I'm going away for Christmas today, then up to the Keppel Islands for a camping holiday, so this will be my last post for a while. Luckily getting time off from EWB wasn't a problem because it closes for a while over Christmas anyway. Also, my kind of boss Anh is going over to Cambodia to check out the Ton Le Sap area again. Can't wait to see the photos! So yeah, take care and merry Christmas!

I thought I'd put a few holiday snapshots up. One of the best things about uni is the 3 months of summer holidays :)

This is my 18th bday party (27th November)

Ice skating at boondal

I've also spent a few days at the Gold Coast and four days at Caloundra. This week I've been working at the EWB office. We're planning the resources for next year's EWB Challenge, which is set on the Ton Le Sap lake in Cambodia. Hopefully the introduction to the project will be an interactive, walk-through display with pictures, videos, models, the works. Should be more interesting than last year's lecture. We're also sending out all the certificates for this year's winners.

Comments on my First Year

I just got back from the beach and feel like relaxing, so I thought it might be a good time to sit back and sum up my first year at UQ. I remember in the very first week thinking how easy it all was, hardly anything we learnt was different to high school. Then the second week hit me like a tonne of bricks. We started learning all these new things and everything was covered so quickly! I felt like I was falling behind in everything, but when I talked to other people I could see that we were all in the same boat. I got to the first exam period and studied solidly through swotvac and exam block, freaking out the whole time, convinced I was going to fail everything. Of course, I didn't fail everything, it actually went really well, so all that stress was for nothing in the end. You'd think I would have learnt from that, but no. This semester's exam block was even worse because I stressed just as much about the course work and I'd just lost my grandma suddenly. So it hit pretty hard, but in the end you just have to do what you can. Don't have results back yet, so I'll see how it went soon. I hope next semester I can actually put the whole "you can only do your best, stressing doesn't help" theory into practice. But yeah, I shouldn't just focus on the exams and the stress because there's so much more to uni life. Being a November baby, I still haven't had the whole uni ball/party experience, but I was in a hockey team and the dance society. I've been volunteering with EWB since mid-year break too and that's been a real highlight. There's so much great stuff to get involved in. Also, I've found that everyone's really friendly in engineering, you spend so much time at uni that you pretty much have to make friends with the people around you. I was amazed when I took an arts course as an elective and half the kids sat on their own, even though most of them had already taken courses together in first semester. It's not like that at all in engineering, you can always bond over a good "let's complain about how hard we work" session. So yeah, overall everything's been great. I'm pretty excited about next year when we start getting into our chosen fields a bit more rather than just studying pure maths, basic science, etc. Even more excited about 3 months holidays :)

Holiday Internship

Hey, I'm one week into holidays! Have just started a part-time internship with Engineers Without Borders, working in the education office at UQ three days a week. If anyone hasn't heard of them, they send volunteer engineers overseas to do community development work. The education office runs a bunch of programs including the EWB Challenge, a design/sustainability project for first year engineers, so over the last few days I've been sorting out resources for 2010's project on Murra Murra, a remote aboriginal community where the people have been given back a piece of their traditional land. Now they're looking at renewable energy and hoping to create an 'eco-village' that runs off solar power and EWB has stepped in to help. So in 2010, a whole heap of first year engineering students from Australia and NZ will be working on projects based in Murra Murra. It's also a bit of a competition, so the best designs are chosen and the teams present at the EWB conference in November. The overall winner gets to go to Murra Murra or wherever their project was based (ours was in Kandal Province, Cambodia). A friend of mine is going down to Melbourne with his team soon to present his project, so who knows, he could be in Cambodia soon! So yeah, it's a great project and we're all working really hard to make sure the next few years run smoothly.
Apart from the internship I've just been hanging around, ice skating, picnicing and partying (only a bit though since I'm still underage). Also planning a really big 18th birthday party :). Anyway, better go, have to start work.

HOLIDAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, one exam down, 3 to go. recon i got through math1051 without 2 much trouble, now time 2 cram for math1052. 1 wk til holidays...

Three days into swotvac now and having a quick break from calculating matrices. Hoping all this Taylor series stuff will somehow sort itself out in my head eventually...

Hello!

Hey, it's my first post! Won't spend too long cos I'm missing watching Frank Woodley run around in a huge chef's hat with fake eyebrows on the front... Am 3 wks from exams & starting 2 freak out, as usual, but yet 2 freak out so much that i actually start doing stuff. Hope ur havin a gr8 wk (that goes out 2 ne1 who actually bothers 2 read this, u neva no, sum1 might ... mum?).
Clare xo