Oh Uni, How Familiar

I have recently returned to University for my (potentially) last semester of my very long degree and it almost feels new again. Last semester I did not attend a single lecture (they were all too early in the morning) and did not find it necessary. This semester though, this final semester, in my fourth year of attending University.... I have decided to actually be the responsible organised student that I've been promising to be next semester each and every semester. It's going well so far. I attend lectures and those I can't (and some I legitimately can't) I listen to online. I read my textbooks and I finished an essay more than a week before it was due so I would have more than a week to work on another one. I'm doing so well.

And oh boy does it feel good to have it all sorted out for once. I'm doing a first year unit. An intro to the general idea of everything it seems called Ideas in Action. Different lecturers come in and say things about community vs autonomy and witch trials and all sorts of things. It's great because I walked in to this lecture theatre after not having been in a lecture since 2012 (and even then my lectures were all small theatres hidden in the humanities department building) but this... this theatre is huge. It's two stories tall at least and it is filled with hundreds of eager students with their ipads, laptops, pens, pencils, notepads, textbooks, highlighters, binders, and of course: that fresh faced look that says "I'm new here."

It is the iconic University experience. The massive theatre that's filled with a sea of faces that all look down at the tiny old professor talking about some subject that they find endlessly interesting whereas a lot of us are just learning about to pass this unit and go onto other, more interesting, subjects. It was both nostalgic and new all at once. It was the kind of lecture you see briefly in movies, not the kind of lectures I was used to where we would get told about the conventions and techniques of those movies. It feels great. It feels like I'm taking part in something.

Then I go to class for this 1st year unit and everything is just adorable. They've assigned us an 800-1000 word essay and oh gosh it's tiny. It's positively bite sized. All these first years are all so clueless. The tutor talks on and on about things and she is ever so helpful and understanding. She is really keen to make sure all those bright young first years are comfortable asking questions on things they're not sure about (and they are not sure about a lot of things) and it's all just so amusing to have put myself in such a relatively simple environment. While she was talking to the class about very basic essay related things like structure and choosing to express a single argument etc I was busy ignoring her and writing it anyway. I nearly finished it in class and would've had I not periodically interacted with the people around me/turned away to pretend to listen.

That may paint me in a bad light what with the whole not paying attention in class and being pretentious about it but I do actually aim to learn... just if you're going to spend half the class discussing the basics of essay writing then I don't need to really pay attention. I've been there, done that, repeat a dozen times over and then repeat again. Like I said, I'm actually being a responsible Uni student and doing work. I plan on evenly spacing everything out to minimise the rushed attempts to finish near crunch time that leads to being shut away in a room for hours on end with no distractions. I know I cannot do everything a week and a half in advance forever but that's OK because the more I get a headstart on now the less I'll need to do later.

Yes. I did it. I beat procrastination by simply just not procrastinating. I learned a valuable lesson last semester which was just that: do things sooner in advance and everything will be fine. Thankfully now I am doing only essay based units instead of film production units so I have this thing called "time". So much time and I know that if I don't waste my time I will enjoy my time a lot more.

Here's to a successful and slightly less stressful final semester!

Issues With Self-Examining Identity

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of how we define ourselves as a person. I've started the idea of making an "About Me" video once every year to chart the progress of me as a person. I refer to vlogging as a form of "visual autobiography" which is in itself problematic in terms of representation and its inherent constructed nature. The basic issue is that because I choose what to present myself as, I thus create a subjective representation as a front to the world as a whole. It isn't an inherent fiction, but is not an accurate reality either.

So how does one define the self accurately? I'm not sure there is a system that is all encompassing that enables an individual to properly define and convey identity and individuality through anything but prolonged exposure to a person. Think about who you are as a person (an abstract and intangible idea) and then try to describe it in words. For example: I am a nice person. But what is nice? Nice as a word is solid, without spectrum, and thus suddenly creates both a strict and confined category, but also an inherently subjective one as you are now trying to convey to someone else your meaning through a sign system that is flawed because you have your own personal idea of what "nice" is based on your context and personal history, that is not the same as their idea of what "nice" is. I'm nice because I don't actively insult people. Someone else's idea of nice is that they go out of their way to be considerate of helpful to others. To some this then is very nice. This "very" thus creates a sense of spectrum. There's nothing to compare it to and if you did, you cannot convey the comparison point to another person without assuming they innately understand that too from their reference point in the hopes that they align.

