Anxious rants version2.0 (Gianina)

Originally I wanted to wait until the first day of semester to have my first post as a second-year blogger; however, fickle-minded person that I am, I obviously changed my mind. So here I am – fresh from the first year blog. For those who read only the second year blog and not the first year one, here’s a bit of introduction: My name’s Gianina. I’m an international-turned-local-student who’s studying Environments. Yeah, the Melbourne Model one – ‘dream large’ and all that. For the record, I’m not an Environmental Science student. Rather, I’m very much inclined towards the design field, particularly landscape architecture and architecture (in that order). I’m also an active (at least I thought so… but more on that later) member of MUCS.

Now that’s over and done with… I can’t believe it’s already the first day of classes tomorrow! Moreover, I can’t believe that I’m finally, FINALLY a second year student. A sophomore! I’ve been waiting for that to happen since 2006! (due to the huge difference between the education systems of my native country and of Australia, and of VTAC’s strict rules regarding overseas tertiary students… long story). Sure, most of my high school batchmates overseas are already graduating in a few weeks’ time but hey, I’m not a fresher anymore. For a while there, I’ve been considering it as some kind of curse – that I’ll be stuck in the first year of Uni forever and ever, like there’s no hope for me to ever move on. But I have, so there you go.

As it is the day, nay, the night before the first day of semester, I’m playing the role of the responsible student and actually checking out stuff in the LMS, e.g. readings and subject plans. Which lead me to having the biggest fright of my life (well, one of the biggest anyway). See, I decided to continue on with taking German for breadth. I followed a link from the LMS towards the handbook entry of intermediate German. And horror of horrors, it says there that it was a level 1 subject! I clearly remember that as a New Gen student, I have to have at least one 3rd year level breadth subject to finish my course, and to do that, I have to take at least one 2nd year level subject. I happen to be enrolled in intermediate German for both semesters, which, according to the said handbook, are both 1st year level. So there I was, panicking and in near hysterics coz I have to redo my 2009 subject plan (possibly with the help of a course adviser), wait until Tuesday or Wednesday to have said plan approved (after which day the new breadth subject I’ve chosen would have probably already finished with its week 1 lecture/tutorial), go through Alloc8 again, explain to my manager at work that I have to change my availability times yet again after just a week of altering it to suit my timetable, sell my German book bundle (coz hey, I don’t need it, do I?) after all the trouble I went through getting it secondhand… and so on. I know, I know, I’m such a worry freak. Needless to say, everything went right again once I bothered to check my enrolment record and saw that those German subjects are in 2nd year level after all. The subject link for German in my LMS was, even though it has the exact same name, the wrong one, as the subject code suggests (which I didn’t notice at all until the last minute). I probably wouldn’t have freaked out so much if I didn’t discover just a couple of hours before that I’ve already missed two rehearsals AND a tribute performance in Rod Laver for the choral society. All because I didn’t get an email notice when I’m supposed to be in the mailing list (that ‘Didn’t you get the memo?’ line in one Batman movie comes to mind). You know, missing those sort of events can convince a person that there is no justice in the world and imbue the said person with a what-else-could go-wrong mentality. Okayy, or maybe it’s just me.

Oh well, that’s it for now as I have to sleep early. Like before 11pm. I don’t know how I’m going to do that but I have to try. Otherwise, I might just get myself run over by a tram or something tomorrow.