I didn’t get to finish the essay, but that’s alright. I got to 1650 words, so I’m not disappointed in myself by any means. I’ll try to finish it up tomorrow and catch up on my modules before work.
In the meantime, I’m going to get some good sleep.
Do your assignments early and be kind to yourself.
- Lily
Tis The MST season, but definitely not a period to be jolly. By the way, if you haven't come across MST before for some reason, it stands for 'mid semester test'. I had my first one last Friday and I have my last one this coming Tuesday. It's not really the studying that is tiring me out though, it is just that I have to come to uni 3-4 days a week and the long commute doesn't really help there. This month has been really hectic so far and it will end up being busy till the end. Apart from having many assignments and MSTs, I'm faced with other tasks such as planning my brithday party, going gift shopping for my friends' birthdays, dancing and playing Softball for the uni softball team. Although it seems like I've got a lot on my plate, I'm kind of enjoying it as I don't really have a moment to be bored. I feel like this month challenged by time mamangement and organisational skills, thus allowing me to sharpen them more. I strong reccomend joining the uni sports program as it is a great social getaway and an opportunity to be active. I sincerely wish my fellow peers good luck for their MSTs and I'm curious about what the rest of this month has in store for me.
Signing off for this month :D
(or, a series of unrelated observations)
It's Pepper!
You would not believe the amount of half-written blog drafts I have sitting around collecting dust already. It seems I've been yearning for a writing project, and now that I have one, I'm so pleased that I don't know what to do with myself. Alas.
We've just come back from the Mid-Semester/Easter break, and, speaking in the only measurement of time that matters, it's the end of Week 6. My thoughts turn to mid sem tests and end-of-semester-torture-devices disguised as exam rooms, and I confess. I baulk. The pressure to do well, to prove to your assessors and yourself that you've spent the past few months productively and absorbed all there is to know, is definitely present. The fear of not knowing if you've missed something, if you'll be asked something obscure, the background noise of ever-present gut-wrenching anticipation in the weeks leading up to results… Exam periods are rough.
I've started adapting to uni life. I see things around campus that no longer shock me: a mad lad playing League of Legends in the front row of a lecture theatre, a fabulously flamboyant gay couple strutting in unison as they walk to lunch, or even an abandoned car park hosting band practice. It's all part of the hodgepodge of individuality that is uni life, as far as I'm concerned. I know that I've signed up for too many commitments. I'm painfully aware of the marked-up prices for a sandwich or beverage, but I indulge nonetheless - Treat Yourself, is the motto of the day, I'll say. ('F*** Thinner, Eat Dinner,' command the city slicker stickers.)
The social system in uni confounds me. You can have a friend for every lecture or tute you have, but never connect with them outside of course work. You can connect with friends outside of your faculty, but never have the time to hang out with them consistently. It takes real planning and prioritising to catch up with high school friends, and even more effort to stay in contact with primary school friends. At this point, I believe that the only way you can have an active social life in uni is to simply not care about the longevity of your friendships. It feels bleak, but every avenue explored and failed is like a raindrop in a monsoon of platonic heartbreak. It might not matter much because the relationship was novel and shallow, but it hurts all the same, and the heartbreaks steadily add up. And of course, there's always the cryptic, romantically ambiguous friendships. How do we define friends, when the tides are constantly ebbing and flowing, and the circumstances and our interpretations of situations are always in turmoil? People (or perhaps interpersonal politics) confuse me.
Campus life is bustling. There’s always events happening on every corner, and there are certain pockets of Parkville which deserve to be named Main Street, or the like. I've already fallen into a rhythm when it comes to my schedule: I know where my buildings are, and I've started finding shortcuts and pathways, and rooms that feel like whispered secrets. It's a good feeling. I'm integrating, like a little puzzle piece into the bigger puzzle of Melbourne Uni. The question remains: have I found the place where I belong, or am I forcibly squeezing myself into places I wish I did?
