Without even realising how quickly it had gone by the break is now over. Next week kicks off semester two and, as always, I find myself grossly unprepared. Partly I think it’s because I’ve been working so much to save up some money before I go back to the 20 hour limit but I also think the break made me lazy. That being said, here are some predictions for the semester to come.

It’s come to the stage of the year when Murdoch starts accepting the mid-year enrolments. A lot of students who take a break after high school find this to be the best time to get into student life. However it can still be a pretty intimidating time and you probably have a lot of worries and doubts. With that in mind Murdoch asked me to write three articles tackling the most common worries you guys face. If you have any questions about enrollment I advise you to check out Ask Murdoch.

“I don’t know if I can balance work and study”

Earning money is fun isn’t it? Sure you maybe have to give up a couple of days in the week to get that money but once it’s sitting in your bank account the possibilities seem infinite. Working can also be quite fun because of the simplicity of the equation. More work = More money. I know a few people that used to go out to the mines, work solidly for two weeks and come home utterly exhausted but $2000 richer. Money also makes life easier to live because you don’t need to worry so much about how you are going to afford your next meal and an impulse buy won’t bring angry debt-collectors to the door. So when you’ve accrued enough money and have decided to give tertiary education a shot it can come as a nasty surprise when study time is replacing all the free time you used to have for work. You find yourself cutting your shifts because you need time to write the lengthy assignments and re-write the hastily scribbled lecture notes. So what’s the solution?

Balance

In the ideal world you’d work enough to pay your bills with a bit extra, have time to finish your assignments and still be able to go the pub every night with your friends. Realistically though you need to work hard to achieve this sort of life-style. Balance doesn’t mean getting everything done at the last minute but actually being able to create, and work in, specific blocks of time for each activity. So how can you do this?

Prioritise

I know it sounds like I’m channelling the inner Dr Phil but you need to sit down and work out what is important in your life. Your part-time job may seem really important and fulfilling but working 35 hours a week while your books gather dust is a dumb idea. The purpose of going to University, for me certainly is to get a strong qualification that will open doors for employment. This means that getting my degree is right at the top of my list of priorities. That being said I still find the time to work; I just need to be smart about which shifts I can and cannot do. Prioritising can be the toughest part of this process. Sometimes you need to cut certain things out of your life, maybe you won’t have time to play cricket with your club every night and that can be sad. But University isn’t forever so don’t look at some short-term sacrifices as the end of the world.

Plan

Proper Preparation and Planning Prevent Piss-Poor Performance. From week one you will have a detailed list of what assignments are expected from you and when they are due. If you know that there is a 2500 word assignment due in week 14 maybe you should approach your boss in week one to secure time off so that you have that buffer to work in. If your boss isn’t sympathetic then at least you know that you’ll need to start work on the assignment earlier than you may otherwise have thought. Likewise if you know that you have no assignments for a couple of weeks then you can temporarily take on some more shifts or use that time in some other manner. The worst thing in the world can be getting some free time and having absolutely nothing constructive to do in it.

Rest & Relaxation

Balance is a two way street. If you spend the whole semester buried in books your health will suffer and that is not fun. If you have a good timetable for your assignments worked out and you are confident that you don’t need to work on anything then you should go out and enjoy the company of friends. This can be the best part of University, kicking back between assignments, because it allows for some much needed breathing room.

Overall

All the fancy words will come as little comfort when you’re up at 4 a.m desperately writing an essay before your class at 8. Sometimes you can’t balance work with study or sometimes things go wrong. A seemingly simple assignment suddenly morphs into a 5000 word catastrophe and you feel very alone and a little bit frightened by the deadline. That’s why it can be a great comfort to know that there are safety nets in place for you. Tutors will grant extensions if you show them that you have worked all semester and you should never be afraid to ask for help. In fact Murdoch has an entire section of the library specifically aimed at helping people complete their assignments and do the best they can. But learning balance rests on your shoulders and it is certainly a skill I have learnt while studying at Murdoch.

A whimsical creature, it comes not when summoned but is known to creep up on the unsuspecting. Nobody is completely immune to its soft siren call although some can resist for days on end often with chemical help. It’s also one of the most valuable resources a student has and must be hoarded whenever possible.

When I was in my first year, all those months ago, I got very stressed out about University. I would spend all day in class, go back to the village and eat dinner and then go back up to the library. At about 3 a.m I would walk back from the library, exhausted and not any more confident in myself, only to get up early the next day and repeat the cycle. It was inevitable that the sleep deprivation would catch up with me and on the night before one of my exams it did. I had been studying too hard and getting very little memorised when I just collapsed, luckily I was in my room studying on my bed. The next day I slept through the alarm I had set, waking up feeling very groggy at 9 instead of 7. My exam was at 9:30. Even today I get a little frightened at how I nearly decided to go back to sleep, luckily I glanced at my watch and my brain did a little scream propelling me out of bed and into the shower. I did pretty well in that exam but that’s not really the point, from that day forward I vowed to never let myself get so sleep deprived.

