I am sitting here in my new room on the Sunshine Coast. Orientation week is now over. I survived ‘O’ week but how much of the actual semester I’ll survive I don’t yet know. I have been looking in to some of the text books and lecture notes that are in the book shop and for the ones that I am doing they seem to be a lot more maths orientated than I would have liked. In fact, it seems that every page I opened seemed to have some sort of mathematical equation on it. Now, I’m no good at maths. I don’t mind saying it as I only managed to pass grade 10 maths with a sound, and received a limited achievement in grade 12. So as you can see it’s not looking too good at the moment. Of course this is just speculation on how I might cope as I haven’t even had a class yet. I don’t know. I’ve been out of school for 10 years and have pretty much forgotten everything that I was taught in school including quite a few of the basic mathematical concepts. Ah well. Have to see how it goes. I have until the 29th of March to decide whether or not I would like to keep going with the subjects I have chosen and can change them without penalty up until that point. I will give it three weeks and then decide.
So what are my thoughts on the past week or so? On the accommodation front everything is fine. The room is a little smaller than I imagined and a bit more cramped but all in all it is all that I need. I must say though that the people who run the Varsity Apartments where I am staying seem to be a bit anal. It seems like the smallest thing upsets them. The house rules are very strict. Take for example this afternoon. I came back to the flat and found a note on the workbench. They had come in to ‘clean’ today which we are supposed to get done every fortnight in the common area. I don’t know what they did. The workbench still had crumbs all over it. It did look as if they had vacuumed the settee though. What else they did I don’t know as I can’t see it. Anyway the note said that the microwave was not clean enough and that the bin had not been emptied. Now, I’ve only have one meal in this place and have never used the microwave so neither of these things applied to me. Even so it said that if they weren’t rectified by the next day then each resident would be slugged $50 to clean it. That would be $200 to clean the microwave and take out the rubbish. They certainly know how to make their money out of the tenants. The fact is thought that they are supposed to be cleaning the common area. I really don’t understand how they can claim to do the cleaning and then say it wasn’t clean enough for the cleaner. Then they have the gall to say they will charge each resident $50 if it isn’t done. It just doesn’t make any sense. Come to think of it, The uni also does that. Despite paying about $1900 per unit (4 units done each semester equalling $7600) with the government paying most leaving a student contribution of around $2600. You still have to pay for your internet usage in the library which would be paying for researching things for uni assignments. You also have to pay for the hire of safety equipment in the labs or buy it yourself. While I’m having a gripe on how much everything costs, each text book is nearly $100 and they don’t just give you one to buy per subject. Oh no, sometimes it’s 2 or 3 books you need to get. They certainly no how to make money out of you. At the coop bookshop you can become a member which gives you a 10% discount on most books you buy. Of course you have to pay to become a member. Another thing that I didn’t realise is how far away the campus is. When I chose this uni I thought that it was just on the other side of the city and it would be pretty easy to go home for the weekends if I wanted. Well it is on the other side of the city just two hours away from it. It take quite a bit of time to drive here even though it is only 100 km from Brissie because of the traffic. There is traffic from the time you get on the South East Freeway until you get off the Bruce Highway and on to the Sunshine Motorway. It is quite far away indeed. I also didn’t really budget for not having to pay for the petrol to get up here. When I get Austudy it will only be $355 per fortnight with $70 pf as rent assistance. After paying for my accommodation it will only leave me with $145 per fortnight to live off. As a tank of petrol can get me 400km and it costs around 80 to fill the tank the I could go home at weekends but I would not have any other money for anything else. Of course that is if I get Austudy. I only applied today so I am just hoping that everything will be alright and I’ll be able to get it. I have also filled in an application for an equity scholarship. If I got one of them it would certainly help me out a lot. We’ll just have to see on that one.
