So, somehow we've made it. Four weeks in and ready to face the assessment wave after SWOT vac - Study With Out Teaching vacation. Hopefully it presented a chance to redeem all those missed lectures and work hard, otherwise it can become a Silly Waste Of Time instead. Almost like a flashback to the last week of term holidays in high school...
My name is Eleanor and I'm learning about language and linguistics here at Melbourne University. To be honest, I never imagined studying arts - yet now I'm writing for this blog and changing from psychology to criminology.
Studying at university does propose a challenge, for example - running to and fro back-to-back classes, jumping over people to find a seat in lectures, early starts in the morning...
But despite all these (any many more, varying upon faculty), university is extremely rewarding. During high school, always dreamed of doing homework without having to push myself - and although that isn't entirely the case (procrastination is unavoidable for some!) it is definitely easier. And, of course, fun once you get into it!
I'll confess - I procrastinate. In fact, I put off posting this for a while until April had swung around, meaning I had to change the former title 'Marching into March'. Nevertheless I hope to overcome this, if not completely but partially, by sticking to a schedule this year and getting all assignments in on time! My aim for my first semester (and hopefully second) is to complete with no extensions.
Does everyone else have goals for 2016? Maybe it's time to relive your new years' resolutions! I remember mine being something related to exercise... unfortunately my fitness currently consists of climbing the Redmond Barry staircase to my tutorial on the 7th floor every week. Fortunately it is 'Active April' this month so maybe I can transform my activity as well!
Good luck for the upcoming whirlwind of a week everyone.
Eleanor
After the stress, intensity and closed environment of Year 12, the copious amounts of FUN which are offered in all forms at Uni present a very welcome change!
As stated previously on this blog, UniMelb is a microcosm of activity, a city within a city, and a massive community to get involved in. There is always something to do on campus if you look for it, and if you find the enthusiasm to jump into the fun side of Uni, it can really transform your experience!
Here are just a few of the fun things that have happened since the start of the year:
Destination Melbourne was a 3 day orientation camp held in late January at St. Hilda's, a residential college adjacent to the campus. I'll do another post about this amazing program in the next few weeks, but one highlight was meeting Bella, one of last year's First_year@UniMelb bloggers who was a group leader on camp!
I wrote an article for Farrago! The student magazine at Melbourne is the oldest in Australia, and gives any student the opportunity to be a published writer! Just send in your article (or artwork) ideas and you might find your name in lights on the pages of the next issue!
O-Week was massive! The week before semester started was devoted to having fun, making new friends, and transitioning to a new campus and a new way of life. There was trivia, speed friending, movie screenings, campus tours, club sign-ups (more on that later) and an evening at Luna Park to wrap up the week. The latter entailed hundreds of UniMelb (and Monash) students having free roam of Luna Park, going on all the rides and having a lot of fun with some new friends!
Clubs are the best thing ever! There are over 200 clubs catering to all kinds of interests, from debating to unnatural llamas (yes, you read that right; don't ask). I joined no less than 14 clubs during O-Week, and while that may be average for an enthusiastic Jaffy like me, I'm going to have to figure out how many of those I will actually have time for! I've been getting involved primarily in the Engineering Music Society (EMS). They run 5 music groups including an Orchestra which I have been playing Violin in and a Chior which I have been singing in. I've met so many friendly and talented musicians already, who, like me, want to keep playing for fun!
I'm also a new committee member for both the EMS and the Italian Social Club, meaning that I will be involved in their planning meetings and the management of the clubs. I love helping out and being busy, so I was thrilled to be elected into these positions – especially since I've only been here for a few weeks! I find they're really happy to have fresh faces involved, so give it a go, fellow first years!
There are just so many things happening on campus all the time; from comedy on Wednesdays, bands playing on Tuesdays, BBQs just about every day (if you're in the right clubs), and so much more, all FREE! I've gotten soapy at the Science "Foam Party", tried to survive the zombie apocalypse in ZEDtown (and discovered that it was more fun to be a zombie anyway), answered plenty of trivia questions and been on a boat cruise with some Italians, and it's only been 4 weeks! Uni definitely is a wild ride, so make sure you make the most of it by getting involved and having FUN! As long as you still have enough time left over for study...