It’s a cold sunny day in April and the curtains are flung wide open,
Pepper
Three days into the mid-sem break: one day’s worth of public holiday, two days worth of weekend, and all I had done was shut myself up in my room with my timers and coffee and go in circles with my philosophy essay (due on the Monday at midnight). I only get one week off, whereas my little siblings get two, so I should spend more time with them this week before I’m off on my daily three hour commutes again but no, I’ve somehow racked up 25 hours for this 800 word essay. I try to reassure myself with reminders that I included all my reading time in those hours and that philosophy readings are super hard to understand, but still my stomach sinks with the feeling that I’m getting my priorities horribly wrong. In one or two or three years I will not live in this room anymore and never will again and when I come back to visit I will stand in the too-clean middle and wonder what I spent so many hours doing at this bendy desk with its warped frame and dried half-scratched-off watercolour stains and I’ll wonder if any of it was worth it if I can’t remember what 99% of it was. I’ll wander around downstairs awkwardly, with no comfort place, because my comfort place has always been my own room, segregated from everyone else. I’ll look at my siblings having a fun time together and be glad that they’re less traumatised than I spent years fearing but sad that I’m not in the circle, not anymore.
I inch down this slippy slide that empties into an abyss and wonder where my anchors went. At uni, superficial sparks of dopamine sizzle whenever I finish taking notes on a reading or finish watching a lecture on 2x speed or manage to squeeze my way onto a tram already packed down the steps. At times like now I wonder if all that hustle and bustle is my way of filling a void. A void of six odd years. Years wasted in a never-ending loop of forgotten mundane tasks. If being a new adult means your childhood is complete then where is my childhood, where did it go? It does not feel complete at all. I look at how big my siblings are and can’t quite remember how they got from baby faces who loved me to here. I did not look at them enough through all those most formative years, all I looked at was my laptop. The guilt is an ocean bowing my back, it locks around my ribs with fat greasy fingers. How ironic, how hypocritical, that even as I’m typing this I’ve already been hunched in front of my laptop for an entire morning. But maybe it’s better for me to feel this way. At least now I can stare the abyss in the face and strain my pupils in that total absence of light rather than perpetually fool myself with falsely-bright tasks in a loop-
Two days later I stand at the stove stirring concerningly rabbit-poop-like boba in a pot while my brothers play video games on the TV and my sister lounges around on her iPad. Time floats away on the wisps of burnt sugar that coil up from the wooden spatula I’m not quite sure is safe to put in boiling water. My brothers scream-laugh at the TV, my sister shouts at them to shut up and this nook in the kitchen is the cosiest place in the world. Twenty minutes later I sit on the couch with my sister and she teaches me the ins and outs of this pilot game that snoozes in a dusty corner on Roblox. One day later I’m in the backyard with bunnies whizzing around me and admittedly I’m still on my laptop (I did finish the philosophy essay but it’s not my fault the readings don’t stop coming, ok?) but wow I’m outside, and my brother bounces around a plastic inflatable basketball annoyingly close and half threatens to hit me and I feel so unexplainably whole. The house has tilted so that no longer is the heaviest weight in my room, now I have other places to reside. And I think, oh, that was just an existential crisis and it’s not the end of the world.
I don’t feel like introductions are my strong point. I freeze up and forget everything there is to say about myself. But I’m a firm believer that every person is a fascinating microcosm of ideas, ideals, histories and dreams, so I should refrain from selling myself short and keeping information about myself close to my chest.
That being said, I pride myself on being an open book. I say what comes to mind, even if I feel awkward about it. I’m not always the most eloquent or well spoken, but I try to be genuine.
Hi, I’m Lily. I’m an Aries, although I don’t actively look into astrology or zodiac related things. I’m an INFP, but I’ve done the 16 Personalities quiz about once a year and I’ve been an INFJ (2020, 23) and an ENFP (2021, 22). Even now, I’m pretty balanced in each of the traits measured. Although I’ve been quite consistently a Turbulent type, which from what I’ve gathered, means you probably deal with some dysfunctional level of anxiety.
I’m completing my first year of the Bachelor of Arts and I plan on majoring in Criminology and eventually pursuing the Juris Doctor here at Melbourne. It’ll be a long journey, but I’m looking forward to it!
I can only imagine that a great deal of my blog will document how I manage my aforementioned anxiety. You see, I have an Evil Noxious Cruel Not-Very-Nice brain that loves to self-sabotage. I think my anxiety has been a massive motivator for me academically, and that perfectionism has pushed me to do my absolute best work. That same anxiety has a habit of telling me that everything is wrong and it’s better, actually, to lay in bed and not talk to anyone, even though procrastination is very clearly not the solution and it never has been.
After my first wave of assignments, I’ve definitely got a lot to say about that, but as an introductory post, I’ll leave that part there.
