Vacant Mind

End of Higher Education

The morning of Friday the 15th of June marked the end of my degree, after 3 years it is finally over, at this time last year I thought that I would never finish that there wasn’t really any hope in getting a decent job at the end of this and that I didn’t really want to do a degree what I really wanted was to be a system administrator, which requires tafe qualifications and some certifications but no less hard work to get to where I wanted to be.

I had begun my university life with as much enthusiasm as any first year student but that soon faded after about 3 years when I had failed enough subjects and had been completely disillusioned by the whole system and kept going back to the fact that I’m not really doing this for myself but for the empty belief that a degree will open doors for me not otherwise available, which we all know isn’t entirely true.

I began to hate everything about University life both what I was doing (study, travel, expenses, friends) and what I wasn’t doing (parties, late nights, on campus, pubs, friends) - all I seem to get doing was the hard boring stuff and missing out on the fun stuff. So I dropped out of my first degree and took some time off, which didn’t really result in much because come and new year I signed up for another degree. During my time off I was able to think about what I really want to do, what I was good at and where I wanted to be, through a bit of research and just some time off I started again but not with the same energy, I was more measured this time, tried hard to be organised and paced myself to ensure that I was on top of it all. For the most part I got it wrong, somewhere towards half way through the semester it all fell apart, I did progressively get better but it wasn’t before a few bumps.

I again failed a few subjects, this brought home some fears and some cruel reality that I wasn’t ready to face but which others around me seemed to be thinking about - maybe I wasn’t cut out for higher education. But I plodded through, encouraging myself most of the way, building a system of study changing the degree again to focus more on my strength and less on my weakness my only focus now was to just finish, just finish and be rid of study, about this time I found a good job that was in IT and this help boost my energy and the first time that I discovered that the busier I am the more I organised am and the more I get done. I started passing all my subjects.
Then before I knew it I was nearing the end of my degree and the sudden realisation that I have to start applying for graduate jobs. The most painful semester over and I had landed myself a job while still keeping the current one and huge.

Looking back, I am going to miss university, the learning, the lecturers, the stories, the time…oh the free time that is available to a student. My peers not so much, the mentality that I had built during my last semester felt more like worker bee while the other people that I worked with just didn’t work hard enough to the point that it was frustrating. Any another further study that I will do from here on in will not have the same feeling as my university life which is a shame, I like being able to walk into a coffee shop where they know you, reading the paper and being able pursue hobbies I fear will become things of the past.

Graduate Jobs

So I’m at that stage where I am applying for graduate positions. I’m not the brightest student that has ever been so I’m relying a lot on my extra activities such as work and sport. I’m not really sure how these will hold up, I assume that they would run a lot of the online applications through a computer system that would filter them based on a set of rules such as grades or keywords.

It brings me to wonder if going for a graduate position is the best option, but I suppose that it’s the point of it - the option is there. I knew from the beginning that I wasn’t too much of a chance but I thought that the opportunity is there and there is not reason to be half assed about it, so I haven’t been. I would probably be averaging 4 - 6 hours per application.

But saying that I’m no chance and not getting any acceptance emails/sms is a different story out of the 9 that I did last week I got 1…today.

I guess that reality hits harder that it sounds.

More updates later.

Almost Done

I have finally had my last class today and now so begins that dreaded time of the year. End of year exams are different for two reason and so much more painful:

The spring racing carnival is everywhere at this time of the year and it’s annoying because I have always wanted to go but for the past 5 years exams have been on at the same time of the year. But if everything goes well this will be the last year that it can be shoved in my face and I can do nothing about it.

Summer, how we love summer and being at Uni doesn’t make a difference everything is so much better. Having to sit inside at a desk/computer and work instead of going outside just isn’t fair. This isn’t so much of a problem because with proper planning most of this can be avoided.

The finish line for this year is so close I can almost see it.
One more semester to go and I am finally done.

Social Identity Theory

I am currently studying a new subject at school that gets us to examine how we work in groups.
It is meant to help us when we get jobs and work in organisational groups, I have just recently completed an essay and due to the nature of the essay I learned 3 things which I now find very useful - Social Identity, Social Dominance Theory and Knowledge Transfer. They all relate to organisational groups, but the first two I found interesting to learn about form a social standpoint.

It is interesting how things from Uni seem to meld into life, somewhere in the back of my mind the stuff that I had learnt about SI (Social Identity) and SD (Social Dominance) started to make sense when I could see how it manifested in our friends, which is a bad way to think about it but I couldn’t help it. I started to wonder why certain people acted they way they did or said what they said and all of a sudden it popped into my head.
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Put Your Hand Up

I have made and conscious effort this semester to get actively involved in my class discussions and in lectures, to ask questions and answer them and to a lesser extent make myself known to fellow students and the lecturer/tutor.

This decision was also due to the fact that I am nearing the end of my degree and wish to finally finish with good marks so I hope that greater discussion might improve or disprove my understanding of the subject, but there is also a noticeable difference in the class structure this semester, there are quite a few students who are part-time meaning that many of them are working full-time (post grade, masters, further study), I’m not certain if an opportunity would present its self as a prospective employer but it has been in the back of my mind.
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Uni Books

I hate the fact that when ever a new semester starts we are always expected to buy new sets of book, not because I am opposed to the unnecessary waste of text books when they could be used in electronic form. But because of the sometimes excessive cost of them. Most lectures know full well the cost of books and the fact that the vast majority of student enrolled and attending subjects are undergraduates which in most cases means that they are on tight budgets.

All four of my subjects require me to purchase text books that are $100 and above the most expensive being a double book reaching the $170 mark. So as a result this week I have been running around looking for second hand books for most of my subjects, so far I can only find one, I will soon try the other channels such as ebay and non-academic second hand book stores. This cost of text books pushes my start up costs for each semester up to about the $500 mark which can impact quite a bit on the back pocket and force me to be tight with money for the next couple of weeks until everything stabilise and debits are paid off.

I have been told and I have heard that there can be some influence as to which book is chosen to each subject because there are sometimes connections between the author, university, subject coordinator and lecturer making the book not always the correct choice for the students particularly if it ends up being rather expensive. I am unsure how true this is and there are cases where it could be legitimate but thinking back I could see this happening on occasion.

My other gripe is that for many of the subjects the books could just as easily be offered in electronic form. Many subjects only use sections, parts of the book or certain chapters it is a little bit of a waste when you consider that you paid $100 of the book and only using $50 worth. University libraries already pay large amounts of money to have digital libraries of books at their disposal for students to use, and in some cases when an electronic book has been accessed a number of times the paper/hard back version of the book is bought. This I see can have two effects for both students and the university; firstly the University will be able to better track it’s book inventory because it will see more accurately what students are reading and where the money should be spent, the second reason I can only speculate but considering that students might end up having more money (although we might pay more in uni fees each passing year) and therefore have a better University experience or even spend more money at Uni on other things.

Just on a side note, I have started to notice the cut backs that the VSU faced are coming through on higher fees for University activities. I guess that I’m just among the many disgruntled University students with no money.