Which brings me to next time: the serious side of Uni and the academic transition from high school.
Thanks for reading,
Raphael 😊
My experiences so far have been akin to travelling into the rabbit hole; but the process has been part falling, part purposefully looking for the fall. That’s not to say I had the hubris of knowing Wonderland would follow the fall—it doesn’t. I took the plunge in anticipating for more rabbit tunnels lain in endless fractals, and it would take me tears, laughter, and sweat to go through countless doors.
This is the non-linear adventure I am looking for.
I know there was another first-year-blogger named Nicole (hi Nicole!—if you’re reading this), and I am in no way going to supersede her and the solid blogging work she has kept up. I’ve been struggling to come up with a way to identify myself differently, but I’m content enough with my name (haha) to come up with a pseudonym. Nor will I call myself “Nicole from _ _ _” because I’m in Melbourne now and where I was born does not define who I am (well, it does explain my penchant for certain food). So, I’ll just stick with Nicole, and hopefully you can spot the stylistic differences to tell us apart.
Here’s a (not so) quick reel of me:
Perhaps next week will open another door, or I’ll keep tumbling and falling for several weeks until I even catch a glimpse of a new door. Admittedly, I do feel as if I am still falling in suspension, but I am starting to get a sense of where I am and the amount of momentum I need to push myself out of this limbo phase (that everyone surely has gone through).
Happy Easter everyone.
It's been a week, and thankfully, it's non-teaching period for whole week here in Melbourne. Time to finally catch up on those lecture recordings you promise you'd watch tomorrow, get a serious dig-in/leg-up on your assignments, and if you miraculously get to the bottom of the work pile, you earned yourself a breather for the rest of the week (thank you for sparing your time to read this btw :P). With that said, I'd like to share a little bit of reflection for the past 4 weeks. Continue reading "Tuesdays with Eyre?"
It shouldn’t happen to a first year…
Picture this. You are alone. It is your first ever day of tertiary study and here you are at the University of Melbourne. There’s just one problem: you don’t have a clue where you’re going!
You’re supposed to be on the ground floor of the ERC. You’ve found the building easily enough, but you’re on the wrong floor. Looking over a banister, you can see all your classmates lined up outside the theatre. So near and yet so far!
After minutes (which feel like hours!) of running around the building in circles, while trying your best to look like you own the place, you find a staircase. Oh great, you think, this’ll get me to my class! Well, you’re right, in a way… Except that when you reach the bottom, there’s a big fat glass wall between you and your classmates. Hmmm…
In a panic, you try the door. Unfortunately, it won’t open - a sign above tells you that this door is for emergency exits only. Even more unfortunately, the noise has caused everyone to congregate around the glass – evidently, intrigued by the strange person on the other side and wondering what she’ll do next! Using an elaborate Chaplin-esque mime, you try asking for directions, but everyone shrugs apologetically back at you. Then, you remember: these are first years, with about as much idea as you have!
After a few more seconds of feeling like a very red-faced museum exhibit, you find your way back up the stairs, out of the building and through the front door. All your classmates now want to be friends… and who wouldn’t with such an entertaining specimen!? But, the worst is yet to come…
Once in the lecture, you decide this would be good time to take some notes. You wrestle violently with the book-rest, set up all your note-taking apparatuses and then, with one fatal sweep of your arm, knock your favourite yellow highlighter off. It rolls ominously under a chair in the next row. Suddenly, you face a terrible dilemma. On the one hand, getting down and grabbing the highlighter while your professor is still talking would probably be very rude. On the other, this highlighter is more than just the thing you use for colouring in – it has seen you through the dark times of VCE and brought you into the bright fluorescent yellow light of your future. Clearly, you can’t just leave it there!
But, getting down isn’t as easy as you expected… First, you have to do battle again with that damned book-rest! You awkwardly hand your new friends all your books and nosedive! This is probably the stupidest possible thing you could have done. Now, you’re in a position which even a qualified contortionist wouldn’t dare attempt! Your bum (if you’ll pardon the word) is airborne, while the rest of you is perilously stuck underneath the chair of the person in front. And still, your beloved highlighter is out of reach! There’s only one thing for it… You push yourself forward. This, unluckily, causes the chair – and the person sitting on it – to rise several inches into the air. You can feel the terrified student on top of you wriggling frantically – probably thinking they are under attack from some under-chair bogey man!
