Just as the higher education sector and students’ expectations of it are changing, we are moving away from the popular idea that University education is supposed to bring about some personal renaissance. For some it does, but for most getting our essay in on time is more important than throwing ourselves into the social or intellectual scene. With a million things to do, uni students have to do some hard core prioritising and it’s usually the fun and relaxing stuff that gets traded off. Just like coffee, we chug the ‘Uni thing’ down and bolt off to class instead of taking the time to revel in it. It is the luxury of time that we just do not seem to have. When I first considered my choices about where I wanted to go to university (flipping through those university guides in a high school career’s class all those years ago…) I knew that I did not want an idealised University experience. I wanted something enjoyable and fulfilling. At the time, I did not really know what that meant. But now, three years into my degree, I know that this means taking the time and the effort to learn outside the class room. A social life and an enjoyable time at Uni AND wracking up an impressive CV and get HDs are not necessarily mutually exclusive, with some time management skills. We all have to remember it is okay to take a break! I am grateful to take the few minutes of time out to sit back with a double shot skinny mocha and watch the spectacle; these minutes are the best time of the day.

My tips for managing your commitments are:

1) Make two ‘to do’ lists. On one of them, list things in terms of time constraints, putting assignments or commitments whose deadlines are closer to the date at the top. On the other, list things in order of how much you want to do them, regardless of whether they will bring you scholastic glory. This exercise is useful because it helps you break away from the idea that the only important thing at uni is your school work. It also shows that while time is of the essence, it is not the only way to rank things.

2) Delegate! If you are working on a group project or in a team for something extracurricular, have enough confidence in your peers to share the work load.

3) Think about your overall commitments and draw them in a mind map. Stick this on your wall. This is a big fat visual reminder of how much you need to balance in your life and is a good warning for those who have trouble saying no to extra projects (like me). It also helps to write, in red texta, FRANKIE SAYS RELAX at the top of this mind map. Heed Frankie’s wise words…

I really do believe that sometimes, with coffee and University life alike, you just need to sit back and drink it all in…

Ok, so maybe I’m catastrophising little, but I’ve just come back from Fiji, where it only gets nippy when there’s a Great White around. Thankfully it seems the sharks were on holidays too for the time I was there, so my two friends and I were able to enjoy our fun in the sun relatively uninterrupted. If you’ve just spent the last two weeks in Sydney, I’m sure you’d like to hear about a warm weather getaway on a student budget, so that maybe you won’t make the same mistake next winter break. So here is what I did.

The tour consisted of an island hop across five islands in a remote but relatively easy to get to part of Fiji called the Yasawa Islands. We arrived on the mainland, stayed overnight and were transferred early next morning onto a double hulled jet boat called the Yasawa Flyer. From there we were ferried from each island by tenders. Unfortunately they were far from tender with our bags. On most islands we would stay for two nights, and on one of the nights we stayed on board a cruise boat. We would meet new ( and sometimes the same) people every night because the tours all begin and end randomly depending on when you book it and which package you’ve booked. If someone booked their tour to start the day after you, you’d run into them every second day. My friends and I were always together though, because we were all on the same tour at the same time.

It would take too long to give a detailed description of the trip, but here are some of the highlights and lowlights:

Highlights:
• Swimming, snorkeling and kayaking.
• Fish and ( if you’re game) feeding small reef sharks
• Guided hikes
• Cave diving in Sawailau (the place where they shot the Blue Lagoon with Brooke Shields )
• The “Seaspray adventure cruise”, a full day of sailing with all alcohol, food and snorkeling included.
• The “Wana Taki” cruise, a live-aboard cruise complete with a hot shower, dvds, outrageous night games and a 3m drop from the boat into the water.
• “Queenie”, the flamboyantly gay Host(ess) of Sunrise Lagoon Resort and his hilarious lip-syncing of stupid songs.
• The constant friendly “Bula”, meaning hello as well as a whole lot of other things, from almost every Fijian.
• The two nights on Beachcomber island, the party island, where all-nighters, toga parties and table dancing are common and the buffet lunches and dinners are great.

