Just wanted to share a bit of my soul with you.

Now that I'm an Arts student I know my observations and commentaries on life and existence don't hold the same weight, but don't you hate it when the frozen vegetable mix doesn't have enough corn? It really brings me down.

Keep.

Keep me in your heart,
Even when I'm not dear - 
Still, then, your voice is
The last thing I want to hear...


S.

Dream.

I had the strangest dream last night. I was rushing, falling, down a dark tunnel towards a light. I was dying, and I told myself I was excited to be meeting my Maker. It made me feel better. I was trying to smile and it felt weak. When I woke up I was scared, and glad, and didn't know whether to take it as a positive sign or as a warning, and tried to frantically to fall asleep again, so I'd forget. 

A Fortnight in Arts.

This post will be a recount of my first two weeks in Arts. I wish I had more to say, some insight into the human condition, an ounce of wisdom. But I don't.


Starting a new degree is super exciting. New place, new subjects, new people. But it's also a little scary. My first day was tiring but exciting, and also really awkward. I got soaked to the skin (literally). Had to go to  female toilets at Melbourne Central to dry off under the hand-dryers. Really awkward. Also got lost. A lot. Couldn't take out my map of campus in case I was mistaken for one of the other newbies. I met some new people, saw some others again. It's all a bit of a blur.

Also, within the first week, I established myself as the stereotypical eager mature-age student. Emailed one lecturer to ask if notes could be made available online before the lecture, and the another to ask if recordings would be made available online. I FEEL NO SHAME!! Well, okay, I do a little bit. But still. My last uni wasn't this slack. Seriously, this uni is technologically challenged. Pretty sure a monkey with a typewriter could have designed a better webpage. It is a massive struggle waiting for the student portal to load. 


Other than that, my Latin tutor looks like Jesus and always wears blue. He's pretty cool. I think he knows like eight languages. Amazing. My French tutor is also really cool. Very French. I love it. 


I did have a moment in the middle of my second week when I questioned what on earth I was doing. I'd just hung out with some really cool girls from the Islamic society, and then had a tutorial in which I met my first stereotypically know-it-all Arts student. It made me furious, but in hindsight, I think I'd just had too much caffeine. I keep forgetting that I've had a lot longer to adjust to and learn about the real world. 


But things are okay. I'm usually tired or running late (consecutive classes at opposite ends of campus) or bewildered. But it's okay. I'm pretty sure I'm headed in the right direction. If nothing else, at least I'm learning something every day. Also, week 1 readings for one of my units introduced me to Slavoj Zizek. He's awe-inspiring. So enthusiastic and animated and funny. I think I want to be him when I grow up. His rant about flowers being disgusting because they are sexual organs inviting all the bugs and insects (obviously a joke) reminded me of a thought I had a few years ago about fruit. Fruit is part of a plant's reproductive tract. And we eat it. And it's delicious. This thought is slightly disturbing.


Peace and love,


S.

Given I have done Arts for a whole week now, I feel the need to post something insightful and politically and morally motivating. But I got nothing.

I was going to call my autobiography (coming to a store near you sometime in the distant future) "Dear Fatty" but then I realised Dawn French has already beaten me to it. Darn her wittiness. And her timeliness.

Stop stealing my ideas before I've had them, world!

You know when you find out that someone smokes and you just think "EWW"? Smoking is stupid and gross. Stupid people do stupid things, and gross people do gross things, and smokers are both of these things together. Sadface.

So much of the cuteness. I tie a little bow, yes?

From here.

Success.

See, the thing I have learnt is that success comes to people who snatch candy from babies and then blame it on the puppy - essentially, people who are not nice.

So why am I not successful? I'm not nice. I'm as not-nice as can be. So what's the matter?

I'll tell you what - it's because I'm passive. I am the puppy who cops the flack in the above mentioned metaphor. I have the thoughts and plans and then I fail to execute. If I were the hangman I'd have been relegated to putting down the straw and feeding the pigs. 


