This morning I woke up, and not only had I woken up too late to get breakfast from the dining hall, but the whole of my gums underneath my lower left set of molars was swollen and painful. This happens because my wisdom teeth are growing in but don't have the space to do it, so there are a few flaps of gum covering the wisdom tooth, which food constantly gets stuck in, and therefore every so often I get a gum infection despite my religiously fanatic teeth cleaning rituals.
The problem with this, aside from the fact that I am now in pain, is that it seriously screws up my practice and I have a clarinet exam in ten days. I can't hold the embouchure without some degree of pain, I can't blow air into the instrument without some degree of pain, and even if I could, the swelling means that I can't really hold the right shape of embouchure because there's this big chunk of diseased flesh in the way. I'm kind of kicking myself, because yesterday when the swelling wasn't so severe I forced myself to ignore it and practice for three and a half hours which is probably why it's so bad today.
It'll probably be fine, since the last few times I've had this, it's only been for two or three days, and I'm pretty ahead with everything I have to play in the exam. But still, as soon as I get back to Hong Kong, where I have health insurance that covers dentists, I am getting all four of those bleeding wisdom teeth removed at the same time. (Yes, I'm aware that this will probably involve me being drugged up on painkillers and eating liquid foods for several weeks afterwards, but I really hate my wisdom teeth.)
In other news, college now serves us five meals a day, up from the usual four, because they seem to think that the best way to do well in exams is to go in stuffed with food. We now get breakfast, lunch, dinner, afternoon tea, and supper. Plus the amount of food and the choice we get for all the meals has hugely increased. Hello, weight gain. There's some truth to the American notion of the 'Freshman 15' -- the 15 pounds that you gain in your freshman (i.e. 1st) year.
All this food makes me really homesick, because it's all Western food and right now I'm really craving Chinese food. Particularly the type of Chinese food you get from small shops and vendors of questionable hygiene back home. There's Chinatown here, of course, but it's not the same. I'm actually impressed that they have authentic food (although a lot of them are still really really fake, like the one I visited in O-week), but the ones with authentic food are so expensive. It costs $7 for a bowl of congee that would cost the equivalent of $1 back home, or $40 for a steamed fish or a roast duck that would cost $8 back home, or $10 for a bowl of dumplings that would cost 50c in Beijing or $2 in Hong Kong.
It's so expensive to eat out here, actually. I guess I'm used to living in a country where in some cases it actually works out cheaper to eat out than to make it yourself at home, but whenever I go out for someone's birthday or eat at uni because I can't get back to college in time for a meal and forgot to order a packed lunch or a late dinner it always comes with a mental image of my bank account draining. It's honestly not an exaggeration to say that I could eat in a nice restaurant back home for the price of fast food here.
I called my dad the other day and he said he's going to be in Beijing for a few weeks when I get back, and if I make it home in time I can come with him. Can't wait.
Also, I have done exactly 0 work during swotvac, other than my usual clarinet and aural studies practise. Actually, amending that statement, I have done exactly 0 law related work for swotvac. I think I actually don't know how to study for humanities, because I picked all my IB subjects on the assumption that I'd never see another humanity in my life. Or maybe I tell myself that because I haven't touched my law notes, don't want to, and don't feel guilty about it because I honestly would not mind failing the subjects.
Work:
Doncaster A&R closed down so am now just a company casual. So far have had a few calls to work and have gotten a few shifts at chaddy and camberwell.
Been for an interview at Borders on Lygon - unsucessful. Interviews suck.
Was complaining to a friend about my joblesssness and now I'm at a law firm in the city doing filing etc. It's a pretty decent job, but so far only one shift a week and as I am hoping to be eligible for the independent allowance next year, it's not enough. NB: This has further reinforced in my mind the idea that it is never what you know, but who.
Study:
Had my first and last exam today, yay! Now spanish is officially over and I'm pretty sure I passed. I've mellowed on my last 'hate spanish' blog and am thinking I'll give it a miss for next semester, but see if I want to pick it up again next year.
Have three essays due next week, all of which have yet to be started.
Social:
I feel a bit stupid, but I'm now stoked to have a bunch of people that I can actually call uni friends. Went to PA's for the first time last Monday with a bunch of people from my USA Today tute, was awesome.
Went to the Glenferrie last Tuesday with two friends, we got kicked out because I was (apparently) too intoxicated (drunk sounds trashy) - needless to say, friends were rightly pissed off with me.
