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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Thursday 20 October 2005 (Day View)

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20.10.2005 – Thursday 20 October – Tutoring & Chainsaws

Day

• What a day. I arrive at uni for my nine o’clock tutorial, where I have my photo taken for next week’s demonstration, sitting at one of the computers, tutoring and drinking in direct violation of half a dozen rules—of course, very sleepy because I never get to bed when I should. The tutorial is supposed to finish at ten o’clock, but I stay until eleven, when I rush off to a ten o’clock meeting to discuss the marking of the course. I then rush back to the labs, and tutor again until just before two o’clock, when Maz and I rush off to the psychology building for some “Word Games”; fortunately, it isn’t too mind-bending, and I emerge with most of my faculties still operational. After this, we attend “Views on Dating Relationships”, in which we express our views on dating relationships, all so someone else can figure out if the role of the family is more important for Japanese. I then rush to the Ville for dinner, emailing my group on the way to tell them I can’t do my part of the presentation, as I simply don’t have the time. On the way back from dinner, I find that student’s are panicking about tomorrow’s deadline for their COMP1800 website, and proffer the advice that a cheap chainsaw from Bunning’s would solve many a group problem, and then accidentally forward this sane advice to the lecturer instead of the student—I suspect chainsaws are not a university sanctioned group motivation technique. UQ, university for the real world, and it’s a jungle out there.

Night

• Work is hectic too—things are collapsing, people are demanding, it’s raining, I’m out of yoghurt and my chocolate makes me thirsty, and there’s nothing interesting to watch. It’s a shame how everything is backwards—when I first came to uni, I didn’t really know what to do. Now I’m at the pinnacle of my university student career, and I’m about to leave. I now know how to get good marks without expending any undue effort, just who to complain to and precisely how, and I pretty much have guaranteed tutoring and after-hours work on campus, for as long as I want it. I’ve even worked out how to avoid the annoying predatory union election canvassers, by wearing a bright pink “Jolt” shirt (“Jolt” is one of the slightly less-insane parties running for student union positions, roughly Liberal as far as I can tell). Wearing a “Jolt” shirt not only stops the insane left annoying me with their cancerous dribble, but they actually smile ironically when I walk past. It even stops the Jolt people from bothering to talk to me. I also (surprisingly, given the amount of complains I’ve submitted to them) seem to be immune from the scary men who roam the labs in search of rule violators—today, continuing in my carefree way, I tutor with food and drink while chatting to the helpdesk staff, while they’re wandering around removing drinks from other people and getting tutors in trouble for not enforcing the lab rules. I suppose it will all end sadly; I’ll fail a course and be done for inciting violence, continual complaining and harassment, have my lab access revoked, and end up sleeping in a wet gutter, dreaming about the days when I was only minutes from a vending machine and had spare change.