I'm back, now with more self-absorbed rants than ever! Actually, I lie.
There isn't a damn thing wrong in all the world.
I HAVE A BOYFRIEND! If you have been keeping up to date (that's okay - I can't keep up to date, either) you'll remember an extremely exasperating guy whom I decided to codename Gaylord... Well. You wouldn't guess from my last post that we're going out now. And by jove. I adore the poor thing. Can I say that here? Ah well... He's wonderful and treats me well, which is very far removed from the rather manipulative semi-relationship-whatever-you-call-it with The Douchebag last year. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IF YOU THINK YOU'RE BEING USED YOU PROBABLY ARE. Take note.
AND I HAVE MOVED! I live in Clayton in a unit with one of my best friends and her fiancée! They jokingly refer to themselves as my parents and we have nerf wars and lots of cakes and slices and injokes. Even though Clayton is still a way out, it's closer than where I lived last year - plus there's a Breadtop here. I do love Breadtop. And $2 stores. And our mysterious 2 Coles stores across from each other.
CHEMISTRY OVER THE SUMMER SEMESTER! Actually my exam is on Wednesday. I promised myself I'd study hard this time around (since I failed last semester) but I ended up moving and watching movies with the boyfriend (teehee, I have a boiiiiiifriiiiiiend) and generally being a slacker. Sigh. WISH ME LUCK. Life tends to get in the way of wanting to be a good student.
ORIENTATION HOST! BWAHAHAH! Yeah I feel sorry for all the people in my group. In the photo - the one that is meant to give my group an idea of what I look like - I'm posing ridiculously in steampunkery. Haven't planned too much yet, been too busy cramming.
Related note:
Dear the guy named Ed in my Orientation Host training session:
We were joking about the hypothetical scenario in which a person in our group is uncomfortable giving out their number. So... I realised long, long after you asked me for my number that you may have been serious. In my defence, you should have picked a way to ask that wouldn't have me instantly assume you were making a joke... But still. I'm a little thick. I shouldn't have laughed. I know that now. I'm sorry... :<
DEAR EVERYONE ON THE FIRST YEAR BLOG: You're all so enthusiastic! Was I like that?! I hope I was. It's pretty awesome. Keep it up.
Sorry, but every time I think of myself as a second-year student I can't help but relate it back to Harry Potter.
Anyway.
Hi!
My name is Cristina, surname forever undisclosed because I am the only one of my kind in the world, therefore am easily look-up-able/Facebook-stalk-able. I am a second-year Bachelor of Arts (Media and Communications) student; I was the final-intake year for that specialised course before Media and Communications becomes just a major in Arts this year, so I get to do an internship and all that jazz and don't have to do any of that breadth business. Hurrah!
I figured I'd do my first post now because I'm already starting to feel swamped and the semester hasn't even started yet. Not only am I beginning training at Kmart (my place of humble work) to work on the SERVICE DESK (this is almost like a promotion, but without the extra pay), but I am preparing for at least three clubs' worth of O-Week activities and semester planning, preparing to actually be an Arts Orientation Host for O-Week, forcing myself to think of ideas of articles to write for Farrago, and edit ones other people write (I am the web subeditor this year, huzzah!).
Phew. But I hope I can do it. Hopefully if all this build-up of stuff continues throughout the semester, it may actually motivate me to do my work on time. I did fairly well last year, but I fell victim to severe procrastination, and I'd like for that to not happen again. I attained my very first H1 right at the end of last year, and I'd like to get a couple more of those, or at least some H2As, if possible. I really want my marks to be better this year (not that they were bad last year, they were fine), because apparently the best internships next year go to the kids with the best marks. And I want a good internship!
However, I'm trying not to think about that at the moment, predominately because I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my future. I have pretty much decided that I don't want to be a journalist, which is what most graduates of this course tend to become. Trust me to be an outsider. I like writing, I really do, I just...hate writing about the news. Or just writing "this and this and blah happened". It's boring. I'm too creative for that. If I have to write about the news, I at least want to be able to give my opinion on it. Or be sarcastic about it. Or add some humour into it. So I don't really know what type of job I want to have. I've actually quite enjoyed my editing duties for Farrago, so the prospect of becoming a proofreader/editor isn't too displeasing. I think I'd rather enjoy it, actually. My only concerns are:
1. Not finding a job.
2. Not liking my job.
3. Not getting paid enough.
Although I guess those are kind of universal concerns. I'm considering the postgrad in Publishing and Editing if need be, otherwise I'd love to follow my dream and study IT somewhere, anywhere. Sometimes I regret not pursuing it in the first place, but I felt that IT courses were far too beneath my ENTER score. That's not to say that I don't like my course - I do - I've just always had a difficult time deciding whether my love for technology or my love for writing should be the dominant force in my life. I know I am perfectly capable of both. I chose this particular course because I know it could potentially combine the two. But I still miss IT. I might do an IT course anyway, even if I do like whatever job I get after this course.