Creating a list of qualities that describe a person begins categorising yourself based off unclear criteria. There is no objective scale to the validity and intensity of these criteria. You can be a bit nice, just nice, very, not very, extremely, a lot, pretty, normally, often nice, etc... These then create approximations as guidelines. Well isn't that enough? We are surrounded by the subjectivity and issues of connotation vs denotation of language in our everyday life. This issue here is a universal issue and thus as it is normalised isn't it irrelevant? A person does not need to be definable by words (seeing as this is in itself difficult and vague).

Well we then must examine how someone constructs their own identity. There are so many different factors outside of personality traits that a person can find as an integral part of their identity. For example their sexuality, nationality, or their commitment to a specific community such as Nerdfighteria. They then divide these into either facets of defining features. Now I'm a nerdfighter, but I don't view this as an integral part of who I am. It is an addition to me, not what defines me as a person because, as I see it, it has not altered my personality, merely aligned perfectly with the qualities I already held as part of the core of who I am. Other people choose very much so that being a Nerdfighter is what they are. Similarly a person can have a strong patriotic association with their country, but others may simply think of themselves as "Australian" simply because that is where they happened to be born. Another way of looking at it is this: Lindsey Stirling plays the violin and she is a violinist. Einsten played the violin, but he is a physicist. The things we do and are play smaller or larger parts in how we construct our own identities given how much weight we attribute to them.

I personally have no patriotic sense of Australia in a nationalistic sense, but I do love the idea that due to geography I am Australian. When summer comes, it is an Australian summer. When the air wraps around you like a warm blanket and the eucalyptus leaves have dried out and saturated the air with their scent. Native birds fly overhead and there is this very sense that is Australia. There's no politics involved, this is simply a shared experience of atmosphere and iconic flora/fauna that others around can identify with on a personal level. It is my childhood, it is my day to day life, it is not merely a tourist experience but a strong sense of seasonal nostalgia.

We now find that simply listing "I am Australian" is an over simplification of a person because we both require a definition of the category, but also the motivation for that category. Identity is inherently complex not just as a concept, but to explain it.

I also recently thought about my self-conception of my identity as a fixed point vs the reality of its fluidity. When driving along I realised that I often describe myself as an introvert who hates making phone calls because they stress me out. But I am increasingly more capable of picking up phones and just making phone calls. Suddenly reflecting upon my identity in terms of personal qualities had proved problematic because it had solidified it when in actuality it was in flux. I'm 21, I have not finished going through big changes in my life to reach a point of safety and calm in my development as a person. In fact, that might never come. After University is moving out, dating, marriage, children, as children grow up and change so does my role as a parent, middle age, children moving out, retirement, etc... death of loved ones destroys the idea of me as a part of a bond between two or more people.

How can I understand my identity if I never examine it? But if I examine it I create a constructed image that can become outdated. Schroedinger's Self-Conception. Self reflection becomes important to self understanding. Alternatively identity can remain as an abstract concept not consciously understood but demonstrated through actions and thoughts without having to filter through the subjective personal bias of your own insecurities and self esteem. One of my favourite faux-philosophical questions to ask in a satirically-pretentious fashion when asked "who are you?" is "who are any of us? Can we really know the self?" Only now have I started to really think about it in depth.

Of course we know who we are... we are who we are who we know we are. You are as you are. But you don't need to put it into concrete words because they will always be inadequate for appropriately encompassing the complexity that is you. A person can be defined by their interaction with their surroundings and that is good enough I think. After all, words are but ideas, but actions are demonstrations of those ideas. I'm not a musician because I can play an instrument but because I play it with the purpose of engaging with it in a sense that demonstrates that I am. I am Australian because in my mind I react to the stimuli in a way that I find suits my abstract idea of what it means for me to be Australian. I have only managed to put it into words through practice of expression and over 2 decades of experiencing that stimuli so that I have adequate knowledge to construct those sentences.

So yeah... define yourself through actions not words I think is the eventual conclusion to this.