Lowlights:
• Only the “Wana Taki” has a warm shower. All the other showers are mostly just raised taps.
• At some of the places, what you see is what you get in terms of food, but I’m a pretty fussy eater and I found it all edible.
• On a lot of the islands the water isn’t good to drink so you have to buy it and it’s pretty expensive at $3.50 per bottle.
• You have to keep moving all the time and by the end you get pretty tired, but there’s always a hammock nearby!

I would definitely recommend it for next winter, it’s run by a company called Awesome Adventures Fiji, but book it all early to get cheap flights as well!

Bula!

While on exchange in Canada last semester I lived 2 minutes from the university library. That’s 2 minutes by foot! The furthest I ever had to travel to class was to a poetry lecture 10 minutes walk away - 15 minutes if the snow hadn’t been cleared or the footpaths were icy. After experiencing such a simple and hassle free (well if you don’t count injury due to clumsiness in the snow and ice) way of getting to uni this year, the thought of returning to Sydney’s public transport nightmare has about as much appeal to me as listening to a song by David Hasselhoff.

I have to confess, the fact that public transport sucks is not the only reason I prefer driving to uni. Whenever I am in the middle of my internal debate over whether I should be environmentally friendly (and wallet friendly) and take the train, or just stuff the trees and drive, the winning factor is always that when I drive to uni I get to window shop as I drive past all the bridal stores along Parramatta Road.

Parramatta Road has it all as far as Bridal outfits go - from the Princess Diana inspired dresses in Peretti, to the delicate lace dresses in Caritas Yu. I have often wondered whether it is weird to try on wedding dresses when I am only 20 and do not have a fiancé, or a boyfriend for that matter. This is a side of my personality that does, I understand, place me in crazy lady territory. But hey - Katherine Heigl’s character in 27 dresses is obsessed with weddings too and it works out well for her - I mean she marries James Marsden!

As I write this I realise two things:

Firstly; that I need to stop comparing my life to a movie and myself to Katherine Heigl.

Secondly; that my attitude towards this whole public transport thing is not only incredibly environmentally unfriendly, it is just plain wrong.

I like the idea of saving the planet one train ride at a time, but in practice my desire to live in a world with polar ice caps just doesn’t outweigh my immediate need to avoid poorly timetabled trains and my desire to gawk at pretty wedding dresses.

So I need to think in terms of the more immediate advantages of train travel;

1) Catching the train gives me time to read - on days when I am less prepared for uni I can do my tutorial readings.

2) I can use the money I save on petrol to by InStyle and read it on the train.

3) I can use the time to call a friend - why not turn into one of those obnoxious travellers and share my weekend plans and the details of my latest crush with my fellow travellers.

Unfortunately I could only come up with 3 short term advantages of public transport.

Help me out would you - can you come up with any other useful ways to spend a train trip?

Firstly, I went well in my English pre-honours course. This was a surprise to me because I decided for the 60% weighted essay that I would shirk all the essay questions and write 4000 words on puns. Then, I went well in a course on Samuel Beckett - also an English 3xxx course. I have no idea how that happened after writing an essay on the psychoanalytical implications in his work which made little sense to me at all. The art history courses I was not surprised by in the slightest but still pleased by. The important thing, anyway, is that I didn't have to unenrol from any of the courses for next semester which approaches quite fast.

In fact, we have less than a week before we go back, although considering that my timetable is only Wed/Thu each week, that statement is not entirely true for me. I have never had such a good timetable for four subjects! There is one slight clash but it is only with a film screening, which I can easily make up. I may have to switch some of my tutoring commitments around but other than that I am definitely happy with it. However, I have yet to calculate my text book dues for the coming semester.

Last semester I landed a book scholarship - the Walter Reid scholarship. That was back when you applied for it and other people didn't know and it was all calculated on your marks. Now, apparently, it is given out automatically to people who do really well. There is no mysterious money in my account so I am assuming I did not do quite well enough for good ol' Walter this semester, but that is OK. I must check all of this out and make a trip to the co-op soon, because it's definitely better to get in there early rather than late, as the queues get insanely long and windy. Some people meet in those queues, and by the time they are in the store, they are already engaged.