You have to be willing to take success, in whatever form, from whoever has it. You can't just sit around waiting. People don't hand things to you, even if it's their job. 


So, boldly and beyond!

...Once I get some sleep.


Peace and love,

S.

Blood boiling.

Sometimes, people make me really angry.

Okay, I know what you're thinking - "Did you just say SOMETIMES? Because it seems like you're ALWAYS angry!"


Allow me to correct you. People OFTEN annoy me. They don't always make my blood boil. Apart from Honours and the people involved in that year, and what I am about to divulge, and crimes against humanity, I can't really think of anything that makes my blood boil. I'm not perpetually angry, I'm just constantly annoyed because people don't shut up. Seriously, if people could zip it every now and again, half of the world's problems would be gone, with the other half being stupidity. 

So. Now that's cleared up, I will discuss the other thing that makes my blood boil on a fairly regular basis.


I am the eldest of five siblings. After myself, there are two girls, and then two boys. The boys are great (totes love the youngest), and I would count the middle sister as one of my best friends. But the youngest sister? You can't imagine how many times I've asked God to give me strength, because I swear I will end up stabbing her one day.


How many times do you have to keep extending the hand of friendship? How consistently nice do you have to be someone before they learn to be a little considerate? Today, as has been the case for the last week or so, she has been literally yelling at the parentals because she wants a cat. She has found a list of reasons online - having pets helps with depression, fitness, etc. But how can she care for another animal if she's incapable of keeping her own space clean and smell-free? Last year was only her first year at uni and she not only failed SEVERAL units, she also missed the sub-exams because as usual, she was up all night watching dvds and then slept in.


That's another thing. She's always complaining that she has no clothes, and every time there's a wedding or event we have to lend her ours, and then she spends all of her money on useless crap. She complains that no one takes her shopping but when we do she wanders off for hours looking at comic books and dvds and stuff she doesn't need. 

And then she complains about being broke. GOD!


It'd be okay if she kept it all to herself, but no, she has to scream and yell and bully until she gets her own way. She has no concept of responsibility or consideration. She literally stomps when she's walking around the house. In the middle of the night, a loud banging noise wakes you up, and that's her stomping and banging her way to the toilet, like opening doors violently makes her cool or important.


So basically, what makes my blood boil - apart from the mess, the things that go missing and turn up in her room, the lack of contribution to chores, being an inconsiderate *****, distracting the boys from homework and sleep and bullying and bribing them, the fact that she can't share or do a favour for someone without extorting something massive from them - is the fact that she doesn't shut up. 


This in turn is basically what annoys me about other people. If you're not invited into a conversation, why butt in? If you want to say something, why do you have to yell? If someone says no, why can't you zip your mouth? Why do you have to yell? And most of all, why can't you leave me alone?


I'm having trouble explaining what she's like and why it makes my blood boil. You'd have to live with her for a day, an hour, anything. 


I have, for the most part, controlled myself. Sometimes I swear and sometimes I sing loudly and in a high pitch to drown her out. But I'm pretty sure that one day I will stab and burn her. And I won't regret it.

And here's a bit of contrast:

Peace and love,

S.

I just pulled out my 10 year old brother's wobbly tooth.

I am majorly badass. 

I moustache you a question but I will shave it for later.

From Love is my weapon - This is an awesome theme. Totes loving the moustache cushion and sofa-bed thing.

Honours. (Warning: Mopey)

So Honours is over. Totally and completely. Thank God.

Last I wrote here, I was only a couple of days away from my thesis defence. Needless to say it was disastrous. I'd asked The Other Guy for the cause of death and pathology databases pertaining to the subjects who donated the tissue I'd used all year. He refused to send either one to me, because of quote, 'ethical issues'.


They were my blergh subjects, I was part of the blergh team, and I was half a blergh hour away from my thesis defence. Did he think I was stupid enough to go and google the names, or something?