Cubed is not 3 Times

I finished my mocks a while ago I just never got round to blogging about it because Combat Arms is addictively fun (Death Room, 3v3, good close range weapon = I own. When there's a limited amount of people the strategy becomes predictable so I know where everyone is all the time. I rock. You don't know what I'm saying...) Anyhoo, (I don't put punctuation like full stops when sentences end in brackets because I don't know what I'm doing) I have got my results back! Would you like to hear them?
Of course you would!
Physics: %61 (same as last semester)
Chemistry: %65 (improvement)
English Lit: %72 (72 on each essay. Consistent much? Hell yeah.)
Drama: I don't remember but I think it was... %59?
Applic: %32 (or %33...)
That's it.

That's it? But... surely you wrote some funny/stupid answers in some of your exams right? You ALWAYS do this!

Oh fine seeing as you all asked (You totally did) I shall tell you!

Drama: Well, do you ever have the sudden urge when you've got 30 minutes left on the clock that, although you've pretty much given up and you're scrounging for that extra few marks just to make sure you'll pass, that your essay needs to contain the word "Flesh"? I know I did. Unfortunately after racking my brains for a bit and writing a few more sentences I couldn't really think of a way to incorporate the word "flesh" into an essay about the characterisation of Quick in scene 70 of Cloudstreet (Quick Drama students! Look up the scene to see to which one I am referring to!) as easy as you'd think it would be... Well I settled on "fleshy". I was quite proud after that. Then I also drew a picture of Pac Man trying to hang himself but he hasn't got a neck so it doesn't really work. I wrote a caption saying something along the lines of "What happens when Pac Man wants to commit suicide by hanging himself?" and then when I got my exam back my epic teacher Mr G had drawn a ghost and wrote "and does he turn into a ghost?". Lol.

Physics: Oh the ultimate of superfluous questions did reside upon the paper of this cursed exam! It asked us for our opinion. It asked us if we thought that landing on Mars (or the Moon) was worthwhile. We get 1 mark for why. That was all. We get a mark for practically any answer we gave (except Nish, who wrote "Yes. For scientific purposes" and somehow got it wrong. That is the only REAL REASON to EVER go to the Moon or Mars and she got it WRONG! What the hell?) and so it wasn't really related to either theory or practical aspects of Physics. It was pointless filler.

I dug into it and wrote as much as I possibly could just to get that one mark and tell the markers how much they have failed at life for having had this question in the exam.

"This is more political/personal than theory or physics. It shouldn't be in this exam. I think from the point of view of scientific achievement: Yes. It means we have advanced to the point where we are capable of doing this. It shows someone learnt something from highschool physics and cared enough to continue doing it. This question should be worth more for something so pointless. I wrote a lot."

Yes. I demand that I get extra marks for something I don't even believe should exist on the paper! (That's just how I roll...dun na na na... oh yeah.)

English Lit: Only one. Well it was in my essay about Medea (Woo! Child killing psycho b*** FTW) and I talked about how her infanticide was a shocking act that would be looked down upon in both ancient greek and moden society.... except in the case of me. "...except for me because I'm cold and soulless." I got a comment saying "you should exclude from saying this, it needs justification." Well my justification was that you can't generalise about the population or society so I'm the guy who goes "BAHA! Owned!". I'm not really I swear! And for some reason the font keeps getting smaller and I need to fix it...

Chemistry: Nah, nothing wrong with that exam. Did quite well.... yeah I'm disapointed too. Nah just kidding I remember now I did have one stupid answer which I knew was wrong. OK it was to discover the molecular formula of a Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC's- you know, those things that destroy the Ozone layer but are absolutely harmless to the human body and so you can drink them? Yeah. I hate them too.) OK when doing carbon chains there can only be 4 bonds OK. So the outer C's have 3 extra non-C's and the middle C's have 2 non-C's because they bond to C's on either end. Got it? OK well I made my formula C3F3Cl6. This is not possible because that's an extra Cl. But I had to draw this but I couldn't. I went through my working twice and couldn't find my mistake (The working worked except for the fact that I had forgotten the extra Cl in the emperical formula mass so in the end... in other words I should've got 2 instead of 3 Carbons). So in the end I drew C3F3Cl5 and then a Cl walking away going "screw you guys". To which I completely agree, screw you C3F3Cl5! You're so stupid! I hate you... I hope you hate it too.

Applic: Where to begin!? Oh I had an entire hour left to get 9 marks just to get a minimum of 50 marks if I get %100 for what I had answered. OK NO ONE get's %100 for what they write let alone me so from the beginning I knew I was going to fail. This means I get to draw some pretty pictures!

