It’s been a very interesting semester at ACU Strathfield. There has been a lot of construction, and this is expected to last for a few years, and although it can be quite inconvienient at times, I can’t wait to see the results of this in a few years time.
It’s really interesting the people you meet on campus. I bumped into my cousin the other day, which was a real surprise, because I had heard she got into uni, I just didn’t know it was ACU. There are also a number of family friends attending ACU too, which is great to see so many familiar faces on campus. Hopefully by now you too have many familiar faces on campus and have made some great new life-long friends.
The most important thing at this stage of the semester is to keep things into perspective. As I write this we are about to enter week 9 of a 12 week semester and for many of us this means we will be undertaking some form of professional experience. For me this means 4 weeks working in a Primary school with year 5 students. This is the culmination of a semester’s worth of study and allows me to put into practice the things we’ve been learning.
Keep working hard. See you around.
Andrew
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What a very busy week it’s been at the Strathfield campus!
There are so many new faces around the place (which no doubt means longer lines in the cafeteria!). And the fact that there are so many new faces, is a testament to the expanding courses and campuses ACU offers.
As many of us have noticed there is currently some building works on-campus, which can definitely confuse us all, as classrooms have temporary locations etc., but if you’re not sure where to go there is always someone willing to help!
I look forward to posting some more about the semester as it progresses, and if you happen to see me around campus, come and say hi!!!
Andrew
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Hello folks,
Well it is that time again, when the semester ends and we have learnt everything they tried to teach us and are perfectly prepared for exams. Sadly this is rarely the case most students know enough to get by on the exam and there are some who are already confident (this is rare). For those of us in the first category this time is study time. When i say study this means ready, writing and discussing all the topics we have studied in units this semester. In reality it looks a little like this for me and a lot of others too. Yesterday i successfully procrastinated (a word you will become very familiar with) by, mopping the kitchen floor, vacuuming, baking a pie, baking a cake, cleaning the fish tank and watching Hawaii 5-0. While none of these activities are recommended during this time, exam time is really helpful in getting my house very clean and smelling like its a 1950′s housewife’s humble abode.
What i really should be doing is learning about; medications that can be used on children in what doses, how to birth a baby, antibiotics and pain medications, drug administration, biology of the human body and functions, research and ethics but alas i have now fallen in love with Alex O’lauchlan and Scott Caan.
Wish me luck for Thursday when all the chaos of exams begin for me.
Naomi
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Hi everyone!
Today is a big day! Today is my last day of uni this year! Next year I will be in my third and final year of study – scary! I can’t believe how fast the time goes when you’re at uni; you’re so busy with assignments, exams, work, friends and family that 12 weeks goes in a blink of an eye.
This semster has been hard, but enjoyable, it’s the first semester I studied psychology – let me tell you all, I loved it! Learning about mental illness + identifying the symptoms = facinating!
This semester was also my first semester working as a Student Ambassador and I absolutely loved it. Learning how to use the sat nav at times proved to be difficult but entertaining, providing you got to your destination in time. Being a Student Ambasssador meant that I had lots of opportunities to go on school visits and career expos. Providing vital information and answering student and parent questions, this was very rewarding as you’re helping them decide what course to study. Can’t wait to see what next year brings!
Recently, I have been stressing over work experience, some advice – start as early as you can! I applied for many internships and spent days filling in loads of different applications, but unfortuntatley I had no success which was really disheartening. So with internships gone (they all have due dates outlining when your application needs to be in!), I’m searching for work experience. This means that I won’t get paid – but the experience is worth it! In my industry (business), it’s crucial that I get some work experience, it ultimately makes me more employable because I have some experience. I’m hoping to do my work experience over the holidays, which means less money because I’ll be working less, but at the end of the day, work experience is far more valuable on my resume! Plus this means that I won’t have to do my work experience during semester because I couldn’t do that. I’d find it too much to juggle doing uni, work and work experience all at the same time. So I ploughed on and continued to send organisations emails with my resume, I’ve heard back from a couple, so keep your fingers and toes crossed for me! I’ll keep you updated!