The actual defence was an ordeal as well. I'd asked the Supervisor about something, he didn't know the answer, the question obviously came up in the defence, I stumbled around a bit and finally gave the right answer. Afterwards, the Supervisor told me I'd done okay, I'd stumbled around a bit, but I'd done okay. No thanks to him.


At the end of the defence you leave the room for a few minutes and your supervisor talks to the panel about how you went throughout the year, and then the supervisor leaves and you get to do the same. I tried to tell them about all the crap I had put up with, particularly from The Other Guy, but I couldn't stop crying, and the guy running the thing kept trying to shut me up. Boo.


Marks came out a few weeks ago. I did okay; when I think of why I thought I wanted to do Honours to begin with, I'm fairly happy with the mark. But given the awfulness of the the year and the people it contained, the mark did not make up for it at all. I finally got the Supervisor a (meaningless) thank-you present (fountain pen). When I gave it to him he had the nerve to say that the microscopes breaking down might even have given me pity marks. B*TCH. I worked my derriere off, trying to keep things going. If I was going to be given pity marks, I should have well over 90.


I have horrible nightmares about Honours. They have died down a bit in the last week or so, but they were awful. But I think I might be getting over it. Karma will take care of everything.


And this leads me to reflect upon my year. It was great - in parts - but the project was incredibly dull, and the people I was around even more so. If one of them - either the project or the lab group - had been good, it would have been okay. But in this case, each seemed worse because of the other. It took most of my lab most of the year to make eye contact and say hello. The Halloween-themed lab bonding day at the RA's house was incredibly awkward. Thank God the postdocs had brought her little kids, because I had nothing to say to anyone, nor they to me. The other PhD students were really nice in the last two weeks, once my thesis had been handed in. They sat through a practise talk and gave good feedback. The Other Guy was as awful and manipulative as can be throughout the year. The Supervisor could have been worse, but the passiveness, and constantly telling me that I can never get full marks or get anything perfect really wasn't great.


When you are going into Honours, people tell you to choose the lab group, not the project, so I did. I knew at least half of the lab because they'd lectured or demonstrated in undergrad. The Supervisor was head of department so I thought there was no way he'd make the year a waste. Everyone spoke so well of them. And how wrong they all were. I should have known better, too. You always get this vibe on first meetings, and then ages later you ask yourself why you were such a persistent fool. Sometimes you just have to accept that people are awful, and stop trying to find the good in them. In the first month or so I was still excited and in denial, but reality has a way of punching through, and you realise that you should have run when you had the chance.


So basically, I spent the entire year being bored and miserable, and I learned nothing. Actually, I learned three things. These are as follows:

1. Microscopy (taking decent images of crap tissue)   
2. Stereology (glorified counting, in a manner thought suitable by the Supervisor)
3. That the world is full of truly awful people, and these are the people who get places in life. Basically, success requires being manipulative, obsequiousness, putting people down, treating people like rubbish if they're lower than you in the food chain, barefaced lies, and having the audacity to think you are better than someone else such that they should be happy with an outcome you consider far below you.

Of course, there were also some great times. I'm trying to remember them now, but nothing springs to mind. I'm sure I'll remember once the echoes of this miserable year have fallen silent. All in all, it was a character-building, soul-destroying type of year. 


I'm sure aggression and misery associated with this year will burst through for a while yet. While it's true that I'm getting over it, the fact that I have a Bachelor's degree with first class Honours and still can't get a job because I basically did no proper lab work this year is incredibly frustrating. Plus all of that awfulness. 


Anyway, I think this might be enough self-pitying and whinging for one post. 


Peace and love,


S.

Instant blood boiling.

I asked for the pathology database so I could check the causes of death for my subjects. He replies with it's not the pathology database, he has to find the actual database, and send him the subject codes. 


Here's an idea, how about you just send the database to me? Is it going to kill you if I look up the codes myself? 


God give me strength.

Trying to by pithy.

Trying to write a witty limerick
Something short and slick
I come up with words
But the ideas are absurd 
And the last rhyme won't click