One question had an entire page to work it out. I didn't know how to. I drew a hug landscape of mountains and cliffs that led down to this unknowingly huge ravine. Three little people were on it. The first one was at the top cliff going "Suddenly knowing simulatenous equations becomes pointless and insignificant compared to the grand wonder of GOING OUTSIDE!" (which is true. Terrible hurty burny sun over simultaneous equations any day) The next one was lower down saying "Help. I can't get up I'm stuck here." (There was no connection between opposite facing cliffs) and then one guy is down the bottom looking completely screwed saying "You got problems! I'm right down the bottom!"

A turned a linear and a curved graph into the Opera House with little people going to visit it.

I wrote (instead of answering the question) to something I completely didn't understand: "Have you ever wondered who updates Transperth's Twitter page? I mean surely they don't get a robot to do it. How do you even get the job? Do you have to show a portfolio of tweets? No I will not answer the question! I'm giving you some entertainment while you mark!" to which the teacher replied "Marking is never boring" (but she later admitted it was) and "Interesting point." My point is indeed very interesting! I can tell right now you are very fascinated indeed. Here have a berry. You recieved Weppa Berry. Put Weppa Berry in your berry pocket.

Hehe... anyhoo.

Oh yes! There was one I somehow got marks on where as NO ONE ELSE in the school did :) OK it started off with a box-plot showing a spread of IQ's from 80 to 120 (Woo! I've got higher than that spread. Oh yeah) and then proceeded to ask questions like "What is the probability that selecting a score out of this will be below 120?" Well... 1... "What's the probability it will be from 110 to 129"... Huh? You CAN'T have it OUTSIDE the range! Then it continued to ask impossible things. OK every previous time I have sat down and thought "this isn't right, this is impossible" it doesn't mean I've intelligently discovered something... it means I just don't understand it. Well after the third question asking for impossible answers I had underlined and circled the values in the questions and pointed out "THE RANGE ONLY GOES TO 120!!!" and then circle the box plot multiple times going "120! 120! AGHH!!!" then wrote "It's not possible but the questions keep asking for it! This normally means my logic is wrong but IT'S RIGHT THERE!". I started getting a bit aggravated and drew someone screaming and crying their eyes out going "AAGGHHH!!!!" and a frame by frame animation of a man beating his head against the wall till it bled.

I got marks for that which no one else did. I'm happy.

I'm sure there were others I just don't remember them.

Just before exams the person overlooking (they have a proper name title thing I just don't know it... nor do I care) us all makes sure our individual exams are complete by going "Turn to page 1, the cover" (...) "You shall see the instruction of the paper. Turn to page two. It starts with (few words) ends with (few words)" and thus repeats. She was the least knowledgable person about maths in the entire room. Cubed does not mean "times three" and she refered to all the non-alphabetical characters as "weird symbol". Oh well, I suppose you can't be too picky when choosing people to babysit us and make sure we don't cheat. It's not like she can actually help us during the exam.

Mocks (Advertising Works)

OK let's start with the short bit. Advertising works.

It does! You totally think that all those hundreds of images you're bombarded with every day affects your descisions at all but no, it does. Perhaps a long speach on how advertising gets into our brains and manipulates us is in order? No. No I just want to talk about DVD's I got recently... Keeping Mum and In Bruges. Why did I get these out recently? Because I had seen a poster for them... years ago. I remember seeing Keeping Mum being reviewed on what used to be my favourite show (The Movie Show on SBS... before it got cancelled. Yeah... nothing says "You're not different to every one else" like "my favourite show got cancelled.") back when it came out about 2 years ago. I remembered two pieces of information about it: Someone kills people and Rowan Atkinson is in it so it was a comedy. So it never really was one of those films you think "OK I want to go see next week!" it was just there. It wasn't even just there, I barely remembered it ever but when I saw it I decided that I knew OF it so I should watch it. Hmmm. Not convincing enough that advertising works? OK how about In Bruges. Released early last year. I didn't even know what it was called until AFTER I had picked it up, decided I wanted to rent it, handed it to my mother to get her approval beforehand (she gets to decide what I get to watch and apparently anything MA15+ needs tight scrutiny before I can JUST get her to say yes) and she had allowed me to get it... Yeah. Guess what I knew about it beforehand? Nothing. I hadn't even read the back, I hadn't done anything but picked it up and recognised the cover. I remember last year turning through the pages of the TV guide and seeing it advertised and it having good reviews and that was enough. You just need to KNOW of something and when you see it later you'll think perhaps you should get that something? Yeah, I say a review on the case saying "the two funniest hitmen since Pulp Fiction" and that also gives you a link to intice you. It works. After that I knew I definitely wanted to watch this film. THEN after my mother had approved it I read the back to find out why the man on the front was holding an icecream and a gun.

