Recharge

Descriptive transcript

Hi guys! Welcome back to the UTS Student Hacks. I'm Roxanne, I'm in my fourth year of Medical Science and International Studies, majoring in Japan. And here we also have Kelly! I'm in my fourth year of Law and Business, majoring in Accounting.

So this week we'll be discussing recharging and getting excited for STUVAC, which is during the week of the 5th of April. Before we get right into it, get some water, fruit and snacks to accompany you through this podcast.

Before we get into this podcast, we'll just have some live updates from what we've been up to.

What have you been up to recently?

So I have recently been up to a legal tech moot. If you're a fellow law student, you would know that Law has quite a few competitions that you can get yourself into. The one I signed up for with my friends was the legal tech moot and it was a really fun experience. We managed to get into the semi-finals, which was pretty exciting.

Nice! How was the competition?

It was really fun! Every single person who participated spoke extremely well. I learned from each and every round, new things I could improve in, and seeing how other people are able to tackle the same question but from a different perspective.

What have you been up to?

For me recently, I've just been doing society events. I'm an exec part of the Japanese Society at UTS. Recently, we've been holding events such as chill sessions and orientation, just doing those sorts of events and also just catching up with uni in general.

Cool! I hope that was insightful for our listeners about what we've been up to.

Now we're going to move into a mini check-in about how we're going with uni work, how we're doing mentally, and what our plans are for STUVAC, if we have any. So we'll first start off with how we're doing with uni work. Roxanne, how's uni work for you?

Recently for uni work, it's been quite a lot. Assignments and deadlines are coming up, quizzes are coming up as well. So I've been slightly behind on work, and I'm just trying to catch up on everything that I've missed, especially since it's been overwhelming recently with everything that's happening. But I'm looking forward to learning new content and catching up to date.

What about you, Kelly?

I'm basically the same, trying to catch up with uni work, especially since I did the moot. I haven't been able to put as much effort into tutorial work and actually paying attention to lectures because my mind was somewhere else. I am a little behind, so I'm planning to get my stuff together, probably compile some questions that I have, and probably ask my tutors and lecturers to see if they can answer my questions because I'm still learning. But I'm really grateful that I have friends that I can lean back on, as they are very reliable and able to help me with anything that I have concerns with for a particular subject or topic. I'm really grateful that I have that type of support system.

So now we're going to move on to, away from uni work, like how are we doing mentally? Asking ourselves, how are we really doing? How are you doing, Roxanne?

Recently, mentally, I'm just a bit all over the place, just trying to get used to things. It's a bit complicated getting back into the swing of having in-class classes and also attending online classes, so just getting used to that sort of schedule again. It's been quite a bit difficult, but I do have quite a supportive network of friends who also want to catch up with their work. So I've been trying to catch up with them, and that's sort of helped me keep up to date with the classes that are happening.

How are you going, Kelly?

Mental health wise, definitely I've been pretty stressed—especially with the extra added extracurricular activities of the moot. It's also adjusting to the flexibility of having both in-person and online classes, and whether or not online is better for me or in-person is better for me, still figuring that out. But once again, I'm so grateful to have a really supportive network of friends.

When you're not feeling as good as you usually are, it's always really important to have something outside of uni work, something you can take yourself away from all that stress. So I have volleyball—whenever I do volleyball, it's really fun because I step away from thinking about uni, thinking about work, things like that, and just focus my mind on making sure where the ball is.

Exactly.

For those people out there that are not feeling that well mentally or physically, maybe try something new to get your mind off things, or reach out to family or friends or even just a counsellor if you'd like, if you're comfortable with that. They might give you advice that you might not have thought of because they could see it from a different perspective.

And especially in certain situations, such as the floods that have been affecting certain areas around us, just reaching out at UTS—they might be considerate of the situations that you're going through and it might help you ease the stress, especially when it comes to assignments.

Yeah, definitely. So if you're in one of those flood-affected areas and you're unable to go to an exam or attend an assessment task—or it doesn't have to be about flooding, anything that's a hardship you're going through—you should consider applying for special consideration or ask your lecturers or tutors to have another time to do that assessment. Always reach out, it's better to reach out than not.

Since I know most of the people around me are pretty much looking forward to a break, luckily STUVAC is coming up. Roxanne, do you have any plans for STUVAC?

