Yesterday I realised that the very next day, I had both an 8:30am linguistics exam and a 9am korean exam.
Uh oh-
My korean coordinator had told us that we might have clashes, as the korean exams aren’t really ‘exams’, they’re just online and 45 minutes long, and they’re not synced with the rest of the official uni exam calendar. He'd made it really clear that if we got a clash, we should just let him know asap and he’d reschedule it.
But I'd completely forgotten to email him. Would he still check his emails at 6 in the afternoon??
Boy was I stressed.
Then I woke up and realised it was a dream.
Both exams are already over. I'd done both of them weeks ago. (I'd never even had a clash in the first place.)
Thank god.
I fell asleep again, immensely relieved, but would you believe it I just went straight back to the same dream. And my dream timeline had fast-forwarded a day. So now it was the morning of the exam(s) and lo and behold I still hadn’t emailed my coordinator. I thought furiously, Betty how did you forget again?! Now what am I supposed to do??
Then I found myself sitting in front of a linguistics exam paper full of questions I just barely couldn’t remember how to answer. Because apparently dream me did know that the exam was weeks ago, and dream me was now stressing about not having revised the content for weeks. So dream me didn’t know how to do her exam. And was stressing hard. Smh.
Also the exam room looked like one of my classrooms from primary school. All the furniture was tiny, the chairs had colourful chair bags on their backs, and everything was bright and colourful.
Also there was a zombie apocalypse happening somewhere. I was running and hiding. idk.
i have three purple-grey scars in the middle of my cheek because i picked at this one spot of acne over and over throughout my short fiction tutes at the end of last semester then through my figure in performance tutes on thursday afternoons this semester and finally i have acne scars. i plucked the scabs as soon as they formed, over and over and over, i just could not stop, and the blood ended up smeared over my cheeks in class and i couldn’t even hide it and it was embarrassing. this is a breadth subject. in three more weeks it won’t matter whatsoever in my life. for this i’ve traded my skin. every day i am either sluggish and get nothing done or i am jittery beyond belief and get everything done, there is no in between, whenever i am working efficiently i am panicky and that panic has to go somewhere and it used to go to my hair, i used to pluck it out strand by strand and i spent the better part of year 12 with a big bald triangle over the top of my head, like a balding old man, and behind my back people called me bald girl. now i (mostly) don’t pull out my hair anymore, instead i knead blobs of blue tac with obsessive fingers for hours at a time so that the panic has somewhere to go and blue tac is hard when it’s cold, it’s hard to mould, and my fingers knead knead knead and under the pressure my knuckles go click click click. it’s been, what, almost two years since i was in year 12? two years since i replaced my compulsive disorder with playing with blue tac and now my hands hurt. in between the bones lined up in my hand it hurts. it hurts out of nowhere, my hands ache and sometimes they sting deep under their webbing and all the delicate little joints in my hands click now no matter what i’m doing, and i think, i traded my hands for what? for what? an 82.003 wam? a syntax assignment?
i know all this and i can’t even break out haha. when i lock my blue tac away to stop myself from ruining my fingers i go right back to ruining my hair, as if the last two years of ‘healing’ never happened. i'm back to being anxious at the sight of bathroom mirrors and my reflection in city glass and bright sunlight because it lights up everything. last semester i went through hell doing all my major subjects at once just so this semester i could chill and have just a couple of random breadth and discipline subjects and i told myself i wanted myself to never stress again but look at me, look what i’ve done to my hands and my skin and my hair. i want my body back. sincerely, i’m suffocating in my own head
This semester's slipped through my hands. Compared to semester one, it feels like nothing’s happened. Semester one was hell. I made so many super unhealthy choices. But I miss it so much. In semester one I had three creative writing units at once. When I chose all of them I thought I would be fine handling the workload but boy was I wrong. I got swamped by readings every week and I had to do them times three for each subject. Just one reading sometimes took me close to an hour to even read through once, let alone properly absorb or engage with, and there would be 5-6 per week. Times three subjects. I died. Then there were workshops to give feedback to and lots of pieces to write and whatnot. It felt like I was being dragged along concrete against my will with no motorcycle gear, just my raw skin with no time to heal being yanked along. I was tired tired. I’m sure I hacked off a good number of years from my lifespan trying to do last semester.
