The Morning Train

I'm comfortable in the knowledge that no one is reading this anymore, and my lax posting and poor punctuation are probably to blame.

But, for those Treading Water faithful (I'm dubbing you Treadders) out there who have come here on a whim, or perhaps accidently, or as a means to getting to another blog, I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that during January I'll be undertaking a course of Microeconomics.

Learning all about the economic decisions that every person makes every day. What we give up to take another action, and so on. Demand and supply curves. Opportunity cost. Microeconomics! For your reading pleasure!

Well I'm not doing it just for blog fodder, but doing one subject on it's own during January should alleviate the strain during this coming semester. The final semester. Ever.

Just to bring the faithful up to speed, I smashed university last semester, scoring consistatntly good marks in all the subjects despite a great deal of other time restraints during the second half of last year. I have a supplementary exam coming up for Stats, and a left over from Semester 1 2006. You can imagine how hard this has been to study for.

I'm wondering if it's even worth it. Perhaps it's best to cut my losses and instead focus on just nailing Microeconomics. We'll see what I wind up doing. The benefit of it is the small chance that I'll pass and therefore not have to do Stats again during this coming semester. On the other hand, if I just go to Microeconomics I'll be helping myself pass Microeconomics.

This says nothing for the gorgeous chatty Swiss girl who sits next to me in class. Demand curve indeed!

Decisions, decisions.

Mean To Me

I’d much rather not have to post at all, but I haven’t posted for ages, so I may as well talk about what has been going on. The semester and the exam period are over. Between what I do (or did) for a living and exams, there wasn’t actually time for posting.

And there hasn’t been much to say, when I’m stuck working on assignments and exam study, there’s not much colour to the subject matter. There really isn’t room for much colour to the subject matter, there isn’t much latitude for discussing the fun and games of spending hours rereading texts and generally shitting yourself about the content of the exam.

For instance, in my studies of Balkans politics, I was banking on a question on the Little Entente (head to wikipedia for more information on that). In this exam, unlike about the last 9 in Balkans politics, there was no question on the Little Entente. Annoying.

Luckily I was handballed a question that was essentially identical to the question I answered in the seminar paper. Not annoying.

Now that I have studied for a lot of exams, I find that my concern is generally more about what will be on the exam, moreso than if I will pass or fail.

From here, I still have a couple of subjects to knock off. I’ll still be at uni next semester, even if it’s only part time. This is disappointing.

I’m also going to knock off a subject at summer school, joy.

It’d be fair to say this could be it as far as this blog goes. I have nothing new to say about university. Lets wait and see.

Dirty Pool

On Wednesday I did something that I had vowed never to do since I started to study marketing: wore a suit for a group presentation.

And I basically only agreed to on two accounts. Firstly, that another group member nagged until we agreed; and secondly, that it was the last group work presentation ever, and hence time to celebrate.

There were two groups presenting during the tutorial, and we went first. Fairly standard presentation, little substance, a degree of style, and me in a belt.

The second group struggled a touch, but also made a crucial mistake. When delivering their planned objective for the particular product we all presented on - let's say it's a gin - they gave projected sales growth figures that were rubbish. It stood out like the proverbial dog's testes, and was something we were specifically asked not to do.

Anyway, otherwise they were fine. Bonus marks for not being henpecked into wearing a suit too. However, one of our group members then did something that I have always considered bad pool - our group member got stuck into them about the sales figures.

This is the tutors job, never a fellow students. Group presentations are annoying enough without being picked off for mistakes. As it happened the tutor did notice it, and brought it up later.

Two or possibly three semesters ago a girl, a very annoying girl, gave a presentation about the Body Shop in which she focussed heavily on the high ethical quality of the brand, and the fact that it is a major point of difference for the retailer. She then went on to talk about a proposed product launch that was to be held at the Crown Casino Palladium Ballroom.

Ahh, yeah. No one picked her up on it, despite how much we'd all liked to have gotten one back on her for annoying us for the previous 13 weeks.

You just have to let these things slide I think, and spare a thought for your fellow suffering presenter who just wants it to be over.