Being that it’s the last day of semester, this means that next week is “study week” and then the following two weeks are exams. For me, this is the most stressful time of uni – I hate exams! To try and prevent myself from getting all worried, I make a study timetable which outlines all the topics I need to cover and cross them off as I go – the more I cross off, the better I feel heading into the exam! So for the next three weeks I won’t be seeing friends much but it’ll be worth it, I have 4 months holiday after exams.
So for now I’ll say Ciao. Hopefully exams will go well and I’ll see you on the other side!
Jenna 
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Throughout my blogs I have tried to show examples of my fellow classmates and reveal the brilliant diversity that is found at ACU. Each member of my classes brings something incredibly different and unmistakably beautiful. Each one with their one history, experiences and perspective. It is such a privilege to use this forum to use them as a means to make silly jokes.
Which leads us to our next profile.
I openly have a man-crush on the this classmate. I’m not remotely ashamed or embarrassed. He’s a pretty man. I find that on very rare occasions someone special comes into your life, someone who helps build you as a person, sharpens you as an individual and helps guide the next chapter of your life. Although Glen is not this person to me, he is definitely a top bloke. After meeting him for the first time in April, Glen has quickly become a really good mate of mine and as such, it is only appropriate that I write a true and honest profile about him that is entirely based upon fact and not the imagination of a bored uni bum whilst he awaits the next Centrelink cheque to come in.
Glen has a lot going for him, he is a full time theology student who is in several classes with me, he is soon to be married to his drop-dead gorgeous high school sweetheart, and has done some modelling in Peru (see above picture), however, although he would claim otherwise, the greatest aspect of Glen is that he used to be the frontman of a Canberra-based pop-punk band.
Every musicians dream.
Glen insists that they weren’t too serious and it was just a bit of fun.
I am sceptical. It is in my opinion that any act that involves straightening one’s hair, one must be serious about it. They were a serious band. Yahoo Serious. Serious FM. Welcome to the World Serious of Serious sponsored by Honey Nut Serious. They were a serious band.
If you ever see Glen about, please ask him to sing some Simple Plan, he will happily comply.
Apart from his previous musical endeavours, getting married in a few months, and generally looking handsome, Glen is an absolute gun in the theology class, asking questions (good ones too), challenging thoughts, concepts and philosophies and happily entertaining me when the inevitable occurs and I lose focus in the middle of a three hour lecture.
This is Glen.
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Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to a jewel of the Theology class, an emerald to ACU and a Faberge egg to Canberra, the one and only… John.
I find the more senior classmates of mine easiest to write about. It’s probably because they are severely more interesting and have achieved more than younger peoples. Unless the young person in question is Justin Bieber, he has achieved a lot also, he murdered an entire artform.
R.I.P. Music.
Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of John, but he kind of looks like that guy from Curb Your Enthusiasm but fifteen years older and slightly more rotund.
 Courtesy of The Bambola Factory - http://thebambolafactory.tumblr.com/post/7520685166/geek-of-the-week-larry-david-after-last-nights John studies theology part-time. The rest of his time is taken up by being a grandparent and driving politicians and other dignitaries around Canberra. I often ask him for goss, but as a good Catholic gentleman, he shares not a whisper.
You know those planes that fly about, yeah, those ones in the sky. Well do you remember the ones that would have a sign flailing behind, announcing a message of great savings at your local car dealership? Well John flies them. Yesterday he released someone’s ashes over Canberra (true story). I thought that was gross but then he reminded me he gets paid quite well for it. That makes it ok.
The first presentation I saw John give, he spoke entirely in rhyme. He spoke of rivers flowing from the mountaintops as a migrating flock of birds soared across the heavens above.
It was a book review.
John has a penchant for North American singer/songwriters, particularly from the 60′s. He can recite a plethora of Leonard Cohen lyrics. I’ll only be impressed if he can recite a plethora of Kanye.
This is John.
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While some students utilised their mid semester break by doing assignments, or relaxing… a group of ACU students decided Australian University Games (AUGs) seemed like a better option.
So at 4:30am on Sunday 25 September.. I dragged myself out of bed to catch a flight to the Gold Coast. Some fellow ACUers from the Brisbane Campus were nice enough to pick us up from the airport, although the usual 1 hour journey to the Gold Coast took us about 3 hours due to some navigational difficulties!