On top of that, I was trying to be a competitive athlete. I had three to four 4am swimming training sessions and three afternoon training sessions per week. One time I got fourteen hours of sleep over three days and still went to training and school and work. I didn’t get the qualifying times I wanted anyway because surprise surprise, my body was actively breaking down. What was I even thinking?
It was hell. But I miss it so much.
This semester I don’t have any creative writing subjects that are like the ones I did last semester, so I just don’t have anything to read. It’s gone from way too much to just nothing. Now I work less hours and train a lot less. I gave myself huge chunks of time to just sit with my uni work but now I honestly don’t know what to do with it all. I thought I would be swamped by readings again. I thought, this time I’m gonna be ready. This time I'm gonna look after myself. I’m gonna finally have the time to read to my heart’s content.
But come this semester and there’s nothing to read. It feels so empty. I can’t believe it’s already week 9. It’s almost like I want to be swamped by readings and beaten to the ground by my 2500 word assignments because otherwise none of it feels real. When I walk around I feel a bit dreamy. Maybe I took off my skin and accidentally floated away and forgot who I am.
Or maybe this is just what being healthy feels like. Maybe I’m just not used to having eight hours of sleep every night after somehow using four and a half to do 4am training then six hours of classes then three hours’ worth of commute then three hours worth of assignments. Idk. I’ve been bullying my body in exchange for grades since before I can remember. It’s gonna take a long time to unlearn.
Anyway, rant over, see yall later :))
A few Thursdays ago in my Korean class, I was very, very tired. My vision kept splitting and spinning, and most of the things my tutor was saying weren’t reaching my head, and my lungs had filled with heavy goop so that it was hard to breathe. I wanted to slump over and die.
I told myself to just make it to the five minute break. Then I could slump over and take a power nap. (My tutor always gives us a five minute break halfway through the two hour tutorial, which is also when she takes attendance.)
But when the time actually came, I didn’t even feel sleepy. Everyone was chattering loudly. I had my head snuggled in the crook of my elbow, but I could hear everything clearly, and the brain fog from half a minute ago had disappeared. I was vaguely annoyed. I really wanted that five minute nap.
Then my tutor announced that she would be taking attendance now. I kept my eyes closed and my head in my arms, but soon I’d have to lift it anyway. No power nap today, then. Pity.
My tutor went through the names one by one. I listened distantly.
“Pe Ti.”
(My name, Betty, in a Korean accent: harsh p sound at the start, harsh t sound in the middle.)
I listened to it with a distant, vaguely amused apathy, like it was a to-do list for the distant future, something for future Betty to lift her head to. Unrelated to me in the present.
“Pe Ti.”
I knew it was my name, just didn’t think it had anything to do with me.
“PE TI. PE TI. PE TI.”
I sat up with a start. It took me a good moment to open my eyes properly and figure out where I was or what I was looking at. My tutor was leaning over the opposite side of the table, reaching for me. Everyone else on the table and in the room was silent and looking my way.
“PE TI are you ok?”
Without waiting for an answer, she turned around and went back to the front of the room. Ticked my name off on the roll. Continued with the rest of the names.
I checked the time.
10:06.
54 more minutes. I wanted to sink into the carpet and bury myself.
—
After class, I was so tired, and my head throbbed a little even though I never get headaches, so I knew it was bad. I could barely walk myself in the direction of the library. If I didn’t concentrate hard enough on putting one foot in front of the other, I would simply crumble into the paved brick underfoot. Flesh puddle.
I made it to the cafe and ordered an iced mocha. (This entire time I’ve been going to that same cafe and ordering that same thing, I’ve been pronouncing it as mow-ka. And no one’s corrected me.
All the more reason to dig a hole and bury myself.)