Had an inaugural 'Grey's Night' last Sunday with a bunch of girls from Siena. We're thinking it'll be a bit of a weekly thing to keep in touch with everyone in the group. Used a coupon from my union booklet for pizza, so is handy for something. 'What About Brian' is now growing on me.
Went to a Kate Miller Heidke gig the other week, was probably my favourite gig yet. She's awesome! Check her out if you like something a little bit left of center: http://www.myspace.com/katemillerheidke - 'Out and In' is my favourite song at the mo', makes me feel relaxed.
Going to Missy Higgins tomorrow - yay!
Sport:
Am feeling feral as I've not been to the gym in about 2 weeks, will go tomorrow.
Home/family:
I love my mum, but am pretty sure I have grown out of living at home, will probably move out at the start of next year.
My Dad has a new girlfriend of a few months, found out a couple of days and am pissed he didn't tell me. Then pissed my brother knew and didn't tell me. She's about 20 years younger than he is...
Uni:
At the end of my first semester at Uni (I can't believe it was only 12 weeks, that's how long one of our terms were last year), I've decided it's better than I could have ever hoped for. My classes are so interesting and very rarely do I not want to attend one. I'm looking forward to a bunch of new subjects next semester. Uni is so so much easier than year 12. There's so much less pressure and no feeling of 'this is it'. So much more freedom, great people, more alcohol, the work is enjoyable and so is easier than last year. Got a bit of a feeling that I'm in control of my life and the direction it heads in. At the mo', I'm thinking I'll major in politics and history and then do post grad law.
So year 12s: there is a light at the end of the tunnel, uni rocks!
My only complaint is that I have very few clothes and there are so many days in a week.
Have a good one,
Georgie
NB: Future Arts students - prepare to hear (of in some cases, see scrawled across a toilet wall) the pizza joke over and over again.
Want a break from studying, but feel guilty about it? Fellow Chemistry students, I have found the answer to all our problems.
It's a quiz on the internet, which appears to be fun to our internet-addicted brains, even if it's not. And it's way more productive than staring at a textbook.
Happy studying.
My friends and I were standing outside the Chem Learning lab waiting for the tutors to come and we see those normal posters posted on the boards. U know, the one abt diff chem stuff. One of them was 'Quantum ..' and we were like.ok, not interested. I then glance over to the authors who wrote that..and of the names nearly freaked me out!
"Hiro Nakamura"
Is that weird or simply me going nuts? If u didn't know, that's a name of one of the characters from Heroes who actually teleports and bends time. What are the odds of having the same name and same surname??
Still freaking me out...
My college gives us 1GB of downloads per semester for our internet connection. If we use more than our download limit, we pay 5c per MB for the excess. I spend far more time than is healthy reading random articles on Wikipedia and compulsively checking my email.
Long story short, I am going to be so, so, in debt when I leave college and have to pay off my internet bill.
EDIT: When I think about it, it is really quite a miracle that I somehow ended up as Secretary of the Music Student's Society (or any society for that matter). Even more miraculous is that I haven't totally and utterly screwed something up yet. I am horrifically disorganised. Right now I'm buried under this absolutely massive stack of papers and revision materials, desperately trying to read my illegible handwriting so that I can type up some notes, and cursing the fact that I like squeezing things in margins so that I can more easily draw arrows to show how different issues link and contrast with each other.
My notes therefore tell me that the doctrine of asjgqegjhdb is somehow linked to the principle of qwiurhy, which directly contradicts Brennan J's idea that law is akjhsiuqw vmcxn oiq asjf, which has significant implications on uiwehb, that this implies 389tysdnba, and that Gleeson CJ disagrees with this all in his dissenting judgment to Qsdb v Aquwih and all of which I'm sure would be brilliantly insightful if I could read it.
To further worsen matters, I also have this tendency to label my computer documents as things like 'notes.doc', 'othernotes.doc', 'powerpointslides.ppt' and 'suzannesrandomcrap.txt' and then put them all in the same folder. Hours of sorting and relabelling fun, right there. Words of wisdom to the next generation of freshers: 'assignment.doc' is not a good label for any document, especially if you put all your assignments in the same folder.
Ever fancied a door doing just that? Well, the ECR building has just the one for you. Just stroll through the campus to the Engineering shrine, walk up to level 3 and enter the computer lab (open to everyone but don't log on unless you're an ECR student).
