5 weeks and counting… (Gianina)

Week 5 – I am still alive; a bit deprived of sleep, but hey, that’s part and parcel of being a Uni student, especially one who’s taking architecture subjects. Anyways, I have just found out that I’ve been accepted for SALP! For a while there, I thought they weren’t able to receive my application or that I wasn’t chosen to be one of the new 160 student ambassadors for this year. I kept on checking my email from the start of this week up until today, as I wanted to know asap that I didn’t clear my entire Saturday in vain (the SALP welcome day is on this Saturday – a day when I usually do chores, go to work, attempt to do homework/projects, etc. – MUCS camp is also on this weekend). I have already sent in my acceptance email saying which weekly seminar (Tuesday or Wednesday) I want to go to – which made me wonder if we are supposed to go to the same assigned day until Semester 2. This, in turn, caused me to go check the possible timetable for my sem 2 subjects. No problem until semester 2 for the day I chose. I discovered such a shocker though- that I would have 18 contact hours per week for next sem! That’s quite a lot, considering the amount of design/analysis projects that Design students are suppose to do at home. Oh, and I would apparently end up with only a 1-hour class for Friday again (most probably a 9am one again) and  one day free. Going back to the subject of SALP, I might just treat myself to a nice gelati at Lygon St. tomorrow. Or a great lunch. Or a movie. Strangely enough, I might have just been accepted to SALP because there aren’t many Environments students who applied. I don’t know that for sure, but I suspect that that is the case. Even so, anything’s a good excuse to eat gelati so nevermind why I got accepted.

This week I had another excursion again – this time, it was in the Shrine of Remembrance. It’s really inconvenient to have just 2 consecutive classes, which take place on the opposite sides of the CBD (i.e. Parkville campus and the Shrine), in one day. I can’t imagine now how it will be in about 3 weeks’ time, when I would have an excursion in East Melbourne immediately after a class in Parkville. Add to that the fact that I usually drown in all the architectural jargon we’re supposed to know for these excursions – all the acroterion, architrave, peristyle, etc. Moreover, it seems to me that labelling all the parts of a great building like it’s some sort of dissected frog (or cadaver… shivers) somehow lessens the experience of being there (the building NOT the cadaver). In contrast to this, my excursion for my Landscape Architecture subject made me appreciate the inner workings, especially the politics involved in management, in landscaped places. My class went to 2 contrasting landscaped areas last week and wonder of wonders! we were actually provided with a bus! That’s quite refreshing considering that I had to take the public transport to all my past excursions and site visits – be it near the CBD or up in the Dandenongs.

Apart from all of that, it would be in my best interests to find a new job. I don’t know how difficult/easy that would be considering the imminent ‘negative growth’ of the economy, which makes me glad I’m not graduating this year.

p.s. I was just checking out some movies at my local cinema’s website, and discovered Emmy Rossum will be starring in a Dragonball movie… it seems to me that her choice of films to star in had just gone downhill from the time she played Christine in The Phantom of the Opera. Oh, and apparently, there is a Pink Panther 2 already out – I wonder if it would be just as hilarious as the first one…