The study desk

Books spread out, primary coloured and underlined, scribbles abound;
Biscuits and snacks within an arm’s length, a glass of comfort.
My precious MacBook in front of me, a distraction every now and then;
Headphones plugged in but I hardly hear the music as I read;
Just one more paper,
Two more weeks,
And I’ll be home.

Just a lil’ bit more…

12 hours left… I can’t wait to get this essay done and over with. Last essay of the semester, but the exam period is far from over. After I hand in this one, I have to start studying for Monday and Tuesday’s papers.

I handed in another essay on Monday, and the sight that greeted me on the second floor was… wow. I swear, I’ve never seen so many people at the Culture and Communications office before, but given that it was the official start of the examination period, and that most essay deadlines fall on the first day of exams, I shouldn’t have been so surprised. The corridors were chock-a-block with students. There were students standing, sitting, and on the floor, getting their papers organized (I was one of the ‘on-the-floor’ people filling out the cover sheets). One of the office staff was even nice enough to stand near the essay chute to help students staple their papers + assignment covers.

As the queue moved along, I noticed a few students handing in MULTIPLE essays. Those were scary sights. I’m already having trouble managing my time properly with two essays due a couple of days apart, but to have two or more essays due on the same day? I’ll probably have a nervous breakdown.

But wait. That might actually just happen to me next year. More sleep deprivation to come. Yay.

Final hurdle…

…not.

After four years of uni, GAAAH. This five-year course is starting to feel too long. But I comfort myself with the fact that I’ll graduate with two degrees under my belt. Hohoho.

`

Righttt.

Tomorrow will be the final round of tutes for the year, but the nightmare has just begun. Three essays, all worth 50% due one after another. I can do this! I can do this! I can do this! *chants ad nauseam*

Re-enrolment for next year has opened, and as I was looking through the subjects available for my majors next year, it’s really saddening to see how many subjects have been cut out ever since the Melbourne Model was put in place. I compared the 2006 Handbook (the year I first enrolled) with the 2010 one, and more than half the subjects have disappeared, or have been changed and named differently. One subject I was particularly keen on doing for next year is not there anymore – I have a feeling it’s been replaced by this other subject which covers similar areas, but the structure is different from what I remembered it to be.

It’s hard to believe that next year will be my final year – and it’s scary too. I still don’t know where I’m headed after graduation in December 2010, but I’ll just have to keep trusting in God to lead me down this road. For now I see through a glass, darkly… now I know in part… but one day I will see all that He has had planned.

Boyband nostalgia

I was – and admittedly, still am – a huge fan of Backstreet Boys and Westlife. There, I’ve said it. And if there were any concerts in the near future, I will confess too, that I will not hesitate to buy tickets. Oh gosh. I feel like such a silly fangirl now.

The past few days, I’ve been listening to a lot of old BSB hits from the 90s era. Ah, the memories. As I was singing along to those sappy, cheesy lyrics, a somber thought came to me: that these songs now evoke different feelings. As naive young girls growing up in that pop-saturated era, where MTV was filled with endless videos of such songs, these songs had once seemed to tell of some fairytale romance that any impressionable teenager will obsess over.

Now as we move into adulthood, I think we’ve seen that real life isn’t the fairytale dreams that you probably once harboured in your hearts. So ten years later, I still listen to these songs, but no longer with a lovestruck, dreamy outlook or carefree innocence of childhood. We all have to grow up someday.

But hey, ten years later, both of my favourite boybands are still together (albeit each is less a member now)! And I still enjoy revisiting musical memory lane, listening to these songs from the 90s and early 2000s, every now and then. But the sands of time has carved imprints and etched scars upon the guilelessness of the young heart, and the songs no longer evoke emotional fantasies, but merely amusing memories of a naivety long past.

Midweek interlude

Today’s piano lesson left me feeling somewhat inadequate and a little in despair over my current stage. That’s not to say that it was a bad lesson – as has been the pattern, I’ve been learning heaps each time, but right now, the point that is being driven home, and nailed in hard, is the fact that I have so many bad habits to break, and to wean myself off years and years of bad practicing. Sigh.

Lessons like these make you feel as if you’ve never really started or accomplished anything in the first place. I almost think that I should start from Level 1 again or something.

`

After VCA, I finally got around to going to the City Library to pick up my card and verify my identification after registering online almost three weeks ago; I should have probably done this waaay earlier (probably a few years ago!) but I never really found the need to use the City Library, especially not with Baillieu providing for the needs of every Arts student.

After picking up my card, I decided to explore the City Library since I’ve never actually visited it properly. It’s not really an academic library; there’s lots of fiction and DVDs and magazines – the atmosphere is more like an everyman than an academia. Roaming through the shelves on the first floor brought back a sense of nostalgia of simply browsing through rows of books to borrow for purely enjoyment’s sake. I’ve almost forgotten that feeling, especially after three and a half years of academic research and borrowing books “because I have to”. I foresee more visits in the future. Have I mentioned how much I love bookstores and libraries? I rather spend my day in Kinokuniya or Borders than shop along Orchard or at KLCC the whole afternoon.

The first half of the semester is [almost] over! if not for the fact that one of my tutorials is rescheduled to tomorrow instead because of the strike. I seriously don’t understand the effectiveness of strikes or protests – it was something that my Politics tutorial discussed about two weeks back, and we generally agreed that there are more effective ways of getting your point across than merely marching down the streets and disrupting civil life and accomplishing nothing at the end of the day except to get yourself in the news that may or may not impact audiences the way you want it to. Political Communication has been a really enjoyable and stimulating subject so far, but anyway that’s another story.

My plans for the semester break look like this: research, read, write, research, read, write.

The life of the university student.