Thursday, March 1, 2012

9:59 PM

Hello there. I’m happy to announce that I have settled in, fitted myself back in the crowd etc. etc. after about a week in Melbourne. Yes, these things take time. Proven again and again. I’m doing fine now. The weather has been chilly this week.

First week of uni has been... boring. Nothing really excites me or makes me happy.

‘Vector Calculus’ seems alright. It’s almost like Calculus 2 for now. The lecturer is very well-spoken, but she’s too serious and doesn’t crack any jokes at all, unlike the awesome lecturer I had for Calc 2. I sure miss him. Mr. Norman Do.

‘Probability for Statistics’ is bad. We have a Chinese man as our lecturer (like China-Chinese), and his English is decent, but I still couldn’t understand most of it. He struggles and stutters when explaining stuff. Sometimes I just want to squeeze the words out of him... other times I just zonk out and fall asleep. I’ve actually started to eat mints to keep myself awake in his lectures. He literally just reads the notes out loud word by word. I have no idea why the university has him as our lecturer, but I guess the notes are quite self-explanatory so...

‘Programming the Machine’ is good. The lecturer is the kind who thinks he’s sort of funny, but no one really laughs at his jokes. But he’s good. He keeps me awake and is also well-spoken. I’m not a fan of our notes though. It’s a 2.5 cm thick bound book full of words in black and white. I know I’ll never finish reading it within a few days before the exam, so I’m hard at work these days, reading and highlighting the relevant material after each lecture.

‘Japanese 3’ is super bad. The lecture and seminars were all conducted in Japanese. The sensei only speaks English 10% of the time (when everyone seems lost). I could only understand about 5% of what they were saying. It was really bad and disappointing. My classmates all seem very good at it. They were into it, they love that the teachers are speaking in Japanese, and a lot have been to Japan. One of my friends even went to Japan to study for a month during summer. They were so dedicated to the language, I couldn’t even compare with them. I haven’t been feeling good about it the whole week. I was gonna work hard and brush up on my Japanese, but today’s seminar made me snap. Halfway through, I’m just like ‘fuck it’. I don’t have time to commit to learning a language, and we even have to do a group project. No way. If only I was a commerce student (like most of my classmates) with a lot of time on my hands. But no, I’m not. So I’ve decided to quit Japanese. It’s a pity, but I guess I can continue learning it in the future if I’m really interested. Right now I just want to concentrate on my core subjects. I’m thinking of replacing Japanese with ‘Project Management’, which I think will come in handy in software development projects. I hope everything works out for the best.

There’s also been a lot of changes to my timetable. Now my earliest class is at 10 AM, which is great. Classes now end at around 4 or 5 for me though, but I’d rather have that than waking up super early and rushing breakfast.

I’ve got to start working hard for uni now. My ‘Programming the Machine’ lecturer said that only one out of three people will pass the subject. That freaked me out a little, so yeah... It’s nerd time.