So for STUVAC, I'm planning on catching up on my languages, since I take a Japanese language class. It's a bit hard to wrap my head around writing and speaking, so I just want to feel more confident when speaking Japanese. So I plan on utilising STUVAC to catch up on all that information and also prepare myself for any quizzes that are coming afterwards.

Kelly, are you planning on doing anything for STUVAC?

Well, firstly for STUVAC, I'm pretty excited because I get to sleep in. There's no classes that I need to attend and that's always a plus because I don't need to wake up for them. But I do want to catch up on work that I have left behind and, if possible, get ahead somehow—even if it's just by starting to look at a document, not even watching a lecture, just something small so I have some idea of what's coming up. Overall, for STUVAC, my plans are to catch up on sleep and catch up on uni work.

Speaking about uni, since we're back on campus and many classes are in person, I personally have been eating out quite a bit and that's been hurting my wallet.

Same here.

I've been on campus quite often now and it's also been hurting my wallet quite a bit.

As a uni student, I'm always excited for cheap eats—something that's cheap, easy, gets the job done and I'm able to feel full and not worry about hunger. What's your go-to cheap thing around campus?

When it comes to UTS and Building 2, I often go down to the food court and my destination is always Uni Bros for the pide. It's only $5 for a pide and you get it with sauce and you feel full for the rest of the day. It's so filling, very cheap. But if not, if I feel like I want to have a change of pace, usually I go down to Chinatown and I visit a restaurant called Super Dish. I've gone there since I was five—it's a childhood memory—and I would often get the congee and just eat there. It's very filling for myself.

What about you, Kelly? Do you have any cheap eats or recommendations that you usually go to?

Yeah, so my cheap eats, my little hack is going to supermarkets, so places like Woolies and Tong Li. They have ready-to-eat food that you can just pick up, they're individually packed and you can eat straight away without needing to heat them up or anything like that. They're always pretty cheap, always on the cheaper side. So for Woolies, I might go to the bakery section, get a couple of baked goods. Or for Tong Li, if I'm feeling an Asian snack, I'll go there. And also, since they also have instant ramen, which are already in cups and UTS provides hot water, I simply get a cup, put some hot water in, mix it up and eat!

If you're on campus Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays, often at UTS in the Tower foyer, you would have the Bluebird Brekkie and Night Owl noodles as well, which they give out free food.

So Bluebird Brekkie happens Tuesday and Wednesday mornings from 8:30am to 11am. So if you're ever on campus during those periods of time, come to Building 1 in the foyer and get some breakfast.

And if you finish class late at night, you can come to the Night Owl noodles and it happens Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5 o'clock to 7:30 at night. Just grab yourself a bowl of noodles and it'll fill you up!

So I've personally been to the Night Owl noodles and they're very filling. I love it, I would definitely recommend. And it's free, so what's there to lose?

On the topic of being back on campus, one of the reasons I'm excited to be back on campus is that I get to have a change of scenery, so I'm not just always at home in my bedroom doing work. I can go to campus, choose one of the amazing locations to get some work done, soak in some sun, and enjoy my uni life.

Personally, I really like the library and the reading room because they have large windows with natural lighting. I don't know about anyone else, but I absolutely love large windows—like floor to ceiling windows. It's just my thing. And especially when it's raining, you see the pitter patter of the raindrops falling down, pitter pattering on the glass, and it really just helps me get into the zone and get some work done.

What about you, Roxanne?

For me, I usually go down to the food court, just because for some reason, I'm not sure why, but I study better when there's a lot of noise around me. Usually because the food court's such a bustling area, it's really easy to focus. So I often study there, just on one of the tables.

For those people that are at uni for the whole day, forget to bring a charger for your phone, I would highly suggest going to the library and using those recharge stations, where you can just plug it in and your phone is ready to be charged. So you can sit back, relax, maybe do some work or watch a bit of Netflix while your phone is charging.

And if your computer dies because of the battery, the UTS library also offers laptops for you to borrow as well if your battery dies out.

In conclusion, if you get anything from this episode, if you're on campus Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, go to the Bluebird Brekkie and Night Owl. You won't regret it.

Thank you for listening. If you want to check out any of our previous episodes, they're on our website and other sites like Spotify.

A special shout out to UTS Startups, as always, for allowing us to use this podcasting space. You should really check out UTS Startups as they have an amazing range of resources.

Don't forget to join us for our next episode. Until next time, see ya!