At last, you emerge triumphant, highlighter in your grasp! There’s just one problem… Everyone in the theatre has stopped looking at the lecturer. They’re all looking at you. And, best of all, seats away, so too are a couple of people you actually know from high school. Back in your seat you climb, wishing for a deep hole in which to bury yourself for the rest of the lesson – or preferably, eternity! Then you remember: even if such a hole existed, you wouldn’t be able to find it, because you’re still a disorientated first year!
It shouldn’t happen… but, it did. In fact, it happened to yours truly. Why then, dear reader, am I telling you about it? Well, really, I just want you to know that if you’re a first year in the midst of a mortifyingly embarrassing situation (or if you’re a mortifyingly embarrassed person in general, for that matter!), it’s not just you. It never is just you. And at least it wasn’t you stuck under that chair!
Salutations from your brand new blogger friend,
Aimee
Hello First_year@UniMelb readers, and welcome to (one of) the first post(s) of the new year! This year promises to be exciting, challenging and fulfilling in entirely new ways for me and I'm sure the other new 2016 bloggers too, as we start our UniMelb adventure! Right now I'm sitting on the beautiful South Lawn writing this; somewhere I couldn't have foreseen that I would be 12 months ago, and I'm feeling excited about all the experiences of this year that I will be able to share with you all.
But first, some introductions are in order: my name is Raphael (or Raph for short) and I've lived in Melbourne all my life. I'm starting a Bachelor of Science this year, and I chose the degree (and the Uni too) because of the broad range of possibilities it presents – there are 40 majors, after all! I'm one of those people who never had a confident answer for the question "what do you want to be when you grow up?" so I liked the idea of a degree which can take me to so many possible destinations, and let me discover my direction and myself in the process!
However, having said all that, I am particularly looking to study Computer Science and Software Engineering through the B-Sci – that's right, it covers not only Science, but also IT and Engineering! I hope I can give anyone interested in CS my experience of first year in this blog!
As you might expect from someone who wants to study programming, I am quite the tech head! I'm a massive Apple fan and love keeping up with all the latest tech news. More than anything, I love the creative puzzle solving elements of computing, where you have to put all you've learnt into practice to achieve a particular goal. There are so many ways to get to the final result, and it is a fantastic feeling to realise that you've created something out of nothing with just a few words and numbers! I hope everyone considers taking Foundations of Computing as part of their degree (or breadth electives) to see what it's like!
A few other rapid-fire facts about me:
Thanks for reading my first post everyone, I hope you're looking forward to following the rest of my adventures this year!
Raphael 😊
Next time: the fun side of Uni: what happened during O-Week and before the work started to pile on!
First posts, while they don't come big, they don't come often either, so I'd like to take this opportunity to say hello to you, dear reader. After some thought on approaches, I think my pick would be the AA-style you'd see on movies and TV. Here we go.
Continue reading "First Impressions (Eyre)"
We’d love you to contribute to the First_year@UniMelb Blog in 2016
Do you like to write?
Do you want to help current & future students understand what uni is all about?
Do you want to be part of an online community, sharing advice (and getting advice) about how to settle into & succeed in first year?
To apply, submit a 100 word mini-blog here:
http://services.unimelb.edu.au/academicskills/undergrads/first_year_at_unimelb
Applications close Mon, 14 March 2016
Happy blogging!
I can't believe it that I have finished first year.
I survived through the hard times.
I survived through those last minute assignments.
I survived through practical and written exams.
I survived it all.
I'm still amazeballs that I had made it. The feeling is truly rewarding, while trying not to have any negative thoughts of what I did wrong, or regretting I should've worked hard for each of my subjects. What I'm truly happy with myself is how I held myself together through all those hard times, when I was about to give up on my repertoire. During those hard times, I was so frustrated with my pieces, that I think I broke down crying in frustration silently in the practise room, because it was that hard Bach then. But thanks to all of the support and encouragement, I got through those hard obstacles in one piece, and I managed to perform it at my recital.