I felt absolutely fine after that, like the coffee had shoved the brain fog to the borders of my brain. And it would creep back later, yes, but that was a problem for later. I felt strangely triumphant, like I’d won against myself. As if it wasn’t my own fault for going to bed at about 1am the previous night. I need to stop bullying my own body.
Last week, of my squad mates at swimming said to me, really really dramatically - Betty don’t give in! You made it through the whole of high school without coffee! Don’t give in now!
A few hours later, at random: It’s killing you!!! It’s killing you, bro! [emphatic hand gestures]
He’s a sports science/medicine type guy, also in uni. I should probably listen.
That’s all for now. Once again this was written to procrastinate doing my actual assignments, including one due on Tuesday that I haven’t started, so see you guys later :)
Some updates and random thoughts :)
(I know half the semester’s already gone by since my first blog 😅. On the first day I wondered if I’d get slapped in the face again by uni. I definitely have been.)
Right now I have three main commitments. There’s uni, my job (swim teaching!), and swimming. It’s getting hard to balance uni and swimming - there’s training six times a week and four of them start at 4:45am. But I put myself back in this sport because I couldn’t go a day without being bothered by the thought of it. Maybe because it’s all my mum talks about at home, so I’m constantly being exposed to it, and constantly being reminded that compared to my younger siblings, I’m - simply - old. Most of the attention goes to them, because they have more potential in ‘making it’. Maybe the reason I stubbornly stayed here is because I clung to the possibility that I could still ‘make it’.
I didn’t want to get older. I didn’t want to admit that I was/am crossing the threshold between two chapters of my life. I didn’t want to admit that I’ll never get to live the life my fifteen year old brother revels in (training every day with a close-knit group of friends, belonging in a big, bustling squad of people almost all within a year of each other, going to competitions together, and being a budding star).
Because of this, uni also bothered me, in a way I can’t quite justify - I sound stupid trying. It really bothered me. Why? To be among other adults? Because it reminded me that I was also one and could never be a kid doing sport again? Because being an adult meant I now had no choice but to prioritise other things?
In my first year creative non-fiction subject I wriggled my way out of doing ‘proper’ research by just doing autoethnography (researching yourself lol) and writing about myself. Since swimming was at the forefront of my mind then, I just wrote about that. And now looking back at that piece, I sound so angry it scares me. I was: angry at my body. Angry at myself for making the choices that led to this body. Angry at uni for being a marker of my body getting older. Angry at my own friends (non-swimming) for not being the swimming ‘family’ I so wanted. Angry at the swimming people I knew for not being friends with me the way my brother’s friends were friends with him (because to me it seemed to further prove that even if I was in a squad, I would never have friends like that again. That I was getting older. That everyone was growing up and growing apart.)
I felt out of place at my job too. Maybe it was the feeling of having shorts and a rashee on in the pool. Or always standing upright. I wished I could be my own students - still swimming. Still at the beginning of the athlete’s lifespan.
Now, though, none of it bothers me anymore.
I’m still in the process of figuring out why. I think I’ve figured out a little.
I made a new friend at work.
Swimming with him is my favourite thing to do in the world.
Swimming with him makes me feel a certain relief.
It’s like he pulled me from a dream and put me back in my own body, one I haven’t properly inhabited in years. It’s like I shed, at some point, all the thoughts that used to rot in my core, until words flow off me like water rather than seep inside and mould. I still remember what I thought about and what it felt like, but it doesn’t bother me anymore, it just doesn’t. I see the thoughts from the outside, I give them a nod, and they don’t try to touch me.
Now, I can just exist.
This has a lot to do with him agreeing to swim with me, I reckon. Thank you, Tom, I guess. You’ve made it easier for me to exist.
Anyway I’ve just spent ages writing this to put off the million actual things I have to study for, so see ya later :)
Yesterday I finally had my first day of uni after four full months!!
Hey. My name’s Betty and I’m a second year Arts student, majoring in Creative Writing. You might remember me from last year when I was a first year blogger. Probably not though, because I kinda disappeared in semester 2 after it slapped me full across the face.
