Yesterday in my HPS lecture we watched part of an episode of The Simpsons that dealt with time travel, as that's our topic at the moment. Part of me just had to kick myself - watching The Simpsons in class? Isn't uni great?
Of course, that's just one class, and it was only one moment. I actually found I didn't enjoy the time travel topic as much as I thought I would. Probably because I don't want to analyse the logic in the stories - I just want to believe them. Also, how can you spend a whole week on time travel and not mention Doctor Who once?
Today I had my last Biol prac, and my last Chem prac yesterday. I'm so happy they're over...I've never enjoyed prac very much. However, I guess I have to admit that they were much better than I was expecting. It's so weird that it's already up to the last this and the last that. It still feels like I've just begun uni, in a way.
Exams are the ever approaching cloud on the horizon. I only have two, Biol and Chem, but I'm not particularly looking forward to either of them. But I suppose that goes without saying. I've started studying for them, but it's harder than studying for my year 12 exams, somehow. It might be the fact that there's way more content, or it might just be that I'm trying to apply VCE study methods to uni, and it's just not working. I also have two major essays to write. It's kind of a nice balance - two exams, two essays.
On Monday there was a wood fire blazing in the fireplace in the Vesti (short for the Vestibule) outside the dining hall at college. It was way too nice and hypnotizing - I had an 8:00 lecture and I almost didn't leave for it. I could probably stare at a wood fire all day long. They're my guilty pleasure. I try to be really environmentally friendly as much as I can, and wood fires sort of go against that in all sorts of ways - cutting down trees to burn and add more CO2 to the atmosphere is a really bad combination. It hasn't been lit since then, however. Maybe on the weekend.
While on the subject of the environment, how nice was the rain today? I like the way the university looks when it rains, all shiny and Oxford-y.
I just used the word Oxford-y. I think it's time for bed.
I hate Spanish.
The xams for this semester are nearing and I really have this uncomfortable feeling in me coz I dunno what to expect..And what's more, I haven't even started learning..and not revising!
The problem is that all the assingnments are due in the last few weeks and when do we get time to actually start learning for the exams when we are so busy trying to finish the assignments on time? I agree that assignments are a part of the learning process but still, they do not cover everything! I aslo agree we've got Swot Vac but that's just 1 week, and I really need more than 1 week to learn everything...
Each morning I get up, I'm so tired from the last day's work..very less free time that I get nowadays. I allocate myself to a specific period of free time everyday coz my body needs that! I will be a mess when I finish everything. I have got Bio and Chem exams together one after the other and I cannot imagine myself completing the bio exam, heaving a sigh of relief and then, opening my chem notes right after that! Not even 1 full day...And just the icing on hte cake - NO PERIODIC TABLE TO BE USED IN THE EXAM! I repeat, NO PERIODIC TABLE TO BE USED IN THE EXAM!! What the...my chem stuff depends on that..I have no idea how and when I'm gonna memorise the whole thing! God help me..
Till next time
1. Start practising again. Gah, it's so bad. From last Thursday to this Thursday, there have been three days where I didn't practise at all, two days where I practised less than I was supposed to, and only two days where I practised what I normally do. It's just that so much has happened this week and I kind of forgot to do it.
2. Send out emails with meeting minutes. I got elected to the position of MSS secretary last Thursday. Elected, of course, meaning that I was the only person who ran for it. Music students are generally nothing at all like law students, in the sense that if you held an election for a really small position like first year rep in law, a million people plaster their propaganda all over the building and your email inboxes. In music, on the other hand, only one person runs for president, only one person runs for secretary, very few run for activities officers, and the people that do run are law students. (Yes, music/law is highly overrepresented on the new exec committee, 4 out of the 13 members being music/law students, compared to about 10-15 music/laws out of 400 overall undergrad music students). So yes. Despite the fact that the elections aren't really the bastion of democratic legitimacy, we've got an awesome committee, and it looks like it's going to be a great year for all things fun and musical.
3. Compose, perform, and collaborate. At the beginning of the year, the head of woodwind set all the first years a project: collaborate with a composer, or another performer, to produce an original avant garde work to be performed at the end of semester. Guess what I procrastinated until the last week. Today I basically spent all afternoon working on my creation to get it done in time for someone to learn it for Tuesday's concert (Yasuko Hiraoko room, Sidney Myer Asia Centre, 5:30 pm). The first year clarinetists all got together and composed a three movement suite, so we're performing a movement each, and I'll be collecting my movement from a fellow clarinetist tomorrow.