Extra-curricularly, I have been working on a film with some people from UTS as Director of Photography. It's a cool film and hopefully we'll be able to enter it in the USU short film comp, but if not we should try to get some other kind of publicity as well. I've signed on to design a production with SUDS (Sydney Uni Dramatic Society) with a friend which is giving me a good creative boost. I, at last minute, threw things at the Hermes (the big literary journal at USyd, run by student editors and the Union) which I now feel a little uneasy about, but whatever. What is done is done. And then there's Verge, the Union-run arts festival coming up, which I am kind of interested in doing some artworks for but am having trouble getting myself together for. It is holidays and I am stressed about commitments! Agh. And of course, as the HSC approaches, my tutoring work gets more hectic as well.

But let's not make it seem that I am unhappy. This has been the best holiday I have had in my whole uni career, I am almost finished knitting a pink scarf and I have almost finished watching all of the Alien saga. If only I had read more books...

In the first semester of first year, a practical project is the focus of the course. This could be anything that ‘benefits humanity’, although a list of useful ideas is distributed to the course members before the choices are made. This year, some of the ideas being toyed with are – an automatically deploying flood barrier, a wind turbine and generator, an earthquake proof house, and a water pump for countries without electricity.

Being a biomedical engineer, our group’s project is a little different. Right at the moment, we’re attempting to construct a prosthetic arm for a child in Nepal with a birth defect – giving him a chance to fit in with society. As such, we’re using a special silicone based polymer that imitates skin in order to make the outer covering. If it works. *rolls eyes*

So all in all, Advanced Engineering is a worthwhile experience for anyone who gets over 98 in their UAI and applies for Engineering (you’d get a letter in the mail). So all you smart kids who think they can breeze through the HSC because their Engo course only needs 91 or so, think again! Advanced Engineering is waiting. Alternatively, you can also get in if you really, really want to. Just ask nicely. And anyway, who wouldn't want to do a course without exams?

I recently had an enquiry on this blog about transferring to Sydney Uni if you don’t first get into the course you want.

So I thought I should deliver with the inside scoop.

a) changed their minds during the course of their degree, or
b) didn’t originally get into the degree of their choice.

The way to go about it is through UAC (University Admissions Centre) again. If you have done at least one year of tertiary study, the UAC will consider your UAI and your uni marks in combination. You effectively get a “new UAI” (you don’t find out what it is) and you will compete against the current year’s cohort for a place in the course of your choice.

Therefore, you can transfer from any university to any other university. If you get in, you then apply to the faculty to see if any of your previous studies will be credited towards your new degree. If they are, you may be able to start at the level of a 2nd year, or you might have to catch up on some 1st year pre-requisites etc.

Now, here are some caveats:

1) Some degrees are harder to transfer into than others. Examples are Combined Law* and Vet**. Generally the higher the UAI of the course, the harder it will be to transfer.

Therefore,
2) You are not guaranteed a place! You therefore must be happy with the original course you are in, because there is the chance that you will end up graduating from it.

Good luck!

*With Combined Law there is also another important point to note, that you can only attempt to transfer after 1st year. This is because it is a very structured degree and if you have completed more than one year it is probably a better option to finish your degree and apply for the Graduate Law program (which is the same course, and in the end takes one more year in total).

**Vet also takes into account some other details, such as a STAT mark and your demonstration of commitment to Veterinary Science

I have written you a thousand love letters, why don’t you write me back? Sometimes- when I am waiting in line at the supermarket, feeding my dogs or even in that fractional moment of repose between the sentences of a stream of consciousness rant- I find myself longing for your sweet embrace. As clandestine as our relationship is, this infatuation is not borne of a crazy, fumbling un-buttoning of a new sordid affair. No, this is comfortable love. Steady. Consistent. A rock solid, enduring, enveloping love. I think you are my safe place. It is undeniable that you have loved me too, Denial, I mean… I have always found you popping up, showing through, proving yourself to be the reaction I no longer bother registering. You lure me to a place that is so much nicer than The Everyday. You make it beautiful, you make it okay.