I think this wall of text clearly indicates that writing wouldn't be a bad idea. But ideas are just the thing. I have trouble getting them. I guess we'll see. Over the next year you'll be able to follow me as I try to figure out what the hell I want to do with my life.
We shall meet again soon,
Cristina.
P.S. Because that ended on a slightly sad note, have a funny picture:
Note from the Author: A survey of my first-year blog revealed that I had written some fourty-three "chapters" and an estimated 45000 words - so pretty much a novel. I got rather attached to my strange narrative way of blogging during first year, so it only seems fit that I continue the saga with a second "book" in what you might consider the trilogy that is my Bachelor of Science. I pay my respects to the bloggers who have been loyally writing here before me and hope they do not mind my posts slotted in beside theirs. Oh and... my name is Jinghan and I’m studying maths and informatics as part of a Bachelor of Science, and the rest of me you must discover on your own. Enjoy!
--
Early December, I pick up a diary and flick it open, and toss it back on the sales cart after just a glance at the inside. I seems planner-diaries are often made for people with no life. Of course, I mean no offence to any with such a diary, but I cannot accept that it is adequate for Saturday and Sunday to be squeezed into the same space that every other day of the week has to itself. I intend on making the most of every day of the fast approaching new year.
I pick up a red diary, the one with swirling leaves and open blossoms embossed in the (maybe fake) leather cover, and flick through the pages and take note of the features that I like: pretty cover, week-to-view, good size, handy notes section for each week, space for contacts, space for notes at the back, a pocket for miscellaneous paper in the back cover and most importantly: a fair share for space for Saturday and Sunday. Even for someone as picky about diaries as I am, it was perfect. The only question left was... red or brown?
Early February, I open my brown diary, the one that hasn't left my side even during holidays. I see streaks of coloured highlighter and black loops of ink. What did I get up to last year if this is what this year is like? Try as I might I can't remember much of first-year. Perhaps I enjoyed how open and friendly people were at uni, perhaps I discovered what I wanted to do with my life, perhaps I enjoyed having a bit more freedom and independence - but these are just well rehearsed lines that I've worn out a little in the first-year of uni. What occupies me now is the present and the future.
There is a blur of events in my new diary: Go to Sorento, Garden Party, MSO Free Concert, orientation host training, ortho apt., Leave for Adelaide, F's Birthday Dinner... and I haven't had the guts to put it in yet, but it's written there in invisible ink: grandma's funeral.
Among the blur of events, this is the first time I've had time to stop and think and feel. On my kitchen bench is a vase of pink and yellow roses. And I think of the friends who gave them to me. I like how, of the friends I have right now, I can't tell the difference between those I've known a long time and those I've only known a year. There's A who is always kind and humble. D who is very young but mature and smart. M who's always looking out for other people. C who never seems to run out of love and friendliness. And S who is brave and ambitious. Yellow roses mean friendship and pink roses mean gratitude. I smile.
In the pages of my diary that are waiting to be filled and coloured will be lectures, tutorials, workshops, a voluntary placement as a classroom mentor with the In2Science program, voluntary tutoring at Friday Night School, (no job,) salsa classes, book club meetings, maybe SALP seminars, and an anticipated exchange trip to California.
What isn't written down is the guilt of hurting a friend without meaning to, the sadness of not knowing what is the right things to do, the fear of having to confront death of the first time, the uncertainty of a yet to be tested long distance relationship, the nervousness of hosting a garden party when the weather is not looking great, the joy and love of knowing that your friends care about you, the peace that comes when death finally arrives and the hope that all will be well in the end.
I look at my diary again:
February 2011
8 Tuesday Mardi Dienstag Martedi Dinsdag Martes
3-4pm orientation host training
6:30pm dinner with I---
To my diary it means nothing, but for me, it's a confrontation with the reality that I am now no longer the first-year student I was, a return to the world of uni after two months of wild adventures and a meeting with a friend from a long long time ago in the primary school era where friends were hard to come by and true friends only by luck.
I'm armed with nothing but the warmth of friendship, a brown (possibly fake) leather diary and a blog, but you know what? I think I'm ready to face this year.
I received a call last night around 9.30- right after I had finished watching a play ("Don Parties On," if you must know, not really awesome). I looked briefly at the number half remembering it as something important- it had once meant a lot to me. For now it was merely a whisper of nostalgia.
Going through my friends' numbers on the train home, I couldn't place who the call had been from. A potential job, an old boss, a university friend? I thought of numbers, but noting seemed to match the feeling that it was something important. So being rather late after, what I thought to be, a bad play I called in defeat and went to bed. The number was left unanswered and alone.