Another joyful post brought to you by a tormented Science student... in light of the exams in less than 2 weeks.
Cheers,
I think I have a habit of blogging on Monday nights/early Tuesday mornings. All my entries have been made during these times.
Uni is still a bit up and down. Today I had a great day. But I betcha that something bad will happen tomorrow to correct the universal order. Ever since uni begun, I have not experienced pure bliss for an extended period of time. Is that even possible? I had lunch with a friend in Newman College then watched The History Boys at Nova cinemas ($5.50 on Mondays). I thought it was a lovely movie with hilarious moments and memorable quotes. It’s a story about a bunch of students at an all boys grammar school in England in the 80s pursuing places for Oxbridge. The movie brought back many memories, namely the silly boyish behaviour only found in boy schools. I am only 19 but I feel old already. Ever since I left the school grounds six months ago, I feel as though I am obliged to be a mature and responsible adult. And I guess that’s necessary when you are in a professional learning environment such as university, but I do miss the immaturity and freedom of being an adolescent boy in high school. As teens, we always dream of the freedom that entails being an adult, your own house, your own car and no parents to hassle you. However, we don’t think about the financial burdens, the lack of leisure time and other complexities of adulthood. I have slowly learnt that it’s the other way round; the younger you are, the more freedom you have to do anything you want without bearing the scorn of society (your youth is your defence). The freedom to talk as loud as you want on trains, the freedom to model outrageous haircuts and the freedom to live in your own little dreamy world. At the end of the day, adults will dismiss you as a delinquent youth and that would be the worst that could happen. I think my inner child will never die. I so cannot wait till my mid life crisis, feel sorry for my kids already.
Looking back in the last few months, I think I have been the happiest when I meet new people and when my relationships with other people blossom. Friends are so important in a large environment such as uni. Friendship however is defined differently by different people. I remember during O-Week when people said they had made friends already. To me, making friends is more than knowing someone’s name, it’s even more than meeting up for coffee once. Being friends mean spending a lot of time with each other and having good knowledge of the other person. Otherwise, it’s just an acquaintance who you say hi to and mingle with once in a while when your paths happen to cross. And that happens a great deal at uni. That’s why I believe making a ‘true’ friend is one of the biggest challenges during one’s time at uni. From what I see, the majority of first years (well mostly those who went to school here in Melbourne) still hang out with people they knew from school or during their school years.
Well today I had the last tutorial for one of my subjects. It was actually quite a sad feeling. Not because I enjoy the subject but because I have gotten to know a few people in my class and chances are I won’t be in the same classes as them next semester. I don’t know whether I will still be in touch with them or that we will just go down our own paths. Will we become friends or is it a case of me increasing my tally of acquaintances? I really enjoy the company of these people and it would be a shame if no effort is made to build closer links. But again, effort is needed and someone has to show initiative which is Everyone wants to feel loved and wanted and so he/she waits for other people to ask them out to the movies, to the pub or whatever it may be. I guess its natural but a vicious cycle can develop and no one ends up putting any effort into developing the friendship. Awkwardly today, I spoke to a girl in my tute for the first time. The set up of the room plus the intense style of teaching at uni just doesn’t allow much interaction during class and the only reason why I did get to know a few others were due to the group assignment we had to complete. Anyway, this girl whom I did not get to know in 12 weeks of tutes seemed like a very nice person and my biggest regret was not getting to know her earlier. For all I know and given the size of the commerce faculty, we may never see each other again. But we do catch the same train line so there is always hope. This might sound like some sort of romantic comedy but I assure you, it’s not.
People say you make lifelong friends during your time at uni and I agree with that. But in some instances, the friends you make can depend purely on fate; e.g the tutes you choose. Sometimes, the people you come in contact with at uni are in the hands of fate.
Most universities market their global and diverse community to attract potential students. I have to say, so far I’m pretty impressed. During this semester, I have met:
• An American exchange student from Cornell
• A girl from Indonesia
• Various people from international schools all around the world
• Interstate students from Brisbane and Sydney
Of course if you take a walk around uni you can see the diversity of cultures but its different when you sit down and talk to them. This diversity is everywhere, even on this blog.