I once had a particularly un-funny friend at school that used to say, ‘deNile ain’t just a river in Egypt’. Then she would snap her fingers like Tyra Banks. I would look on impassively and the exchange would become a little awkward. I don’t think I ever really ‘got it’. Until now. No, Denial, you ain’t just a river in Egypt! Oh no sir, you are here and now and sometimes, I don’t think I can go on without you! What would happen if I started planning? Would you leave me? What if I organised a study timetable? Rest sessions between essay writing? Spoke to my tutors and lecturers early about things I don’t understand? You wouldn’t find me attractive anymore, would you? What if broke down tasks into smaller jobs and did them incrementally? What if I wrote a ‘to do’ list to help me stay on track? Maybe you would find me boring, a little mundane. I think this fantasy world we created is just a bejewelled cocoon, insulating me from the pointy edges of a reality that would otherwise bruise me until I am as purple as my prose.

I have forgiven all your misgivings: you have minimised mine.

I think if I acknowledged you for who you really are then maybe you wouldn’t cloud my judgement just as you crowd my head. But you have traced your pattern on my skin. Our love is a perverse joy; such sweet torture. Sometimes I wonder if I am just a plaything to you…

But, of late, I feel my affection for you waning as Semester Two shapes itself on the horizon. My planner is already filled with future engagements, study commitments and all things extracurricular. I have to be there for them- and be there on time and with 8 hours sleep. It is so selfish of you to make me believe that other things do not exist except you. You want me to block them out and succumb to your siren call. It is not going to be this way anymore. I need to get myself sorted. I need you out of my head! I want to dump you dramatically, heart wrenchingly and with a sense of solemn finality. I want to be the one who breaks it off. You wouldn’t deny me that pleasure, Denial, would you?

Bec xoxo

This is all great and fun, but it really is getting a bit monotonous.

What do you do?

You need a change so you decide to.....

Adventure 1. Change your hairstyle - they say blondes have more fun!

Adventure 2. Change jobs - maybe a retail gig will be more stimulating than helping 5 year olds sound out their vowels...and a staff discount never hurt anyone!

Adventure 3. Get out of town on the weekends. If you can afford it why not try a trip to the snow or the Hunter Valley...wine and cheeses by a fire sounds like the perfect way to spend a wintry weekend!

Adventure 4. Go to Canada on exchange. Spend what would have been your summer navigating snow drifts as high as your belly-button, temperatures as low as -20, and black ice which never fails in making you fall. But it's not all bad - you're studyng some great courses at Queen's University, meeting people from far off places like the the Netherlands and Argentina, and ice skating with new friends at an outdoor rink in your local park. You are only an hour by plane from New York City and only 3 hours from Cuba...places you actually get to visit during your exchange semester.

So....what will it be?

Hopefully my shameless plug for exchange will encourage some of you to take the plunge, fill out the application form and embark on an amazing adventure of your own.

As part of the exchange experience you get to visit amazing places and meet incredible people from all over the world. But what is even more incredible about the whole experience is that when you come home, despite all the distance you have covered, your ordinary Sydney life becomes pretty exciting to lead and you become aware of just how special it is to drink tea with friends on Wednesdays and eat lunch with your family on Sundays!

No.

No dear readers. My legs are fine, if not a little hairy. I sit here still because of my undying desire to tell all of you about my first semester at the University of Sydney, so that you might know a little of what to expect before you get here yourself. I say “might” because to be honest, I haven’t exactly been here that long.

So here are five things you should know about Sydney before your first semester.

2. There are a lot of people. In some of the popular Arts lectures like philosophy and psychology, there can be up to 600 people in the one place. And it’s by no means only recent school leavers. In one of my first psychology lectures I sat next to an old lady who showed me her grandsons. Twin boys. God they were ugly. Again I stray from the point, which is really that the number of people has implications for the way things are taught. Because there are so many people who are all so different, the most effective way for a uni to teach them is to have them pretty much teach themselves. Unlike in school, where everything was sort of handed to you, lectures and tutorials are there more to give you some direction. They give you a basic outline for you to expand on in your own time. Of course, the basic outline is usually enough to pass, so if you go to the lectures and take some notes and hand things in on time, you’ll pass.