Yet with the rising of a new day (and further job hunting/saxophone/Japanese) I decided to take the initiative and call to see who the familiar unknown number was.
It rang for a heartbeat. Immediately was
"Hello."
The voice masculine, offered no name no nothing, just a flicker of recognition.....
"Hi it's Daniel here......." My mind ticked over and suddenly there was an ignition of memory. "Wait a second C------y! Jeeze I thought that number was familiar, how've you been? Why'd you ring last night?
"I just thought we could have a game of Tennis, just like in the old days."
"Oh yeah sure, when did you have that in mind for?"
"Today."
Things seemed to stop for a moment with that word. I'm no big fan of sport, but neither did I want to miss out on the chance to meet up with this old old old friend from way back in the day (not two weeks ago, BACK IN THE DAY).
So I said yes, we talked, reminisced, joked and missed each other.
It is a good thing to have friends, even when you forget you have them.
Dan
(He also, unsurprisingly, beat me in the Tennis games we played)
Or the opposite can be true, "Is it ambitious to be greedy?" It's very easily interchangeable, but the two words have different connotations. Ambition, is well the better of the two, it shows you have initiative and you're looking to move forward, to do, have and be more. Greed, on the other hand, looks to be lethargic and stupid, running into problems here and there due to his (or her) obscene want- it goes to the ridiculous in order to have it's want, often in a wasteful manner.
So what does this have to do with university, life and perhaps (for the self aware) you? Simple, should you be happy with what is guaranteed or, like a chronic gambler, take the plunge into high risk ventures (read Art's course). To stay in boring comfort, or to go boldly where no woman (or man) has gone before? My take is that usually taking risks is better than being confined as you generally lose more in not doing, than you ever would in a tried and failed venture.......
And yet the other side of the argument still comes over a radioactive green fence: but don't you inherently enjoy a banal security? Isn't it fun to just vegetate and do nothing, to be safe in the knowledge that you'll never lose anything?
It's a tempting couch potato siren call, mingled with chips and a tub of lard-that is to say very slippery. It holds merit, I don't have to do anything and I won't have to worry about anything, but that's just based on an opposition to change that no one can change. Sure, you could, I could, hole up in my room, go back to a steady (but boring and dead end) job, do subjects that were inherently easy and didn't challenge me at all, not worry about writing and just spend my time without any risk of progress.... but that would be ultimately more greedy than any ambition I could ever hustle up.
So it's not greedy to be ambitious, to cast off the old and to try on the new. So if there's a chance for something more, take it.
Daniel [Yoddeuss]
Note: I realise applying the same logic to any sort of gambling would probably end in ruin, but as long as the benefits outweigh the costs things should be fine.
Well it's been a while second year blog, so much so that I'm in third year already. And what can I say time has been well spent.
I went to Japan for 10 days with a host of people, many of which are now my friends.
I made a gingerbread house for Christmas, which I didn't eat a bite of.
I spent New Year’s playing computer games at my friends place and falling asleep.
I went driving around Victoria with dad to see hanging rock and a host of small towns, mainly to get my driving hours up.
And I spent a small part of January at the beach (to attempt) surfing.
Yeah I know it's more or less a boring list of events from A-Z of "I did, I did, I did," but with each of those listed events so different from each other I'd have to spend a lot longer explaining every little detail of emotion.
As a general blanket statement I'll say that everything was nice with varying difference, e.g. during the Japanese trip I felt a lot older than the people around me. For Christmas I felt subdued but pleasant about the celebration. For New Years I felt a tad shallow and empty, as though I had missed something really big, that or I was really nostalgic about the year. Driving with Dad felt liberating and the trip to the beach as though I were running away from something/having too much time for myself.
Looking back on all that, I'd have to say I'm feeling guilty/worried about something, the only thing I can call to mind is moving out/getting a job, which is still up in the air, but planned definitely for this upcoming Friday.
Yes even with the maybes of a job offer that may never come, I'm going to move out. The reasons are that, first of all, I’ll be able to pay for the rent (since I saved up money), and secondly I've wanted to be proactive about this for a long time. If I don't go for it I'll always be waiting until I've got a secure financial backing, which in this day and age doesn't really exist. It's more or less a do, or vegetate kind of situation, compounded by the fact that I need to move out (family wants to rent it out).
