Last night was the Ormond Ball. I don't want to sound too negative, but basically it was a waste of $60. A ball sounds really sophisiticated and elegant, but it was just a night at a club, which really isn't my thing. If I'd known it was going to be like that, I would have just spent a night in my room watching TV. Of course, some people really enjoyed it, but if you're like me and don't drink and don't like clubbing, you'd be better off saving your money. Don't get sucked in by the term "ball".
There are notes around Ormond reminding us to let the office know whether or not we're staying at college or going home for the Easter break, which makes me think of Harry Potter everytime I see them. (Speaking of Harry Potter, my Chem pracs never fail to remind me of Potions. Luckily for me, my demonstrator is nice and not at all Snape-like.) Unlike Harry, I'm going home, which I'm really looking forward to. I miss Shepparton, and my dogs, and just the general comfort of being at home. Living at college has its perks, but I'm envious of the people who can attend uni while staying at home. College still feels like a college, or just a place to stay, rather than home yet. But it definitely feels more like home than it did even two weeks ago, so I assume it's just a matter of time.
Tonight my beloved Joss Whedon Appreciation Society is having a trivia night. I love trivia, mainly because I'm so competitive. I like to think that I know a lot about Joss Whedon and his television shows, but so does everyone else in the club. So it's going to be interesting. But fun. Interestingly fun.
Random fact of the day: It's William Shatner's birthday. :)
Ok so World's Greatest Shave took place at uni last week. There was a good turnout of people and an even more astounding number of people getting their heads shaved! At one point there was almost a fight over a razor. It was also an afternoon of freebies! Free pizza and free drinks, and of course free haircuts. There were also about 4 or 5 Medico-legal firms in the area getting people to sign up in exchange for free stuff.
Let's just say I came home with a whole bunch of shiny new pens, a drink bottle, a couple of bags, a few lanyards, some stress balls (including one dressed up as an apple) and other assorted goodies. Bring on the spam!
My weekend was a little less exciting. I had to sit the 2 day First Aid course. Our instructor was great, so I'm not knocking anybody down. it's just that...well who really wants to be stuck CPR from 9 til 5 Saturday and Sunday?
This week has been pretty ave. We started a new PBS PBL case and today I got to be an extroverted arts student in an ICM role play. That was pretty fun, though it's always easy being the interviewee as opposed to the interviewer.
Oh and in other College news, Beard Ed has re-kidnapped my gorilla, but that is a story I shall have to share with you all later.
I just thought I'd give you an update since it's been a long time since I last posted (this is only my second post...SORRY!) But I am now off to play beautiful music with the African Drumming Club. The African Drumming Club, as Suzanne would also tell you, is some of the most fun you'll have at uni. It's a great club and you learn some pretty cool stuff.
Til next time...
Adios amigos
Argh! I missed the information session for study abroad and exchange today! And I really wanted to get out of Australia and go see the world too! Argharghargh~!@$$%^%^&^&~!
Gah, there'd better be a repeat session somewhere.
Before coming to uni, I had an idea of what it would be like...getting more time to relax with friends after all the skool pressures. But now, it's more pressure for me..anyone feels this way?
I'm usually good at studying and organizing, but lately, I am finding all so difficult. Each lecture covers an enormous amt of work and when I sit down to revise, there's lots to actually look at apart from just the notes. I thought assignments would begin later in the year, but I have got now two due in the next couple of weeks!! Not that I can't do them, but something else seems so strange..somethin that doesn't fit in...maybe I have to just get used to it..
Travelling all the way to Burnley is another hurdle. It usually is in the afternoon, so right after my class at parkville, I have to jump on the tram to flinders and get on another one to burnley. So, my lunchtime is spent that way. I don't get to go to union house and have a look around at what's happening. It takes a maximum of 2 hrs to reach home on those burnley days..I'll be so tired that I go to bed early and no time to revise..
I decided to learn during the weekend, but even each day of the previous week had lots of notes and all together is hard to absorb in two days!
Any strategies, my friends?
Here's a quick post for download addicts: an undergrad is only allowed 50MB of downloaded data on-campus per week (whenever you're prompted for a username and password, your download is being counted). I just found out this week. If your usage exceeds the limit, you won't be able to browse external sites for that week. Keep this in mind. Avoid videos, graphics-rich contents if possible, unless you don't need the Internet on-campus.