The ACU representation at the Gold Coast was epic. We took over the Condor Apartments and caused havoc on the Gold Coast. What did I compete in you ask? European Handball. Because I enjoy the sport? I wouldn’t say that – with no experience whatsoever I thought it seemed like a fun sport to have a crack at! After playing Ultimate Frisbee at the 2009 AUGs, I realised the fun of competing in a completely random sport!! As it turns out, I was extremely lucky to be part of such an awesome handball team, which included ACUers from 4 different campuses, as well as an Australian Handball Representative. Special mention goes to Sarah Cherry from Brisbane, who begged a goalie from one team to let her score a goal.
The week started off with an amazing opening ceremony at the Gold Coast. Other highlights include: losing every handball game (but learning the rules!), human fooseball, stealing QUTs mascot, running to the top of the clock tower at Bond University with a 10kg bag of rice (don’t even ask!), enjoying the luxury that is Bond University (they have their own Student Flights centre!), great team dinners, social nights out (with a different theme each night), an extreme lack of sleep, spray tanning a volleyballer for ‘dress your mates’ night, mixing hummus and yoghurt (a surprising combination!), enjoying some local fountains, cooking eggs for a late night snack, meeting new ACUers, and making friends for life.
All in all – an epic week at the Gold Coast!!!
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This weeks profile features one of the few Wonderful Ladies Who Study Theology (hereafter known as WLWST’s… I couldn’t think of another acronym that was wasn’t offensive…thus I went for jibberish).
Bek is one of the stars of Theology, her results for classes, even the ones she doesn’t enjoy, make mine look like sick little garden gnomes that have faded in forty years of sunlight and dereliction. Along with a few other friends (who will be featured in later editions) we have terrific discussions about theology, church, ethics and life. They are terrific mainly due to our conflicting views about such things, although occasionally we agree. I hate it when this happens – thanks to my sincere love of jovial conflict. Therefore, when such an abhorrent occasion occurs, I will quickly say something outrageous so to distract Bek from focussing on the shared perspective. Unfortunately she’s started to realise my cunning plan. I will have to devise another.
Bek recently went to Spain to go high five the Pope and attend World Youth Day. I often wonder whether the Pope has ever high fived anybody. I’d like to think he has, perhaps only once after seeing a re-run of Top Gun. I can see him, arm raised with a cocktail of nervously excited anticipation spread across his grinning face. Genius.
Unfortunately Bek didn’t have the opportunity to high five the man himself. She didn’t mind. It was after all, a story I made up for a blog.
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So to our first profile, I introduce you to my mate and fellow student – Maurice.
Maurice is one of the most terrific people I know. He has a brilliantly sharp wit and always has the perfect comeback to my teasing. We get along great. I often pretend that I know nothing about our subjects, so when I answer a question correctly he nearly has a heart attack… I’ll get him one day.
This is a photo of Maurice when he was much younger and had a glorious beard.
Here is a photo I took of him last week. He flipped me the bird but got embarrassed and thus it is blurry.
He has a Masters in Modern History and has recently completed a massive work about the ‘Civilisation of Man’. I’m not entirely sure what that means. I think it may mean he knows more about stuff than I… although I have a Masters in Yahtzee, so I guess it works out pretty even.
He has an agent in New York and is in the process of releasing his big book of something over the coming year.
Unfortunately, Maurice, the sympathetic classmate that he is, enjoys asking me questions whenever I am doing a presentation, they are often rather clever questions which result in my answers being a medley of miscellaneous grunts, twitching and potentially relevant, though unstructured words.
This is Maurice.
Until next week!
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Hi everyone!
This is the first blog I’ve written on this page, and I thought I would let you know what I’ve been up to with study lately. Today my science class had our first assignment due for the semester. We were in groups of 4 and had to invent something. My group chose to invent a new type of dog washing machine, and we had fun presenting that to our class today. For the past few weeks I have been on a practical field placement one day a week in a Primary school in Brisbane. I’m in a year 2 classroom, and have enjoyed teaching a few maths lessons. I’m currently preparing for another maths lesson about money that I’ll be teaching on Wednesday. I’m going to get back to work now, so I’ll let you know next week how the lesson went.
Cheers,
Zach
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