Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness… What a semester this is turning out to be. I’ve had honours issues that have left me on the brink of throwing up my hands and running off to join a band with nothing but my harmonica and the ability to play When the Saints Go Marching In. I’ve also quit my job at the uni bar which means I no longer spend 6 hours on a Monday making coffee, cleaning and freaking out that I have no time to complete my assignments or an honours thesis.

Prac is also looming like the monster in the closet. After watching Monsters Inc I’m not sure if this monster is a scary, Emily eating monster or a nice monster that will be my friend and leave me all inspired at the end of it all. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

Despite my stresses and strife I refuse to be squished life. Instead I’m going to wake up every morning and say things like ‘Today is a good day to write a Literature Review... and when it is said so it shall be done. And when it is done I shall be happy and happy I shall be. I let you know if it works for me!

Posted by Emily on April 26, 2008 8:57 PM | Comments (0)

I feel like I have a permanently windswept look. This semester is rushing by so fast, the weather is blowing hot and cold, I constantly have to be somewhere and once I’m there I’m rubbing my temples wondering what’s next, what am I doing and is anything due. This hurly burly has left me with little time for hair care and the rushing around leaves me feeling like Bridget Jones after her escapade in the car with the top down.

However, I feel that my current mantra manages to sooth my flustered soul (if not my hair) and keep me smiling while I serve quotes with my coffee and ask my maths teacher if she would like soy with her references. The trick with mantras is to keep ‘em simple. Keep them concise and it helps that if you repeat them over and over they can take on a musical hypnotic meditative quality. Mine is …… ‘Don’t panic’. After several ‘Don’t panic’s’ I chuck in a ‘I’ll be ok’ and I find myself releasing my grip and allowing colour to return to my knuckles.

It’s just been one of those weeks. Honours project issues, assignments due, group work, work work and it’s my final year. I’m sure I’ll be a lot calmer and more zen the next time I write. In the mean time, I’m hoping the new series of NCIS will provide me with some much needed non-thinking time.

Posted by Emily on March 25, 2008 9:05 PM | Comments (0)

One week down and a party on the horizon! Timetable troubles have either been ironed out or set in complicated and ridiculous ways for the rest of semester. Both students and teachers succumbing to the computers idea of ‘time effectiveness’ and getting on with the show so to speak. I’ve glanced at the ever important ‘assignments’ section of my subject outline and I’m getting a good picture of what this semester is going to look like.

It all seems to come so easily for me now. That first lesson is mainly logistics and organisation. Sorting out what information is important and what information can float about in the steam of my peppermint tea. Now second week brings in the content and with ethics first thing on a Monday, I have a subject where my brain and mouth get a good workout. Its not a bad way to start the week. I’m a bit of a talker. I hate it when the lecturer says something and the reply is a mute stare from 20 faces. Me… I’ll pipe up. Mostly because I feel for the lecturer and partly because I do tend to have something to say about everything.

Even though only one week has past, this year already seems to have its rockets set to ludicrous speed and I have a suspicious feeling that I’m going to arrive at the other end in the same state as Dark Helmet in Spaceballs who quotes ‘What have I done? My brains... are going into my feet’

In the mean time get your party tickets people, find a sheet and bring your boogaloo to the UTS Semester Party at Kuring-Gai this Friday.

Posted by Emily on March 3, 2008 8:06 PM | Comments (0)

The air of semester one always prickles with anticipation, wonder, excitement, confusion, bamboozlement, gossip and another 500 emotions....which are all going through the hearts of students in various stages of the university merry-go-around. Those who are stepping on the carousel for the first time with nervous anticipation and those who know the place so well they notice the new carpet even though the colour has not altered a hue.

My last minute decision to take the leap to do my degree saw me shoving faxes through as the dead line tolled its last seconds. It was a decision that was brewing for a while but then the here and now seemed to flash past me and grabbing it meant a hurly burly flurry of typing letters and figuring out ‘how does one apply for uni 7 years after leaving school?’ It all happened so fast, I found myself in the paper… the print was really small but never the less there it was... my name and my first choice uni and degree. It all happened so fast.