1. Her law skills assignment, due on Monday, which involves reading about a case where some pizza delivery kid got mugged by his customer and then sued his boss for making him deliver the pizza and get mugged. (Honestly, after three weeks of law school, you start to think that you can sue anybody for anything if you can afford the lawyers)
2. Her Aural Studies assignment, which is also due on Monday
3. Practise, for:
a) Orchestra, because all her parts are:
i) really exposed, and
ii) really difficult, and
iii) really not-learned-yet
And for:
b) Clarinet class on Monday, which she could normally bluff her way through because it's just scales, but since it's being taken by her teacher (as opposed to somebody else's or a guest artist -- clarinet class is a group masterclass where a guest teacher comes in and focuses on a specific aspect of clarinet playing), who she just saw on Friday, she can't do that because he'll know she hasn't practised it since her lesson.
Talking in third person is confusing.
Hee. I love the program for the first orchestra concert. It's all Russian music from the 19th and 20th century, which is one of my favourite types of music (although to be totally honest, I'm more of a Rimsky-Korsakov-and-students fan -- his students being musical giants like Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Glazunov). Shameless plug here: watch the concert on Monday 26th at 8pm at Hawthorn Town Hall!
Also, would anyone more familiar with the area like to tell me where Hawthorn Town Hall actually is? ^^;;
Anyhow, it is time to move things from my other blog over here:
Tuesday, March 6th, 2007
Anyway, this semester, outside of class, I have signed up for:
- some form of music ensemble which I have not yet been assigned to because the audition results are not out yet
- African drumming club
- Mozart concerto competition
- Chocolate Lovers Society
- ballet and ballroom dance, neither of which actually fit with my schedule but I figured I should get some exercise (I swim, but the swim team's waaay too intense for me -- every morning from 6:30-8:00. AM. Yes, am. 6:30am. Ewwww.)
- UNICEF Club
Am planning to:
- set up a choir at JCH! Right now our college does a joint one with Trinity College, but Trinity's about five times larger than us and they do selective auditions so our members don't really have a chance to sing with them. So the music tutor asked the ten music students at college to set up one together and I'm the conductor and dictator-slash-music-director because nobody else wanted to do it.
- do the JCH sports, but those are like sports day or swimming gala back in high school - sign up, forget about it, then show up on the day.
- I also want to find people to do a chamber ensemble with me.
- I also should be doing some of the law school events like Moot Court or Witness or Letter Writing Competition, where you basically get up on stage and act like the lawyers on TV. Except in the letter writing competition, where you write a one page letter of legal advice to a hypothetical person telling them whether or not they can sue the doctor who accidentally removed their earlobes during brain surgery or something and how to go about doing it. I think I'll do letter writing and skip out on moot or witness... too time consuming.
So the newly inaugurated JCH choir had their first rehearsal on Friday. 'Twas fun. Hopefully by the end of the year we'll be an established choir which will become a JCH tradition for all eternity, and go on international tours and give concerts and sign record deals and such like Trinity's. Except we'll be infinitely more fun and cool than Trinity.
I kind of wish I was taking more music classes, because the thing about double degrees is that you feel like you aren't really fully involved in either faculty. They signed me up for Music Techniques 1-1 by accident in the first week, and I'm kind of regretting the fact that I went and corrected the mistake with student administration, because technically, I am allowed to overload one extra half credit course (6.25 points) per semester, so I could have taken Techniques (theory classes) and Practical Study (clarinet lessons) as my 'normal' classes, and then overloaded Aural Studies, since it's half-credit. I'm also taking Ensemble 1-1, but because they automatically rejiggled things around a bit to make room for Techniques originally, that's not for credit until second semester, so I'm overloading next semester but under-enrolled this semester, which averages out to a normal workload for the year.
I think I do need to start overloading, actually, because I want to do a specialisation, and I'm technically not allowed to do one under my double degree structure. They will let you take the classes if you're good enough to get into them, but you still have to fulfill normal requirements, which means your specialisation is extra classes that you have to somehow make room for. So if I take extra half credit courses each semester, I'll be able to get rid of enough requirements to be able to fit in specialised classes by about the 4th year of my 6 year degree. I'm still not really sure how that actually works.