First year, Bachelor of Music students is truly full on. We had to learn pieces in three months for our tech exam, and probably three to five months of learning our recital program, we had to grasp quickly on how we should do our assignments in our music subjects, and we had to face heavy commitment of practising. That's pretty much in a nutshell, I could probably go on forever on what we had to face in our full time studies.
Again, all I could say it was pretty full on for first year. In total, we took ten subjects (five in each semester), including practising commitments, plus studying for our academic electives, breadth subjects, work, and other extra-curriculum commitments as well. Don't worry, subject intake will get lesser in each year. In second year, we take nine subjects for the year, then possibly eight in third year. It's great and all, but as we get closer to finishing our degree, practising commitments are essential. The way it works in our degree is, you have to do well in your performance, aiming for at least a H2B, then at least a pass for all of our subjects. Instrumental teachers have an expectation on what every body should get, when doing tertiary studies.
Even though there were obstacles along the way, I really enjoyed the experience of studying as a full-time music student. It made me learnt about what I could do to improve myself as a musician, and as a person. The people that came along with my journey was amazing, and I felt like I was apart of the family of the con, and the university already. Coming from a high school, where I was the only person who is studying classical music in my cohort at my high school, into a degree surrounded by other music students was truly satisfying, and I felt like I belonged with this community.
Looking back into the past made me think, “Woah, look at how much I had achieved!” But also thinking deeply of how I became a better musician and as an individual. To be honest, I’m still amazed that I made it to uni, despite of how I struggled with school in the past, and every day I surprise my family till this day. I never regret coming into Melbourne Uni to study music. I know it is the place for me, and I wouldn’t thank enough for MCM for me being a part of this music program.
Next year, it will be an exciting year! I am a first year representative for the next batch of BMus first years! I am super excited to meet them to welcome to our unique family. I’m also will be auditioning for Melbourne Youth Orchestra 2016 (HOW EXCITING IS THAT?). Following by that, I’m going to be involved with accompanying one of my friends in the first semester of 2016 in Concert Class (SUPER EXCITING!). I'm also rehearsing for an audition for Piano Duo and Duet with another friend for first semester of 2016, and I’ll be having plenty of performances upcoming in concert class, if I’m willing to do so. So, I’ll be pretty busy in the summer!
Concluding my last post of the year, I am so happy and thrilled to be apart of this blogging community, and will love to continue on into second year blogging community for more updates. I loved sharing my experiences as a con student, including my sorrow frustrations, and emotions.
So, all I can say is thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for reading these posts. Thank you for this great opportunity.
Thank you, and goodnight.
- Nicole Ng <3
PS: For the first years of 2016, embrace the change, embrace of what is coming up next, and focus to achieve at least a Pass, or even at least higher than that, if you can. But most of all, following by our motto, Believe. Believe in yourself, believe you can accept every challenge that comes by. You can only make the change, and accept the challenges that pushes by towards you. That should be all from my wisdom of words and thoughts. :)
Well folks, it has been an absolute pleasure sharing my adventures at uni with you this year. I feel like I am really in the swing of things now. With SWOTVAC nearing its end, so is my time on this blog!
Here are some highlights of the semester...
- Academic Skills workshops: these are really helpful! I recommend registering for some via SAS. They are very popular, so get in quickly!
- Getting my first H1 in French. Yay!
- Puppies at uni. TWICE.
- Getting involved: clubs, committees, etc. I love being involved with the General Committee for M-ASS, the Arts students' society especially.
- The fantastic weather towards the end of September.
It's very surreal to think about how I felt at the start of the uni year compared to now... I was a bit lonely, confused and disoriented.
Now, I have really pushed myself to be open to experiences. I have met some incredible new people. Unimelb is all I imagined it would be, and more! Every day I'm grateful I attend this uni. Remember, anyone can have an awesome time at uni, if you put the work in. Be open to opportunities, work on building friendships and study hard!
Thanks for reading all my posts.
Good luck for the exam period!
Signing off for the last time,
- Bella :)
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