3. Well, it’s not really that simple. Another thing you have to be on top of at uni is the internet. It’s the easiest way to get information quickly to everyone at uni. You don’t have to be a Bill Gates to work it out, but it’s one of the most essential differences between school and uni that at uni everything you need, including lectures, tutorial materials, student discussion boards, your emails and even things like your exam seat numbers or casual employment ads are all on the net. It’s called WebCT, or Usyd e-Learning, and it’s really important that you know how to use it. I’m sure if you’re reading this right now you’re more than ok, because finding the link to this page on the USyd site is like trying to find an engineering student with a sense of humour. But in the first few weeks, you really have to check your account regularly, because assignments can be due within the first few weeks in some courses, and if you don’t check WebCT you might not even know about them. Unfortunately, WebCT is often really slow because everyone has to use it, and I sometimes wonder if the CT stands for Cumbersome and Tedious.

4. One of the more positive byproducts of the number of people at Sydney is that it is a really social environment. There are a few places to get drinks at any time, the two most popular being Manning ( frequented by Arts students having a beer at 11am) and Hermann’s ( frequented by engineers, trying to come up with one good joke between them with the help of alcohol). If you’re not a drinker, join a few clubs! I joined about ten during O-week (“O” for Orientation), and really enjoyed a few. Look out for a blog in the future about SURG FM, Sydney Uni’s radio station, which a friend and I take over for an hour each week. It’s only for the first three weeks of each semester due to licensing issues, but we get to say whatever it is that is on our minds ( mostly unprofessional pauses and loud coughing). It’s great fun. I might also recommend The Captain Planet Appreciation Society, which is basically a pub crawl club with cool t-shirts. If that’s not your thing, there’s the Games and Puzzles Club, the Chocolate Society and Film Club to name just a few.

5. If you’re at uni more to do well than to have a good time ( although I suggest a balance is a good thing) then you might want to know about exams. In my experience, which is of course minimal having not even received my marks back from my first lot, exams are not too tough as long as you plod along at a steady pace, keep up with the assignments, go to your lectures and tutorials and if you want to do really well, don’t just do the readings but make sure you can understand them, which can sometimes be a little tough! If you do that, you can get a good chunk of your marks for the course before you even sit the exam, which is usually only worth between 30% and 60% of the course. I, along with a lot the course, went into the linguistics exam having already gained around 40% of the course mark. So exams are really just another assignment rather than a huge ordeal like the HSC. If you’re worried, those rumours about first year uni being harder than the whole HSC year aren’t true, at least for an Arts degree.

Any way, sorry for taking so long to write another blog, but to make up for it I’ll follow up with another about things to do in uni holidays in the next few days. If you have any questions about this one I’d be happy to answer them.

There’s only a point to which you can get by while still procrastinating in stuvac, and that point was this semester. When I received my exam timetable…let’s just say unless you’re Super(wo)man, it is not possible to cram in stuvac, material for 4 exams in the first 5 days of exam week. I had a similarly horrendous timetable in first semester, first year, but this time the material is thrice as hard (since it’s third year). I knew I had to buckle down, and on one of those rare Internet surfing sessions with a purpose other than procrastination, I found—him. Mr Temptation Blocker.

He saved me from procrastination and, hopefully, a fail or two. So who is he? Basically, he stops you from accessing selected programs for a certain period of time, and if you want access to any of these programs during that time, you need to enter a randomly generated string of 32 characters, which is an absolute pain. Some programs are automatically listed for banning, such as Internet Explorer. You can also add programs and documents to that list, like that novel you’ve been working on but don’t need the distraction of during study periods. So, go ahead and Google him, he’s good with any Windows operating system. The only criticism I have is that you cannot block specific websites, so if you really need to check something out, you will unfortunately have to type all 32 characters to unblock Internet Explorer again.

So now you know how I've been off the Internet for the Three Week Torture, and hence the timing of this post. Good luck to all those with upcoming HSC trials, hopefully Mr TB will be as good a friend to you as he has been to me :)

And now for the post exam cleanout...