Anyway until something drastic pops up about the fate of university (or me) cya,
Daniel [Yoddeuss]
whoooop summer holidays and working and lal la lal..
posting this on new years (day) now - and happen to be behind the scenes for Armin's Mirage tour...
yea. you wish you were me. (and slogged out 3 years to get this position)
Uni is still plodding along in a strange manner, just got my forms in for 'change of major stream' and 'variation to major' and then I don't know what I'm going to do about enrolling for Global Issues Program. The co-ordinator is on leave until the middle of Jan, and I still have to enrol in the two subjects I did LAST semester AND one I'm starting in Jan. I've kinda gone 'meh, I'm enrolled in the overseas Uni, something will HAVE to work out'. I want to graduate mid-next year!
(With no job prospects)
Just worked six hours at the RMIT graduation...
RMIT vs Melb Uni Graduation: RMIT seems like a big production line, Melb has that exclusive feel to it (and you can take pictures on campus). RMIT gets it over and done with in one evening, Melb has a few days (aka exclusive). RMIT has caps for undergrads. enough said.
Yes - it's been a long time since I made an update here. I've been plagued with projects, an exam, a couple of bouts of sickness and more projects. But now, I'm more or less free. Almost. My parents have been reminding me to get a job for next year. That, is harder than it sounds. The market has not been tested for Bachelor of Environments graduates, because this will be the first year that there will be such graduates. According to a career counsellor at Uni, it's even harder for Environments students with a major in Architecture or Landscape Architecture to be employed, as it's really the 2-year Masters degree that is considered the professional pathway rather than the 3-year undergraduate degree. According to the same counsellor, the best I could hope for is a year-out work experience. I wonder if that'll be enough to pay the bills? My parents are just waiting for me to move out, so there's rent to consider. If, hopefully, I can pass my driving test before Christmas, there's the car+rego+insurance to consider too. So, in a nutshell, I face being unemployed and homeless next year. Oh, what fun. And this is why I have mixed feelings about my supposed graduation on the 17th of December, exactly 2 weeks from now. On one hand, it's the end of my 3-year degree and I'll be getting my well-deserved diploma. But on the other hand, my future is rather uncertain, to say the least. Sure, to make that future less uncertain, I could go straight into Masters for next year - there's a chance that I might be guaranteed a CSP in my preferred Masters too, if I get at least a 65% average in my last two years of Uni. However: 1) I'm tired of studying, 2) because of this, I reckon I don't have the motivation/the drive for the demands of a Masters coursework and 3) since I'm not (yet) an Australian citizen, I have to pay for the tuition fees myself and I just don't have that sort of money. Okay - that's probably enough of the doom and gloom that is my immediate future. So ---
After nearly three years of being on Ls, I'm finally FINALLY going to sit for my driving test for Ps. I doubt that I have already completed at least 120 hours of driving, which is the minimum required driving practice before sitting the probatinary licence test. However, I'm now over 21, so I don't have to produce a properly completed log book (which I've initially been diligently keeping until my 21st birthday). What's more, I'll go straight into green Ps. Sure, other people my age will be on a full licence now, especially if they were lucky enough to get their Ls before the graduated licensing scheme has been introduced. However, getting a driving licence was not one of my priorities when I arrived here in Australia four and a half years ago. I came from a country with a good public transport system, bad roads and unaffordable (even second hand ones) cars. As a result, I didn't have that I-must-have-my-licence-by-the-time-I'm-18 thinking and didn't think much of all this business about licences till before I started Uni. So now here I am, 22 years old and just on the point of getting my probationary licence.
In other news, even though I already have a definite date for my graduation, it's not yet definite if I'm actually going to graduate. Results will only come out on the 10th of December, which is, oh, just a week before my supposed graduation. Sure, some results might come out earlier than that but so far, none for me. I've been checking the Student Portal everyday and even though I've finished all of my assessments as of the 11th of November, there are no final results yet for any of my subjects. My studio leader was considerate enough to inform my class that everyone passed studio - so I at least have a 25% chance of graduating. Hopefully this chance will become more of a certainty over the next few days. More updates later :)
Thought I'd take 5mins out of my *work* day sneaky sneaky (... & my boss shall be reading this) in order to give ya'll an update on what's happening. Exams are OVER. In latest news, the uni has decided to stagger the release of results, which means that there is a possibility of getting results back early. As though that would improve them. Its ok, because I've been introduced to the wonders of irish cream lattes at Plush Fish, which makes everything ok. In order to motivate myself through these exams, my group of friends from both melbourne and monash had a mini competition against each other. There were two (mixed uni) groups vying for the lowest aggregate score. The losers cook dinner for the other group. The wider the gap, the fancier the dinner.
Considering the level of my cooking skills "I don't want to cook...can't cook..must not lose..." this competition was a big motivating factor.
So, now its summer holidays again, and having fun with three jobs. Looking for a hobby that doesn't cost money - and have swallowed my pride and asked my youngest brother to teach me how to play guitar. The biggest hurdle to this was cutting my nails (I'm not joking either).
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