The chill has finally arrived and I have to say, I am loving it. The warm weather was good but it’s good to finally wake up to rain. The bad thing about the colder climate is my lack of winter clothing. In the past few years, all I have needed was my trusty school blazer. Yes call me sad but the blazer seriously has to be my favourite piece of clothing in winter. It’s a shield against the cruellest of weathers. Since i can’t wear it anymore I will have to go shopping for clothes, which I absolutely loathe. I can’t stand shopping. I don’t mind so much strolling down shopping strips or markets but shopping centres are the worst. There are so many different places to visit and so many options to choose from, it’s just too much hassle. I don’t understand how it can be a hobby for you girls. Not to mention the obscene amount of dough you have to fork out these days for anything that can do a decent job of keeping you warm.
What does the title of this blog have anything to do with what I have typed? I don’t know. I saw the word ‘Hopscotch’ on an ad today and liked it for some reason.
Exams are looming, at least the pressure is not on like year 12. I was wetting my pants this time last year.
Oh sorry for the mellow tone in this blog.
Toilet count: 10 – discovered the one on first level Union House opposite the lifts.
End of chem prac, end of bio prac..
one ended a good way, one ended a bad way..(well, sort of)
Let's start with the bad one with chem..I was so happy i was doin my last freakin prac and the next thing I know, I have splahsed iodine all over my lab coat. And table. And lab book. I was like..no way! this is so not happening. I stood for a second staring helplessly at my stained WHITE (but not completely white anymore) lab coat. One girl told me that u can't wash away iodine stains. And that was enuf to get me down in the dumps. I was so stressed out over this that I was planning to get a new one the next day..My mom was staring wide-eyed at my coat and I advised her to try washing it. And miraculously, they disappeared...saved $30 bucks!
Oh yeh, the gud one, for bio prac, I dissected a rat! How fun was that? It was my first time and I was a bit scared but then, later it got awesome! We took out its guts and spread it out. Its intestine is soooo long! It was a real fun day. I was thinking abt putting some pics but they are really gross, shud I put them on?
Last weekend, got a cold and here I am sniffing. I wasn't in the mood to study so postponed our combined study today. One incident - I was comin to uni on the tram and this guy gets on with 2 huge luggage and I felt pity for him and helped him push it to his seat. He thanked me. I felt good, too. helped someone. When his stop came, he heaves his luggage onto his shoulder and that stupid bag kicks right onto my face. I am amazed my glasses didn't break. Fortunately, no one saw that 'cept for a girl and she was asking me if I was allrite. That guy didn't even see that and he just left! He returned the help in a nice way, huh? Good start to the week...
Till next time
(sniff)
Not because I hate it or anything. It just feels like a freaking huge waste of time because I can think of at least a dozen things off the top of my head that I'd rather be doing with that time and at least three of them involve switching to another degree.
Thoughts?
...that I've joined lately include 'My education is getting in the way of my learning', 'I've thought about dropping out of law school at least ten times today' and 'Every time you write parallel fifths, Bach kills a kitten'.
Now, that last group has absolutely no relevance to what I'm going to talk about in this post. But the others reflect a great deal about what I've been thinking about in the past few days. I've noticed that, particularly in my law lectures, there is a great deal of teaching to the test when it draws closer to exam time, almost as much as, or more than, there was in high school. Now, I understand the impetus for wanting your students to do well on standardised tests in high school, because after all, high schools base their reputation on how well students do in exams and the consequent university placements. But when you're in university, and the point is to actually drill something into your thick skull for the general idea of it and not for some other end, and when everyone getting great marks means grade inflation, not excellence, I have to wonder what the point of spending so much time on exam preparation is.
I mean, it's great that my lecturers are so thorough in making their expectations clear and providing help for exams. And this whole spiel is probably coming from a bit of a hypocritical standpoint, given that their exam tips are probably going to save my butt when I walk into LMR with no idea about what the heck I'm going to do. But I came into university expecting that I would finally be able to learn something purely for the sake of it, and instead find that students here are still motivated more by a two digit number on a piece of paper than by the prospect of opening their minds. Call me naive, or stuck up, or a kooky intellectual purist, but I find it incredibly dispiriting, when, after the LMR lecturer announces that there will not be an essay on the social implications of tort reforms on the test, students ask if that means that they will not have to learn about them. I find it disheartening that when the lecturer tells the class that everyone in law has done incredibly well in school, that the general first reaction is to stress over the loss of standing in the hierarchy of academic achievement, and not to consider the wider implication that now that you're in a pool of intellectual equals and superiors there is a remarkable opportunity to have the kind of sophisticated discussions you could only dream about in high school and to really learn from each other without the kind of constraints you'd have in a smaller pond. (Sorry. I know that sounds incredibly cliched.) Cut throat grade grubbing and teaching to the exam might have had their purposes in secondary education, but they do not belong in higher education. Period.