This time I’ve promised myself to actually keep up the commitment so we’ll see how that goes.
I was on campus from 9 to 6, which is fun to moan about to anyone who’ll listen because it finally feels like I’m doing something with my life again. (I’ve spent a little less than four months with ants crawling all over my skin and inside my skull, where all I wanted to do was get up and run and do something but I was securely strapped down on the anthill.)
In the morning, when I tried to pack my bag, I was greeted with a big handful of MUSH because lo and behold there was a squashed, blackened banana at the very bottom.
😳🤦♀️🤦♀️
It had dots of furry white mould all along its split-open skin, seeping into the very fabric of the bag. Rotten insides pouring out. I thought, ewww has this been sitting here for four full months?! So I had to throw the whole bag out and take one of my dad’s ugly bulky grey backpacks instead. Why do I function like a dysfunctional high school boy?
In the confusion I forgot my lunch, my coffee and my headphones, so I couldn’t even watch the lecture that I’d skipped on Monday to go to work for. Then I got on the wrong train so the usual 30 minute train ride turned into a 50 minute one and I walked into my first class of the year a full 15 minutes late. Humiliating.
But it was all worth it to finally make it onto campus. I got to do my favourite thing in the world - creative writing!!! - in my creative writing tutorial, then I learnt some of the Korean alphabet, which is fun because it’s a puzzle that actually makes sense. I chose Korean 1 as my breadth subject because why not. I like kdramas and life is too short to be serious. I wish I’d known last year that you can take languages as breadth even in an Arts course. Would definitely recommend for first year students.
Then at prime dinner time, which was when my last tutorial of the day was, I used the last of my depleting blood sugar to write about a mermaid making a library go mouldy. (When my tutor asked people to share I carefully averted my eyes. I’m truly sorry, Miss.) I was so tired I felt a little drunk. The room spun when I turned my head.
On the train ride home I fell asleep and full-on drooled onto my own collar. Gross. So so tired. But so worth it, as I said. Until it slaps me in the face again I’m really excited for this year. Hope you guys are the same. We’re all gonna smash this semester outta the park, I can sense it :))
Cheers and see you next time,
Betty
Hi again everyone! It's Amity from the first year blog- back for more :) I actually meant to write this last week but in true second-year fashion I was too busy and completely forgot. So here goes.
Anyway. Week 2, off to a great start. There's a cold going around campus, or at least going around my friend group, so I've given myself express permission to pop two Codral and pass out at 7pm without getting any work done. If my writing starts to seem a bit incoherent, it's because I've fallen asleep on my computer. It's not that big of a cold so I feel very entitled to dragging my friends down with me into this endless hellscape of blocked noses and fatigue for at least the next two days.
Just kidding. I would never do that. (Or would I??)
Second year is off to a BANG and it's just as hard as mum kept trying to warn me it would be. Especially now that I have to get a job (savings don't last forever, it turns out...) while trying to balance everything else I over-ambitiously signed up for at the end of last year. Ah, November 2023 Amity... what on Earth were you thinking?? I signed up to volunteer as a peer mentor for the MPMP and I'm having a blast so far. If you're a first-year reading this, PLEASE go to your peer mentoring sessions. It may seem stupid or a waste of time but getting to know the people in your sessions (and making your peer mentors look good by boosting the attendance numbers) is so much fun. My 3rd session is tomorrow and I'm already sad it's going to be over. Definitely signing up again next year.
So far my Top Tip to myself this year is trying to get a bit more out and about. What I would like to say is that I'm doing it because I want to make more friends and expand my social circle but let's be real- I want a love letter on UMLL. And I am not graduating from this university until I get one. I don't care if I'm 28 and still on my third year of an undergraduate degree, I will do what it takes.
But for now I'm going to lie in bed and ponder the vocal folds until I 'fold' asleep. Hahahaha. Seriously, if anyone wants to let me try and explain how the vocal folds vibrate to make sound, that would be much appreciated. I'm three lectures in and already lost. Don't even get me started on what a jump-scare it was to be watching actual videos of vocal folds in my lecture this morning. I don't know what I was expecting when I signed up for phonetics but the fact that he could even speak with a camera shoved that far down his throat speaks wonders to the capabilities of the human body.