Some other things about me include that I like to speak and ramble! A lot! Usually non-coherently and just to my friends, or in my little iridescent fish scale patterned notebook. I’m not afraid to participate in class discussions (I’m usually quite chatty with those!), but when it comes to my language learning tutorials I get a little panicky. I’ll work on that! And write about it too! I like to game with my friends (although I’m not really a gamer, I mainly play Genshin Impact. I’ve been playing Overwatch lately as well, but I’m not really any good), I like to draw, sing, perform, and ice skate.
Ultimately I’m just a little guy in a big university. Do not pity me, for I shall not weaken under the weight of my duties (getting 8 hours of sleep)! I shall slay the dragon (my anxiety and upcoming assignments) with the power bestowed to me by the gods above (Monster Energy and supportive friends)! The world shall echo my name and sing me praise!
Anyways, it’s nap time. Catch you later.
Don't worry I'm not going to be complaining about how I need to figure out supply and demand curves or how I need to somehow make my balance sheet actually balance, but I am going to say that the assignments really did sneak up on me. When the assignment dates were mentioned earlier in the semester, they seemed to be a decent while away, but I did get a reality check when week 4 came around. Juggling the assignments with work and my dance performances outside of uni is quite a challenge, however crossing out each task one by one on my 'to do' list is quite motivating. Although I initially thought the workload was overwhelming, it really allowed me to develop my planning and time management skills. Other than the assessments, uni life has been a delight! Meeting up with friends during breaks and catching up with friends in other faculties while discovering the beautiful scenery on campus has been wonderful. It's really important pass all your assginments, but it's equally important to keep a balance between work life and social life. So, enjoy the social opportunities the uni provides, catch up with your friends and explore the campus while putting a decent effort into your work.
Signing off for now :D
I look around the grand cavernous mouth of my first ever lecture theatre, and not a single face do I recognise. Not one single face in that field of faces lit sharply by the too bright alternating white and yellow lights.
Do you know what this means?
This means no one knows me.
No longer is my form defined by the chiselled year-hardened cage of shy kid try hard perfectionist gets good grades only because she’s pampered doesn’t know how to joke can’t take a joke. I’m a blob, liquid and squishy and gurgling. I'm a small pale moon wavering against the twin mammoth screens’ harsh white light. I'm an NPC.
I came from a high school where I knew everyone inside and out. (Well, not everyone, and not that well, but you get what I mean.) If I achieved something and something that allowed me to achieve that something hadn’t been available to someone else, I would spend the next days or weeks or months drowning and gulping in intense guilt. If someone else achieved something because, or if they simply just did, have something I didn’t, I would spend the next days or weeks or months enviously obsessing over why the whole meritocracy system built on fairness isn’t actually fair. Even if those people were my friends. Driven into my flesh all over were barbed anchors strung tight to a thousand criss-crossing wires that threaded me with the lives of everyone around me. A spiky spider web I couldn’t escape.
Toxic. I know.
Obviously, I didn’t want to be that person. I scrubbed at the life histories and comparisons and scales of worth etched into the concrete of my head until the air was choked with chalk dust and the obsessions somewhat paler, still there but somewhat less. Give me a few years to clean it away. I eased those spiky anchors from my flesh one at a time, slowly, hissing in pain all the way.
Then I went to uni and
all the spikes fell away by themselves. Painlessly.
(i love you unimelb.)
Why? Because suddenly, there was nothing for those itsy bitsy little painful wires to connect to. There was nothing for me to compare myself to. I didn't know anyone at all. And even when I started to get to know people, the sheer amount of diversity present in the room was not a trigger for whatever mental problems I had before; ironically, it was another balm. To realise that I could never log every detail of every person’s life just because there are so many people and so many lives, so many combinations of subjects and majors and jobs and interests and dorm rooms and academic achievements and personal histories up till this moment where two faces meet. To realise that never again could I measure everything using homogeneous units.
From the tiny, suffocating, padded-down, ranked-me-on-one-linear-scale-along-with-everyone-else high school environment to now this. The world had spun and exploded into a million iridescent shards and blasted away all my obsessions as if they had never been. Leaving me clean.
Even now, when it's the end of week 4 and half my tutors have pinned name to face, when tentative friendships/alliances/acquaintances have wobbled into being in all my classes, when this subtle familiar uncomfortable reassuring warmth of knowing and being known has settled on my shoulders once more, when my NPC days have already come and gone - I am still grateful for the freshness uni gave me in those first few days. The absolute liberation.
That's my intro to uni story. For those older than me: can you relate? Or have I just outed myself as someone totally not healthy and not normal?? And for those younger: hopefully your intro to uni presents you with just as much freedom as it did/is doing for me.
Yours truly,
Betty
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