It’s a vow I’ve broken many times, sometimes because of exams, sometimes because of assignments and sometimes because I just didn’t want to go to sleep when I could be hanging out with my friends instead. I think the last one is perhaps one that a lot of people can relate too. I didn’t exactly have a curfew when I lived with my uncle but they had work in the morning so there would come a time when I would be alone in the living room while everyone else was asleep upstairs. When I started at Murdoch I could wander into the living room at 3 a.m and find my flat-mates watching the television or simply talking for hours about nothing. It was amazing for the first few weeks but after I started dozing off in lectures I kind of realised I would have to start being a bit smarter about when I went to bed.

At first I got around the sleep I was losing from late-night studying by simply drinking a lot of coffee. This seemed to work for a week or two but I still did have trouble focusing when I’d pull all nighters on my assignments, until I discovered No Doz. I’m not going to list the numerous problems I had with No Doz, nor do I think it necessary to tell the story about the time it made me shake so much in a lecture that my notes were illegible. I think if you learn anything from this blog let it be that No Doz is not a good idea. Ever.

I guess the point is that sleep is very important to your average student. I would like to believe that I can build up a ‘bank’ of sleep over the holidays and on the weekends but really that’s more of a temporary measure. Sometimes you will just lie in bed and stress out over exams and assignments that you know are going to be there when you wake up but sooner or later you learn to just push it all aside and relax. A lot of people I know find that the early hours of the morning are their most productive; perhaps the removal of other distractions helps their concentration. Personally I find it helps with mine but you might find it just makes you tired.

So at the end of the day you’ve got to decide when you go to bed. Maybe you’ll want to stay up to read that final chapter in your textbook, or have one more beer with a friend but at the end of the day I hope you guys don’t neglect your pillows as I did in my first year. Also I hope you learn the lesson about No Doz without having to find out first hand.

We’ve all had days when the alarm goes off and we wake up feeling like death warmed up. The causes of this can be manifest. Sometimes we’ve simply had too much to drink, sometimes it was that extra couple of hours you decided were worth sacrificing to get that assignment done and sometimes it is simply because our fragile student immune systems have been over-powered by some virulent virus that seeks our destruction.

Admittedly it is far more likely that we’ve simply come down with a simple case of the snuffles or a little bit of food poisoning but when you have an 8:30 lecture everything feels worse. A bit of a headache suddenly feels like a herd of elephants in your skull, a slightly sore throat feels like sandpaper and your bed feels even more comfortable than it has ever felt before. There is a lot of debate over the best move to make at this point. Some recommend going to the doctor and others suggest shrugging it off and heading to class. I’m a strong advocate of lying on the couch, sipping Lemsip and watching Dr. Phil till I feel better. If whatever I’ve got hasn’t gone away by the next day then it’s time to head up to campus to make an appointment to see a doctor.

International students should breathe a sigh of relief here as OSHC makes it free to see a doctor on campus. They also partially cover the cost of some of the medicine you might get prescribed so keep the receipts and take them to the International office on Monday, Wednesday or Friday to be compensated. OSHC does not cover an ambulance unless there’s a serious emergency so unless you want to fork out $500 for a trip to the hospital you’d be well advised to take out separate ambulance cover when you arrive because you never know when you’ll use it.

As far as hospitals go Murdoch has one right next door, St John of God. However, it is a private hospital which means OSHC does not cover getting treatment there. In an emergency I’d recommend heading into Fremantle as the hospital there IS covered by OSHC, at least partially, so at least you won’t be stuck with a big bill after treatment. I do not recommend hanging out in the emergency room without a friend or two as some of the people that wander in can be rather scary especially at 3 a.m. on Halloween.

For sexual health and counselling services you can go to the Health & Counselling centre. Generally speaking the nurse is always on hand to help out people without needing an appointment. The nurse is very nice and won’t laugh at you when you have a minor freak out during a blood test, not that I’ve ever done that. I haven’t had any one to one time with the counsellors but they ran a workshop on shyness last semester and I found them to be very pleasant. There are also regular STD screenings that students can get if they feel they need it as well as free condoms available to help practice safe sex. All in all it’s a very useful service on campus.

I think students have pretty decent health services on campus apart from some problems with OSHC. If you can afford it then perhaps checking out some private alternatives wouldn’t be a bad idea but not essential. That’s probably enough rambling on this topic but I might blog a bit more about student health later in the semester, especially with the village being a breeding ground for flu, but more on that later.