University Life Glossary Term #18

Prattle Fatigue

To become increasingly sick of hearing the same annoying voices in the same tutes after a 10 week stretch of uni without a break.

(Thank god for this week's break.)

Josh H.

Yet another mild disappointment.

The Spirit

Ordinarily at this time of year I stop posting all that often, this is normally because I've run out of motivation and have just flat out stopped going to uni. This semester... well I'm pleased to say this is not the case. I've probably missed 5 classes so far this semester, with two being over the past week due to a feral cold I've been lugging around.

(Nothing beats the first cold of spring, an annual tradition.)

Right now I have three more deadlines before the drudgery of exam study begins, and I'm looking pretty good for a pass in all four subjects.

Now that wasn't too hard was it? It only took me 6 years to develop reasonable study habits - or possibly to develop some motivation.

That's the update. How are you going?

Dr. Karl

When I came back to univeristy after the year off, I found that I didn't have a great deal of friends at univeristy. There were a few factors at play in this happening, and the year away was probably the least of them. I should also really say 'aquaintances' or 'associates' rather than friends. That would sum up the nature of the univeristy friend relationship a lot better. I was also in a relationship at the time, which despite it's steady decline, kept me clothed in a feeling of acceptance than meant I didn't actively seek out the friendship of others.

During the year I had off - which was the second year out of high school for those of you keeping track at home - I met a girl called Kylie. She lived in Albury, and myself and Cavalier basically stumbled across her in a pub there (The Globe - do we have any Albury based readers?). Through a protacted process involving beer, some mobile phones and a shocking memory, me and Kylie became friends. Proper friends, we confided in each other, etc. At the time I was in said realtionship, so before those of you who know me personally, and read this, get any ideas - there was no romantic interest.

Tall and pretty, Kylie was a favourite of my mates too, and soon earned the pseudonium of Dr. Karl via a system which we had in place that allowed us to discuss girls while we were in our workplace. (Geez, those were the days! Girls! What a time to be alive!)

Our educational record was similar, we had both dropped out and taken a year off. When I went back to uni after the year off, she moved to Melbourne and started at my uni. She lived on campus, and I spent the odd lazy afternoon sitting around her common lounge room talking shit with her housemates and listening to bad mid-day TV revolve in the background.

At the time i was working a job in the mornings before uni, and would show up to class tired and bored. At around 1PM, Dr. Karl's unemployed, parentally supported friends would stumble out of their bedrooms into the living room and complain of how tired they are, how late for class, and how they simply don't have the time to do homework, before promptly returning to bed.

To be continued.

New Monday Resolution

I've been a bit quiet lately. In the past this has indicated that I have basically gone into my shell and stopped doing much study, stopped attending, and consequently have nothing to talk about. This semester is a little different. I've attended every class, gone to every tute, done almost all the reading. I was doing okay with the reading until about two weeks ago when the assignments began, biting into my time and leaving me slightly behind now.

This is unusual, I'm normally yet to open a textbook at this point.

However, I do need to get back into nailing the reading, leading over the past two weeks to what I call the New Monday Resolution. Come the end of the week I'll spend a night sleeping, waking up the next day only to decide that 'next Monday I will start back at studying.'

It hasn't happened yet, so I'm saying now that Next Monday I Will Start Studying for this coming Monday.

University Life Glossary Term #17

Sectional dilemma

Looking over another group members section of a group assignment.

You should never ever look at another group member's potentially terrible section of a group assignment without being aware of two questions:
A) Can I be enough of a prick that I'll just go ahead and re-write it? and,
B) Can I be bothered rewriting it?

If you can't answer yes to both these questions, it's better to never ever look at another group member's section. Ignorance is truly bliss in this case.

Shared Drive 2

This time from a chatlog on the computer I'm currently slaving away on:

[04:50:42 PM] You Know I'm: hi
[04:50:42 PM] You Know I'm: fatass
[04:51:15 PM] * You Know I'm so COOL and SWEET, when people see me they jump outta their seat! has been blocked