Sydney Life

With my first batch of midterms over the week before Halloween, I decided to celebrate the brief breathing time by beginning Halloween celebrations early. Yep, the movies are pretty accurate – Halloween is HUGE in America. There are countless stores entirely devoted to selling Halloween costumes and accessories (I’m not really sure what they do for the remaining 11 months of the year), and as early as the start of October, businesses had started scrambling to make most of the festive (ie. money-spending) mood of American society ... myself included.

Sydney University has over 200 clubs and societies!
On the 14th October, there was a glamourous awards night to find out who had the best events, who had the best poster, the best t-shirt, who is the best club!

Forgetting to wear gloves on the daily bike ride to uni is quickly becoming a huge mistake!

I was sitting in my Philosophy of Mind lecture the other day when a thought occurred to me. At least, I think it was a thought, and I think it occurred to me, but if the subject has taught me anything it’s that you can never really be sure with these things.

Sydney Uni in the Dust - September 2009

Apart from being one of the more photogenic universities in Australia, I thought that I would list a few reasons as to why I love Sydney Uni. This isn't a glossy puff-piece, and one of the good things about this blog is that I know that I can talk about when I'm having a tough time with Uni - this is just a list of why I love Sydney Uni; these are reasons that reaffirm why I've chosen to study here, and these are qualities of the university that I also believe are important to protect.

Time certainly flies when you're having a great time! It's hard to believe that I've already been in LA for a month and that I've survived the 3rd week at UCLA. So here are my impressions of LA and UCLA so far ...

So many cool things about Canadian campus life that are very different to Aus.

After 4,500 miles of good times road tripping its finally time to say goodbye to Bruce the eclipse.

The weeks before the break I was so pumped it was already summer! I wrote a blog (which I didn’t post – clever!) about the joys of 30 degrees in September! I’d gone on a beach weekend vacation with 11 other uni students to chill on the beach in the Central Coast and head out fishing, jump off a wharf swimming, a late night BBQ – all things summer! The next weekend again I’d spent at the beach, eating mangoes, sushi and Boost juice – the 3 ingredients of summer!

Now a week later it’s FREEZING! I’m sitting writing this all curled up in a dressing gown and ugg boots (the height of fashion I know!). But seriously: dust storms, record high temperatures for July, record low temperatures for October, summer in winter and winter in spring. Come on weather – work yourself out!

So, I might be exaggerating a little, but it’s definitely crunch time! In the last few weeks I’ve had over 10 assessments due – it hurts! But, it’s my fault! I decided to take on five subjects this semester!

I kind of wanted to write this blog to advise against overloading. It is a great way to speed up your degree, or in my case catch up subjects I didn’t do in previous semesters (because of things like travelling and internships), but it is a lot of work. I’ve actually had three subjects for the last two semesters so my rant and rave now is probably all part of the shock of having a lot of work due at one time!