I got my job at the bar within the first week and I remember meeting people who were in their final year of the same degree and they just seemed so far beyond me. They were talking about interviews and placements and things that made me feel that the journey would be long. But now, as I chat to first years, I realised that it only seems long for that first week. After that, time does its magic trick and with a slight of hand, it slips 3 years into your mind and you’re left staring at your final year of uni...so focused on getting through the last two major pracs and final throws of your degree that you barely recognise yourself in the faces of those first year students. I wonder if I seem as wise and old as those fourth years seemed to me. Or whether it’s as obvious to them as it is to my friends that we still feel the journey is nowhere near complete. After all, those fourth year girls of 3 years ago are now carrying the wisdom of 4th year teachers. Will I be chasing them for ever..?

Posted by Emily on February 26, 2008 10:30 PM | Comments (0)

So the diaries have been printed and the orange and black splashes of colour will float into your peripheral vision for the rest of the year. But I have a small reservation. At the beginning of the year my sister gave me a little diary. You know the type… it fits conveniently in your bag or pocket, but it also fits quiet nicely into small crevices and unknown voids in places such as the space in between seats in the car.

Here is the dilemma. Do I stick with the convenient and compact little diary that I have grown quiet fond of but have a much higher chance of losing or do I get myself a larger uni diary which you can’t lose unless you loose your whole bag in which case your diary is the least of your worries? I never thought I was a diary person but I have come to realise that with 3 jobs, uni, netball, courses and life if I don’t write it down I would be unemployed, uneducated, unfit and uninteresting…

Now the small diary only has small sections for writing down my bits and pieces. What happens when I have 3 assignments due, work and a hot date all on the same day? The bigger diary could easily handle this bombardment of notes and memos where the smaller diary would end up offending my sense of order and OCD.

Now I know that I am raising questions that have plagued man kind since the 1350’s and these questions will continue to be food for thought as long as we continue to evolve, but I just thought I let you all know that diary size is an issue that although not openly discussed is on the mind of many as we embark on a new year.

Posted by Emily on February 19, 2008 1:14 PM | Comments (0)

It can’t be long before uni starts again. It seems to be an endless road of working and holidays that I walk upon. I think I feel it a little more because I had a short but sweet encounter with uni and my future life as a teacher a few weeks ago.

You see, in your final year your prac has all these stages. Stage one is to attend the first week of school. That includes the first day back for teachers where they dust off the old sensible shoes and discuss the playground duty roster and other such important bits and pieces. Then it was three days of getting acquainted with the school and settling in. Although I have a year three class I spent my time with a kindergarten class. Watching wide eyed kids on their first day of school was captivating. Some laughed, some cried, some slept and some stared. After that intense week I returned to my holidays. I felt that just as I was beginning to settle in, I was thrown out. But it was good to get that insight into the school and great to establish a rapport with the school and my teacher.

Now I feel a little like I’m in limbo. It got me all fired up and ready to go and now I feel like I’m chomping at the bit. Let me lose on a class of primary kids, throw me into a lecture on how to discipline the little monsters, put me to task on an essay about why maths is the most important subject ever…

All that said I am enjoying my long sleep ins and mid week late nights…

Posted by Emily on February 11, 2008 1:21 PM | Comments (0)

Well now that the festive season is behind me, I can kick all those resolutions into their various piles labelled: ‘Yeah right!’, ‘You can always try!’ and ‘Achievable’. Once the sorting is complete I am left with a ‘to do’ list rather than a list of resolutions.

But this festive season has not been all food, booze and laughter. I’ve had uni on my mind. It lurks there while I read text messages from friends wishing me a big appetite and visits from Santa. It hovers in conversations of what is going to make 2008 so great. It flaps about preventing dust settling on good ideas... and bad ideas settling at all.

Now in previous years, I have not had such continuous thoughts on my old academic life. Holidays are normally spent blissfully resting my cognitive abilities and indulging in slightly less educational activities. My touch typing fingers produce information on the plan for the night rather than Vygotsky’s pedagogical theory. But honours changes thing.

Now this is no complaint. It’s been really great to have time to think about things. See which ideas grow and which ones just wilt and fade. There’s not much I can do to move my project along at the moment. But having all this time just to think is not only useful it also keeps me excited about my project. So I’m off to the movies with my sister now, which fits nicely in to the holiday mode. But maybe the plot will inspire or a conversation in the popcorn line will be food for thought.

Happy New Year!

Posted by Emily on January 2, 2008 2:03 PM | Comments (0)