4. Have fun! JCH ball was yesterday. It was great, not too much drunken debauchery and all that jazz. I got to see four generations of fresher dances, which was pretty awesome, and meet a few ex-JCHers. And on Monday and Saturday I saw my music tutor and her trio perform in a series of joint college concerts between JCH and Queens. Very pro.
5. Catch up on reading. Yesterday I felt guilty about going to the ball because I'd be 60 pages behind on reading for LMR. Then I realised I was already 100 pages behind anyway, so 60 more wouldn't make a difference, and I felt immediately better.
6. Arrange plane tickets home. Don't want to be stuck in Australia over winter break, do we?
7. Buy phone plan. I haven't been able to call anyone on my cell in almost a month because I ran out of credit. I don't know how I survive.
8. Make a difference. I'm doing the Student Ambassador Leadership Program thingy which you might have seen around campus. It's usually second years and above, except that because music students are different from law students, nobody from music ever wants to sign up for it. If they didn't catch those keen as mustard first years nice and early they'd never have any SALPers in the music faculty. So basically, I'm going to these workshops and seminars, which, to be honest, are a little bit of a waste of time and don't really accomplish much, but it gives you pretty good opportunities and resources to start your own volunteer projects and things, and a lot of past participants have been able to use the program as a springboard to do quite substantive things, so I suppose it's worth it. Went to camp over the weekend. Was pretty fun, but I was a bit annoyed about missing a day of practise.
9. Get life. (See two posts back) In particular, there's a Melbourne Symphony Orchestra concert which I absolutely HAVE to go to because they're playing some of my favourite stuff. And I really should visit at least the State Library since it's so close.
10. Pick up PPL essay tomorrow 4pm. Do I really want to know?
11. Australian Youth Orchestra auditions came out, and I really need to decide whether I want to try or not. On the one hand, it's a good way to get exposure to high level music making and practise the audition process. On the other hand, I can't afford it because it's freaking expensive, and it also tours during the summer and winter holidays, which are the only two times in the year that I get to see my family. I could audition and not get in and that would get me the benefits of experience without the commitment, but then that would indicate that I'd need to work harder to get to the #1 spot that I have to be in to get a job in performance, and I'm not too sure I reaaally want to know about that.
12. I should clean my room. I live in a hovel.
Yesterday afternoon I went to see Spiderman 3 (if you liked the first two, you owe it to yourself to go - twas awesome). I walked into the cinema resigned to the fact there would be at least 15 minutes of ads before the movie would start. I settled into my seat, expecting to see the familiar car ads and movie trailers. What I didn't expect to see was the Bailleu Library.
Yes, it was one of the commercials for the Melbourne Model. And it was pretty impressive, all piano music and thought-provoking titles. However, a few points particularly interested me. There was a heavy focus on the sciences, and in particular, environmental issues. Of course, this is no surprise, considering that they're all about creating a "machine" that "has the answers" to future problems, which at the moment is very clearly global warming. Also, there were very few shots of the university - the one shot of the Bailleu aisles was generic enough to be any library, and was basically the only one of the uni itself. Instead, we had panoramic landscapes, power plants, agar plates and X-Rays. I suppose these were chosen on the basic of their generality (and how good they look on a cinema screen), and because these ads aren't trying to reach people through the campus itself.
So after the film, I went home and decided to watch the other two. There are three, and you can see them at the dreamlarge website. "Can you see?" is by far the best one. I have my concerns with the Melbourne Model, but that ad made me feel proud to be a student at the University of Melbourne. Yeah, I know - completely sucked in.
My college PPL tutor says that once the assignments all get handed in, law students just start to drift. Without the stress of looming deadlines, they decide to relax, showing up to fewer classes, putting less effort into note-taking, and ignoring the cases that they have to read for lectures. Almost all of them forget that they have exams just around the corner, and sink into a state of blissfully ignorant lethargy.
You know what?
She's totally right.
Guess how many pages of reading I'm behind on in Legal Method and Reasoning. Clue: It's three seminars worth of stuff which I haven't touched. Somehow, I'm completely and totally up to date, even slightly ahead, with the reading for Principles of Public Law, though. I suppose it's just the content of the reading -- it's so much easier to read debates on the nature of human rights than it is to read pages of judicial opinion on whether ginger beer manufacturers should be sued for letting decomposed snails get into their bottles.