Ironically, the place I ended up getting my first job barely even glanced at my resume- instead, we discussed one of my high school English teachers, who my employer and I both happened to know. What I mean by this is that: the resume isn’t everything, especially if you’re new to the workforce. First impressions and a mildly entertaining character during an interview will probably hold more weight.

One of the key complaints I hear from people trying to justify their ‘lack of job’ is that they simply don’t have the time. Dealing with Uni work and sporting/music/club commitments, there just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day. If that’s so, simply look for a night time job. Also, consider travel times – don’t become so desperate for a job that you apply for every Woolworths on the Greater West. The closer to home, the better, and the less time taken from study and recreation.

Also, try to understand the natural progression that occurs with employment- getting disappointed every time you get turned away from your favourite music/clothes/book store isn’t going to get you anywhere. Remember that a person that’s got the slightest bit of experience will always take employment precedence over someone who doesn’t. Be prepared to start at the supermarket, late at night, packing shelves if you have to.

‘Do what you love, and it won’t seem like a job.’ As sure as I am that my father stole that quote from somewhere, it is probably the best advice that you can take from all of this. Doing something that you enjoy will make those money-making hours pass by much faster- and a natural enthusiasm will make you appear all the more promising to an employer.

Happy job hunting! :P

I took this snap outside the White House when I visited Washington D.C. earlier this month. I have always had a secret desire to be like C.J. Cregg from the West Wing, so I am thinking of taking him on, becoming his press secretary and creating a Rags to Riches legend with which even Barack Obama could not contend.

It is important to point out at this point that neither of us are American citizens – Joanna is Canadian and I am Australian...we just liked to talk as if we could vote in the election, as I will continue to do in this blog. Let’s face it, most of us wish we could vote in this one!

Joanna and I thought Hilary Clinton was more intelligent, had better policy ideas and more relevant experience....and we totally thought she kicked Obama’s ass in the debates.

But then something interesting happened....

Our conversation started to shift from her policies to her ugly pant suits. We started criticizing her hair and her makeup and suddenly it become all about how we had a bit of a crush on Obama and how we really liked the way Michelle Obama dressed.

Then Will.i.am released that great Yes We Can video on you tube. Talk about star power! If you haven’t seen it you should check it out on YouTube

Slowly, but surely, I was being turned into a supporter of Barack Obama. The shift really didn’t have much to do with the man himself. Sure he gave good speeches, but it was everything around me that was changing my mind. As I heard daily on CNN (which I have become obsessed with since living in North America)...“the momentum” or “the buzz” was on Obama’s side.

As someone who has spent a little too much time watching the coverage of this year’s U.S. Presidential election campaign, I have come to believe something I have suspected for a long time....Image really is everything!

What do you think...if we got ‘Me for President Now’ a good suit and a photo op with Goldie Hawn and Brad Pitt...would you be tempted to vote for this man?

I have been dreaming about exchange since I was in high school - it is something I’ve always wanted to do and something that I knew I had to try.

If you’ve ever thought about exchange, my main advice would be to start thinking about the application process as early in your degree as possible. I applied in September last year, and I’d been thinking seriously about going since the January before. I was silly enough to miss the cut-off deadline for first semester exchange last year, and so the most important thing to remember is that you’ll need to keep on top of the organisational side of things if you’re serious about heading OS.

But don’t let that put you off! The first stop if you want to find out more is to go to one of the exchange information sessions that get held regularly. Click here to find out dates and locations of the next session.

After that, you can visit the Exchange Office, which is all the way down the other end of campus, past the Aquatic Centre. They’ll give you the application form and from there you can start researching where to go, how much it will cost and what you will study.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m faced with the glamorous (but ever so exciting!) task of organising flights, visas, insurance, backpack contents and hundreds of other last minute things I’m certain I’ll forget! I can’t wait :-)

The exchange website address is:
http://www.usyd.edu.au/stuserv/international/

Everyone will have to combat rain at uni at one point or another. Whether it's a freak storm, seven days of non-stop rain or just a sun-shower, here are some handy tips to survive uni in the rain!