Administration really confuses me. It's kind of like talking in third person. Especially double degree bureaucracy, because you need to go back and forth between two different faculties, neither of which really understands what the other does. Did any other double degree students here feel completely and totally lost during O-week because of this?
Well, not literally, my first prac in my life, but at uni. I was quite intimidated at the start with all the continous reminders of do's and dont's. I think it's much more complex than in school.
It was the chem prac and I took more than a little time to get used to the lab and processes. It has been quite a few months since I have lost touch with chem, so I almost forgot how to do the calculations....and to add fuel to the fire, I simply forgot to bring my calculator. Fortunately, the girl next to me had an extra one, so used that. I knew the previous night I had to bring the calculator, but I was so busy with other stuff, that I forgot..(I thought of using the calculator on my mobile, but others would get the wrong idea..)
I wonder how correct my results were....get 'em next week..
This might be the shortest blog I'll eva write...lol
When I started my first entry for this first year blog, everytime I use the computer, I always tend to come to this site. (even if I have other important stuff to do..) I haven't even updated my space yet, I have been spending lotta time here instead...is that good or bad? I have no clue.
Anyway, since today I'm just trying to kill time, I think I'll talk abt random stuff. I have noticed that nowadays, ppl are quite interested to know more abt DUBAI. When my friends came to know I'm from there, they were just so immersed in my narration of that wonderful place. The first thing I need to say abt that place is that U DON'T have to pay tax....yep, incredible, huh? So, I could say I was living a hell of a life there! Job opportuinites are good, and my dad was working in the IT world..(computer stuff...not my fort) But the thing is that the company paid for almost everything! We lived in a villa (2-storeyed house, 3 bedrooms upstairs, 3 baths & 2 toilets...quite a mansion, actually), they paid for the rent, they paid for our education, APART from the wages!! (Pls don't think I'm boasting, just trying to convey how life there is..)
Talking abt tourism, there's no end, so I'll just pick up a few. The main attraction is the hotel, Burj Al Arab, which is a skyscraper built on the beach. What's so big abt it? Well, there's an underground restaurant and u can actually see the fish swim past by when u eat. On top of this buidling, u have a tennis court. Probably, u might have seen it - Roger Federer played there for the Dubai Open. So if the ball goes out of the court, it just goes down to sea...maybe they have some kind of fence. I've never been there, too expensive, but I might go there one day when I have lots and lots of money....(big dreams..)
Another one is a a place where they made artificial snow and u can snow there!! Pls note that Dubai is a desert, and u know how hot that is, and u can snow there!! It's a closed place, so they don't melt. Then there's the Palm Island, where they built land extending from the beach to the sea, and u can buy houses there!! (as long as there's no tsunami) U must have heard of the new one where they are building the world map on the sea and u can buy houses there as well...Fascinating, huh? If u wanna see the pics, just search on google for DUBAI, and u will get it. (I thought of attatching pics here, but too lazy to do it..sorry!!)
One thing I want to say is that when people hear that I'm doing Food science, they think it's home science (cooking n stuff)...To be loud and clear, IT'S ABSULOTUELY NOT!! It looks at much more broader aspects of food production and management...packaging, safety, etc...
thats' all, people
Till next time,
L.S.
Now, just to let you know, I now despise anything depressing. Yes, I realise I mentioned in my last blog that I don't like sad books, but this now extends to movies as well. This may be because I cry at just about anything (I've cried watching McLeod's Daughters before - not that I watch McLeod's Daughters) and that I just haven't built up a strong enough tolerance to the harsh reality of the world. But no matter! I now vow to only read and watch things that will most likely have a positive outcome. How, you may ask, will I do this? Well, for starters my new book phase will be the romantic classics - Austen, the Bronte sisters etc - none of those end in death or destrction do they? And my movies will be limited to lighthearted romantic comedies or comdedies full stop or something like Rocky (I just watched the first one on the weekend - great film!).