So yeah. Just need that one little thing put there in your mind and suddenly the product becomes so much more appealing. I also rented Juno. It was epicly awesome and not outrageous or over the top to be funny. It was brilliant and had just the right tone and feel to it to have those random lines that seem like normal dialogue just stick out and you laugh at them. They're funny. The character of Juno is pretty cool.

Wonderful short movie review there.

Anyhoo, English Lit mock exam! Agghhh? Nien Agghhh!

I spent so much time studying Chemistry and Physics and thought "It's OK... my Lit exam is on Monday but I don't need to start studying until the weekend..." And little did I know that it was actually Saturday already. Damn, I thought I had an extra day. So I spent ALL of Sunday reviewing notes, rereading things and going over things again and again thinking "It's OK. I don't need to tackle the poetry section until later..." So you can see the line of procrastination here can you? I read notes on poems without reading the poems themselves. Thankfully my exam started in the evening so I had time to study beforehand. I get up, go on computer, and play Combat Arms online for an hour and a half. Well you know I haven't exceded my download limits for Off Peak so the morning is the only time I can play OK? I am allowed to play a video game instead of studying for my imminent exam! You know why I'm allowed to play a video game and spend the 20 minutes before the exam reading the poems I had "prepared" again and again and again?

Because I rock!

BAM!

Guess how it went? Come on, guess. Say it right now... to... the screen...

It could not have gone...

...and BETTER!!! XD I honestly OWNED (as in PWNED as in "showed a high level of skill in defeating or outdoing the average level of talent required to accomplish something") that exam. I have never written so much in my life before! OK one of the consistent and common feedback topics I get for my in class essays is that they are too short. Yeah I sit and write... then see that every one has written more... and there will always be pauses and thinking "OK what next? Hmm... can I really say that? Is it relevant?" and stuff like that. So you know I aim to get PAST the page and a half mark because at least then it's not TOO short. So 2 full pages is pretty good. Recently I got onto... wait for it... PAGE 3!!! :O And I was like "WHOA!" and even wrote it "PG3!!!" and underlined it and every thing it was great. That was amasing.

What's even more amasing was how I wrote an entire essay (and even got ONTO PAGE 3!!!) in 40 minutes. Then wrote another in 60 minutes... (ALSO got to PAGE 3!!!) which left with an hour and 20 minutes to do a final essay. OK basically I'm feeling quite epic that I've managed to write two essays longer than I ever would normally in less time than I normally have so I'm on a roll. I write 2 and a half pages of my final essay in an hour... and pause to do maths as I wonder how much on average I have written and what a third of 7 thirds is and what that means in terms of page space... then decided that a) it wasn't a good use of time b) was impossible to do in my head because I hate maths c) doesn't matter, I still had a lot to go.

OK remember that I'm on my 3rd page and it has lots of exclamation marks and a little arrow pointing to it say "Hell yeah!". Oh and... then my pen stops working... Whhhaaaa? Don't worry I've got 4 more. 4 more that... DON'T WORK!? I try them all twice even the one I was using before and then thankfuly I realised that it just needed to be written with at a certain angle because it was dodgy.

OK I keep writing thinking that this essay, if giving time, could just go on and on and on and not lose it's flow and still have more topics to bring up when it happens... the never EVER before achieved... mystical, mysterious... breath taking... PAGE 4!!!!

Booyah. Page 4. I kept writing and decided that because I had not much time left I'd just finish off... with 5 minutes to spare. To sit there with the biggest smile on my face not doing anything because I had finished 3 of the most epic essays I'd ever written in my life. Everyone else was busy writing away... and I had never been so happy about the outcome of an exam before.

Monday was a very good day :)

Exams are going great.

They are bound to get worse.