I haven't practised enough this week either... last week and the week before were really good because I got in about three and a half hours a day on average, but this week it's been about two hours a day so far, plus half an hour or so of playing random things I shouldn't be playing because they're irrelevant to what I'm supposed to be working on. I'm so bored of scales. Can't wait until next semester when we get actual pieces of music to play.
At any rate, I need to get my lethargic butt moving, and/or stop procrastinating on the internet until midnight like I am now.
All the more ironic given that exam timetables came out today:
Practical Study (clarinet): June 12th, 2:30
Legal Method and Reasoning: June 14th, 9:30
Principles of Public Law: June 19th, 2:15
Hmm. I wonder why I don't have an aural studies exam.
In other news: orchestra concert on Monday went well but involved me getting home at 1 am because the trains stopped working, yesterday's Mozart competition was a disaster, and I've eaten lunch at uni more often this week than in the entire previous weeks combined because I keep forgetting to order a sandwich from college.
My grand plan last time I left you: to become an expert on the topic for my tute that week so as to be able to discuss (hopefully intelligently) 'The Rise of Conservatism'.
Result: Extra reading did not help that much because in the USA Today tutes we talk more about contemporary issues than looking at the historical perspective. But, I did have an opinion on some of the topics we discusses ie. how much the government should intervene in lives of citizens, should drugs be decriminalized and guns in the US.
My new idea? Pretend to have an opinion (even when one is absent). And I think the knowing everything thing doesn't matter so much because it's not like everyone is whipping out facts, they're just talking (sometimes very emphatically) about what they think.
Went to The Pajama Game (Melbourne Uni Musical) with a couple of friends from my tute because one of the guys from our tute was in it. Alright musical, had a good time hanging out and chatting.
That's all for now.
A few days ago I woke up, and came to the startling realisation that my life is boring. In fact, I realised that the most exciting thing that I had done the day before was watch somebody's cupcakes baking in the oven. As in, I had actually sat there in front of an oven for 20 minutes and stared at a tin of muffin mix rising and solidifying in the heat. And enjoyed it.
This, I believe, is what happens after you get past the mid semester break at uni. All the shiny newness of it all, the excitement of upheaval, the adrenaline rush of being thrown into the deep end, it's all gone. And you're left with your normal daily routine, except it's even less exciting than normal because you've just been through all the shiny glittery stuff.
To be honest, it hasn't been that boring here. In fact, this week was actually loads of fun. Especially since it involved lots of free food. So, Monday I handed in my LMR essay, which marked my last graded written assignment for the semester - yippee! Tuesday I went to the 85 Broads Launch, which gave the most awesome free food ever and I was very upset that I didn't get to eat more because I had to go back and attend college tutes. (And yes, it was very empowering, and a great chance to meet people, and all that jazz, but the food was my personal favourite part :D) Later that evening was the college auction, and I lost every single bid because of my cheapness.
On Wednesday, the JCH choir got up at 5 am and went to sing the national anthem at the uni ANZAC day dawn service with the Melbourne University Regiment. I didn't conduct this time, because I don't actually know the Australian national anthem (or any national anthem, for that matter -- that's what happens to kids with geographically displaced childhoods, I suppose). Afterwards, the regiment invited us back to their headquarters for a free breakfast, and gave us a tour of their machine guns and grenade launchers and stuff, which was very cool. Later that evening we had the JCH musical soiree, which wasn't really that great in terms of musical quality compared to what we have at the Con, but was more fun and laid back, with a wider variety of music than the usual Bach/Brahms/Beethoven that you see in the faculty. Plus more free food.
Thursday I went to watch my music tutor's recital in the Trinity College Chapel. Needless to say, it was amazing, although it was a pity that there were very few people there aside from the JCH music crowd.
Friday was the college Ip Dip party. The general concept of Ip Dip is that you're assigned a character, which gets posted on your door the week before. You then have to dress as your assigned character, and go to the party, where you can see everyone else's costume. The characters are set up in groups, so if you're Winnie the Pooh, you know that you'll be able to find Tigger, Piglett, and Eeyore at the party too. I ended up as Beyonce, which, as those who've met me in real life know, is probably the complete opposite of how I normally dress and look. (And for those of you that haven't met me in real life, imagine a short Asian girl with large glasses in jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers, carrying around an oversized backpack, and you'll understand why) It was awesome fun getting together the costume, and there was more free food at the party :D. So you can see that I've had a pretty busy and food filled week.