And what, you may question, ignited this dislike for all things gloomy? Well, after reading 'Of Mice and Men', 'The Book Theif', 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' and 'A Fine Balance' (all of which are exceedingly miserable) I decided that there might be a better way to indulge my literary desires. But then yesterday was tipped the scales. In Australia Now we watched 'Gallipoli'. Admittedly, I had already seen the movie, but seeing it a second time made the ending no less distressing and so yes, I was crying. Thankfully my friend E, sitting next to me was crying too.
Ok, now I've got that off my chest, I had an awesome week this week! Classes were great and I was able to get back into the USA Today tute that I had accidentally changed out of. Actually the tute this week was great, there was a semi-argument between a Canadian guy and a British guy about how people in Europe shopped - that's right, we're tackling the important issues here! But it really was great and I'm looking forward to many more heated debates in all my tutes!
I'm really loving Australia Now (even though it made me cry this week) but I made a mistake with the reading this week for my tute. We were meant to watch Gallipoli last week but it wouldn't work so the lecturer gave us a different lecture. So rather than do the week 2 reading we were meant to do week 3, but what did I do? Week 4. So I was really annoyed with myself because it was a good topic (multiculturalism) and I didn't get the most out of it. I supose I've learnt my lesson now though.
I'm now sort of settled into Modern Lit, but this week we did James Joyce's 'Dubliners' which I really don't like and am annoyed that oue first assesment is on it. It's a book of short stories and I only made it about a third of the way through it and just my luck, in our tute we discussed two of the stories I hadn't read. That being said, studying the form of the book rather than the content (if that makes sense) isn't horrible.
I managed to update my resume this week, and boy did it need updating. I had awards and stuff on there from primary school, I'm thinking this is becasue the last time I actually used my resume was when I was first looking for a job when I was 14 and 9 months old! So now I just have to check with some referees and I can start handing it out. And, thanks Michael, I put my name down for the Casual Employment Register - good idea! Also on the job front, my pay got upped this week because I'm 18 now, so getting my pay yesterday was very nice.
I also do a bit of babysitting and on Wednesday I was looking after some kids I babysit reularly and their mum told me that, starting in a few weeks, they'd need someone for Saturdays and Sundays and would I be interested? I'm thinking that I'll just take one day, because kids can be really full on sometimes, and so I can still get another casual job.
Q: I wish you all the best trying to convince me that there is any real application for maths and chem in my everyday life. Especially chem - man am I glad to be rid of that! All that proton, atom crap, I mean, what is actually between the electrons, it can't just be nothing can it? Arggghhh, it's all beyond me!
Micheal, I don't go to coffee on Tuesdays for the Political Interest Society (PIS) either and I have a lecture and a tute after the meeting on Wednesday so I don't go to the pub either. But I'm really loving the discussions on Wednesday! I was there this week - we probably saw each other and just didn't realise! I'll see if I can find you next week. And Sophie, I reckon it'll be easy to find you becasue there's about 5 girls that go to the meetings and thanks for the advice!
Suzzane - oh my god! Your analogy was perfect and I'm not even a music person. I can't believe how accurate it was and hey, it's always nice to know that there's a whole bunch of people going through the same thing!
Exodius - I can barely string a sentence together but: Buenos dias, buenas tardes, buenas noches (good morning, good afternoon and good night) - enjoy!
Just as a final note, I bought Red Hot Chilli Pepper tickets last year and as the 11th of April draws closer I'm getting more and more excited. I was listening to Stadium Arcadium all this week. Sometimes I'll forget that I'm going and then suddenly remember and it'll make my day - cheap thrills I spose!
Have a good one guys! And guess what, I'm listening to Nova and Snow (Hey Oh) just came on! Yay!
[Explanatory post-write note: This was originally going to be one of many topics discussed in a collection of trivial issues, but it turns out that once I start writing about rudeness, I just can't stop.]
Rudeness
One thing that I certainly didn't expect coming to the University was the large amount of rudeness — on more than one front. The most obvious manifestation of it is in lectures: any kind of slight lull in the last 10-15 minutes of the lecture seems to be taken as a signal by some to (loudly) pack away their belongings. The problem is that one pack-up begets another, and another, and another, and so on until the entire class is noisily filing papers, zipping pencil-cases, or clipping backpacks. All, of course, while the poor lecturer tries in vain to finish the rest of the material.