Anyway, the whole thing which sparked this rant was an exchange information session this afternoon. The rep from the University of California talked about how the policy at UC Santa Cruz was to assess all subjects on a pass/fail basis, and to provide detailed and personalised written feedback to students where it was necessary, with similar detailed letters of recommendation being used in lieu of transcripts for graduate program applications. There are a number of other American universities which use a similar policy, notably Reed University in Oregon, and MIT for all its first year students, and generally it's found to be a great way of easing transition to university and encouraging a supportive, rather than cutthroat, environment. It's not very practical to implement this system for Melbourne, because it only really works with relatively small schools with few students to write evaluations about. But it's a nice thought nonetheless.
So, to change the subject and touch on why I joined that second group there, I'm wondering whether I really actually want to be doing law. (It really has nothing to do with anything in the previous ramble, because that's a general thing that applies to all faculties.) It's just that I originally chose law because my parents made me pick a backup to music, and I really didn't want to do arts, creative arts, mediacomm, or commerce because I was a hardcore science and maths geek who hated economics, my only non-language humanities or social science subject, in high school (For the curious, I did IB with maths, physics, and music at higher level, and English, Chinese, and economics at standard level. Everyone in my family is a scientist or mathematician, so I also got to play with equations and things a lot as a kid). I figured that since law would be logical and all that it would suit me better than the other options. But now that I'm here, I've discovered that there are people actually doing music/science, although the degree doesn't exist in the books (it's a complicated setup where you do both part time and transfer credits from one to the other), and I'm tempted to switch once the faculty of music replies to my email about how you actually go about setting up such a degree. I just feel like all the maths I did as a kid, all the education, and all the interest in the stuff is being wasted by doing law, a subject for which I have only a lukewarm passion.
But even that's not what I really want. What I really want is to be able to have my music degree, and then double it with a broad, generalist degree, because I really don't know what I want to do outside of music. And the heart of it is that I really want to be good at everything. I want the writing skills and the critical reading ability and the questioning and thinking around fuzzy and unclear issues that you get in law. I want the rigorous logical manipulation skills you get in maths. I want the problem solving from science or engineering. I want the appreciation of beauty you get from the arts. I want to go on exchange, and travel and live in all sorts of places so that I can look at everything from a different angle. And then I want to get into a position where those will be of some use to the rest of the world.
Bah. I hate that I can't pick any electives in my course until 4th year (when the rest of you have probably all graduated). I have so much fun designing my future and education. I'm kind of doing it now, on a little bit of an unofficial basis, with an unofficial English literature class (i.e. reading books again, starting with my floor tutor's book - she's a published author, and then moving on to some Russian stuff like Anna Karenina), an unofficial Chinese class (i.e. reading books in Chinese) and an unofficial film class (watching all these random movies from different cultures in other people's rooms), and I want to squeeze in some time to finish some music compositions I started a while ago, and to finish writing a story, plus I have all these random calculus and music theory books I brought over, just in case I needed them, which I probably won't get around to looking at because I'd like to have some slightly less dorky hobbies too. And I really should stop thinking that revision lectures are breaks -- just because there is no new reading doesn't mean I should stop looking at the books altogether. I have weird study attitudes. I find exam period relaxing because I only have to go into class on the day of the exam and nobody gives me assignments during them.
As a side note, why on earth are Australians so behind the times? Nobody here has Facebook, which, back home, would have been incredibly weird for someone with any semblance of a social network. Certainly, in the States, you'd definitely be one of the weird smelly kids if you weren't constantly procrastinating on the site. (For those of you who don't know, and the fact that there are such people goes a long way towards supporting my point, Facebook is a social networking site where you and your friends all have profiles and send each other messages and things. It's pretty useful when everyone's on it, because you can send out mass invitations to events to everyone on your friends list, and it reminds you of all their birthdays and crud.) Here it seems to be mostly a Myspace craze, which back home, is uncool for anyone past their early teens, because the majority of people who use Myspace are either a) 12 year old girls, or b) 40 year old men stalking those 12 year old girls.
Oh, random plug: I'll be in the chamber orchestra that accompanies Trinity College Choir for their concert of Haydn's Paukenmasse on Saturday, 5:30, Trinity College Dining Hall, $15. Watch!
Man, I write long posts.
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