But anyway, despite the fact that there's been so much going on, it still all feels like there's more out there that you've been cut off from. I suppose it's the fact that almost all of it has happened in college, and after a while, especially in a small college, you kind of start to want to go somewhere else, to take part in the wider community. College begins to be a little bit too much of a bubble.
This is especially true once you start thinking about how you almost never visit the east side of uni. Or in the middle of uni, really, because all your classes are on the western edge (music), or the southern edge (law). Or how you've never aware of any of the events on at uni. Or how, despite the fact that you're a music student who's lived in Melbourne for almost three months, you've never gone south of Flinders street except for clarinet lessons, and have therefore never been to the arts centre or the National Gallery. Or the State Library, any of the museums, the beach, or Max Brenner. In fact, once you start making lists of where you've been (and by you, I mean me), it starts to become painfully obvious that you don't get out enough.
Because of this, I have resolved to make more of an effort to live outside of my usual haunts and explore the city. It is about time I got a life.
P.S. Bonus points for anyone who can name the reference in this post's title. (No googling, thank you very much, and it's a reference to both a philosopher's words and the title of a book, so special brownie points if you can get both of them)
P.P.S. Come to the Orchestra concert on Monday, in Hawthorn Town Hall (take the train to Glenferrie). I'm playing in Sculthorpe's Sun Music III, which is a VERY COOL piece of music, because you get to hear the strings make noises that sound like puppies being kicked by squawking seagulls, and the other pieces we're playing make a pretty awesome programme too. [/shameless plug]
(i) only union members are allowed to use the toilets in the basement of the union house?
(ii) only union members are allowed to take water from the drinking fountain from the union house?
(iii) only union members are allowed to read the magazine 'Farrago'?
If yes, I've been unknowingly violating the first and third rules!!
I read Farrago coz it is openly put on the stands in the union house AS WELL AS outside the balilieu library...it doesn't specify that it's for union members only, then why can't I read it?
I got this startling info from the magazine itself...Union news, article titled 'Goons target union "Scabs"' :
regarding (i) it says it has begun a UMSU's crackdown on non-members using facilities, random membership checks are currently undertaken throughout the Union House. Students without memberships were manhandled out of toilets
regarding (ii) and (iii) ..forcing non-members to empty drink bottles full of water "filched" from member-subsidied drinking fountains & confiscation of stolen copies of Farrago..
I looked up the word filched and it meant to steal!! C' mon guys...it's water!! Is there such a thing as SPECIAL water for union house members??!!
I wouldn't have come to have known abt this if I hadn't read Farrago...and it says Farrago's for union members..then how are we supposed to know abt these stuff?
If all of this is true, I would like to apologise for having used the facilities since I am NOT a union member...I shall satisfy myself by using the toilets in the other buidlings, reading some book that I brought from my home and using water from the balilieu library...
Is there any more rules that I need to be aware of? Pls let me know...
Thank You,
Till next time
With a well-timed evacuation, I suppose. An evacuation that was very efficient - congratulations and thanks should be offered to those staff involved.
I had a Biology lecture in the Copland Theatre this morning, and we had a new lecturer, who was really engaging, running up and down the stairs imitating a jellyfish. I was tired, because I'd walked into the city and back to buy tickets to the Comedy Festival (Tim Minchin on Wednesday night! Yay!), and so I was just relaxing into my seat and basically putting my feet up. But my rest was short-lived. An announcement came over the speakers, telling us that we needed to evacuate the builidng immediately. The poor guy sounded slightly panicked, which I think spread to us, because we all just started getting out of the theatre as fast as we could. Once outside, I met up with a couple of people from my college, who told me that there was a gas leak under the building and there was a chance it could explode. Now, due to the Hollywood glamour of explosions, I thought that was slightly humorous, and dare I say it, kind of cool. As we were shephered away from the builidng as fast as possible (which wasn't very fast - think sheep), it suddenly occurred to me that if the building did blow up, I was probably going to die.
Now, that thought only lasted a second before the whole situation went back to being surreal and funny again, but for that second, I was honestly scared. In that second, death was as close as the building behind me. It was real, tangible, and scarily comprehendable. Needless to say, it was an interesting experience. Last night's sermon at Chapel at Ormond was all about death and peoples' beliefs about what comes after it, which I found really interesting. Last night I thought about those words in the context of last week's Virginia Tech tragedy. I never expected to revisit them in a very present and personal sense only the following morning.
As I recounted the story to my sister later, she commented that of all the places to die, the Commerce building was fairly low down on the list. Of course, I found that extremely funny. But the little voice in the back of my head continues to remind me that it could have happened.
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