Okay, fine, if you have a class on Queensberry St. (or somewhere similarly distant) then leave early if you must. But do it quietly, for crying out loud, and don't force the lecture to an early end just because you're not staying.
Oh, and fellow classmates? Please: shut up. And I mean that in two ways. Firstly, if you're going to spend the entire lecture whispering to your "bestie" about that totally, like, awesome party that you went to last night, why did you come to the lecture at all? Save us all the pain and spend the hour talking outside instead. Secondly, participate in lectures if invited, but don't participate too much: what you have to say isn't actually all that interesting to the rest of us. Particularly if it takes you more than a minute to say it. Save it for the tutorials. (Interestingly, people in my Commerce subject class have the right idea about this; it's the Arts subjects that are full of windbags.)
(Warning: This paragraph contains a somewhat irrelevant and generally unrepresentative anecdote. The sensible reader is advised just to skip it.) So I'm sitting in an Anthropology lecture, minding my own business, when — about half-an-hour into the lecture — along comes Latecomer, sitting himself next to me. The lecture continues without incident, &c., &c. About half-an-hour later, it's time for a break before the next half of the lecture. I filled him in on a little of the administrivia that he'd missed — this wasn't an unsolicited fill-in, by the way — and I was in the middle of explaining where to pick up the week's reading when he turned around and began a conversation with somebody he knew sitting behind him. Gentle reader, I will indeed excuse you if your eyebrows need a moment to make out with your hairline — mine certainly did. I thought it was probably a misunderstanding, or something, but when this new conversation was completed he turned back to me and said "You were saying something...?". "No," I said to him, while saying to myself "Self, this will be a moral victory. No reading photocopies for you, rude Latecomer." And that was that. Or, at least, that was that until the overly-helpful secretary from the School of Anthropology, Hair Styling, and Aerodynamics (or whatever they've merged with recently) brought the photocopies to the lecture theatre instead of leaving them in the basement of Bouverie St. And thus was my karmic revenge undone. (I did warn you to skip this paragraph; It doesn't even really interest me, and I'd quite forgotten about the whole thing until I bumped into Latecomer himself outside the tutorial room this week. Rest assured, I gave him the most disdainful look I could muster.)
One final thing: Mobile phones. Grrr. Silence them, or turn them off. And if you forget, don't answer the bloody thing. And if you do answer it, don't stay in the room. Hiding under the desk doesn't make you less rude nor less audible, and whispering doesn't make you less rude. Sheesh.
(I have to admit: I lose one moral-high-groundness point because my own mobile phone rang in a lecture last week. But I silenced it immediately and turned it off. And it was a dull part of the lecture anyway.)
One more (really) final thing: The rudeness isn't only on the part of students. My Anthropology lecturer never apologies (not even briefly) for being late, which annoys me immensely. It doesn't have to be profuse or even sincere; just a brief acknowledgement would be nice. I know that lectures officially start 5 minutes after the scheduled time, but to me that means that the lecturer arrives at the original time, does any necessary set up or preparation in the theatre, and begins, you know, actually lecturing at 5 minutes past the start. So I disapprove of this lecturer who usually arrives at 10 minutes after, then sets up (leisurely, I might add), and then begins lecturing.
This was going to be a kind of mish-mash post of miscellanea that otherwise wouldn't merit its own posting, but it turns out that I actually have a lot to say about rudeness. A lot of which is necessarily, I guess, negative. The first-year blog oracle has this to say about negativity: "However, if you do encounter a problem, we’d like to hear also what action you took to fix the situation, and how that worked out." It's sage advice for any situation, I guess.
I'm not really sure what action I can take to fix any of the aforementioned situations, though. There's a limit to the number of dirty looks I can give to people talking in lectures (I considered passing a "fermez la bouche, s'il vous plaît" note to a particularly gossipy pair in Monday's French lecture), and I'm not exactly going to tell a lecturer that I think his unapologetic lateness is rude. I guess what I'll try to do is take an easygoing, zen-like attitude: people might still be rude, but maybe it won't bother me so much any more.
So, er, sorry about the mostly negative tone of this post. Puppies, kittens, and rainbows next time, I promise!
Interactivity!: Do you find people rude at uni., and how do you deal with it? Comment below!
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