/ˈbaɪ/ !!
Amity xx
- 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?
The First Year Diaries blog is currently in its 18th year of giving first years the space to share their experiences of starting and surviving uni with others. Future students and fellow first years from Melbourne and around the world read the blog to find out what uni is really like, day to day.
To apply to become a blogger, write a 100-word mini-blog about why you’d be a great first year blogger and submit it via the application form by Monday 6th March, 2023.
Application form: https://go.unimelb.edu.au/s3ns
What do you do when you realise Uni is over for another year? I had my last exam on Thursday last week, so have been free for almost a week now, and it's weird. It’s such an anticlimax to finish exams, to not know what to do without the stress driving you forward, or what to do with all your new free time. Here are some tips:
Visit the Rowden White Library and borrow lots of DVDs to watch. Seasons of TV shows! Borrow more than you think you'll need, you can always renew online!
Following on, read a book. Play a video game. Do some of those things you couldn't do before without feeling guilty during semester, you deserve it!
Catch up with friends when you’re not bumping into them between classes. It's summer so there are heaps of things to do outside! I went to the beach with some friends on the weekend, to Carlton Gardens one afternoon and am having a picnic with some others tomorrow. It's so nice to spend quality time with friends you might not get to see very much, especially those who don't go to Uni.
Work heaps to save up for an exchange trip to Italy! I've submitted my exchange application so now I have to save the money to go in six months. Airfares won't buy themselves so I'll be depositing in that high-interest bank account!
Check my.unimelb every day (multiple times each day if you're like me!) to see if your grades have been uploaded! It’s an anxious wait to find out if you aced your exams as marks are released gradually as they're finalised by each subject. You never know whether your average grade will have changed when you login. Did it go up or down???
Clean your room. There are papers and books everywhere, my room is in desperate need of it's semesterly clean-out where everything goes in the top of the wardrobe and out of sight. It's there if I ever need it again, but better to be off my desk. And my floor.
Plan for next year. What breadth will I do? Which subjects are available and which are not offered any more (check out the 2018 handbook) Do I take Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning as my Computing elective? So many decisions, so make sure you choose and reenrol by the December 8 deadline!
Play Christmas Songs. It's that time of year, have a great holiday everyone! Raph 😊
After a really busy few weeks, mid-semester break provides a chance to pause, revise, catch up and also have a break! This semester, like all those past, has been crazy and extremely busy. Like the duck often used as a simile in situations like this, I’m always struggling to stay afloat, even if everything seems to be going just fine.
Life update: I’m making my way through another semester of Computer Science and Italian, with the addition of an elective in Electrical Engineering (“it’ll be fun” I thought) which is proving a bigger challenge than all my other subjects combined! I'm enjoying it though, and trying to constantly stop and realise how much I'm learning every day. I was recently elected president of the Engineering Music Society which I still can’t quite believe. It’s a wonderful group of people which I’ve played music with since the start of Uni. President means leading a committee to plan rehearsals, concerts and events, a big job but one that I’m proud to be doing.
I’ve also been using the break to plan an exchange trip to Italy for semester two 2018, where I’m hoping to study at the University of Bologna, the oldest Uni in the world. It’s quite a process, and I’m currently flicking through the subject handbook (not laid out nearly as nicely as it is at UniMelb) to decide exactly what I want to study there. After many of my friends jetted off this semester for their exchange experience, I’ve gotten more excited but also more nervous: it isn’t far away now!
I’m again disappointed that I haven’t had much time to blog this semester, however I hope you’ve all been enjoying Aimee's posts, I know I have! What strange coincidence that I happen to be taking classes with both Aimee and Eyre this semester: Aimee in Italian and Eyre in Software Development. Like it was meant to be!
Hope everyone's had a great break, keep pushing on towards exams!
Raph
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