My brain is a little full at the moment and I keep forgetting what I was doing, sometimes in the middle of doing it so I’m scribbling a few more words on Uni because I’ve forgotten what I was really going to write.

Uni life is amazing!

They tell you to hook all your devices up to their wifi – your phone, your tablet, your laptop. If you don’t bring your own then there’s plenty of computers in the library plus lots of spaces to sit where you can use your own device. Places to plug in laptops and whatever to charge them. One thing they feel is so important they’re prepared to fund people to help is emails, printing and wifi. They will spend the time with you to make sure your emails are forwarded, to make sure you can download them on your phones, your tablets, your laptops and often all three. And, while they’re there they’ll also set up your device to print at Uni, but only if they can. There are some limitations to their magic and that’s determined by the device, iPads and Linux machines have issues and you’ll never guess what I tried to use! I’ve gone back to the iPad as that had the fewest unsurmountable problems.

Printing at Uni is fun

You can print from anywhere you want, so long as you have their wifi you can print. I’m thinking of the trees every time I go to print as it’s so easy to print a treeful in the blink of something or other. When you send something to print it ends up in a queue which is only run when you actually go to a printer, scan in your Uni card and press print. It can then spit out as much as you want. And then there’s some lovely person whose job it is to help with problems in the library, whether you’re lost or you don’t know where something is or you just need help with printing, they’ve got an orange tshirt on, a mini tablet in hand and a lovely disposition.

Workshopping

One of my assessments was to write a creative piece and make it ready for workshopping. I wasn’t excited to be printing 25 copies at home, with the formatting needed 1,000 words became three pages, so I put my USB key in the computers at the library, the printing was so fast. On the appointed day each classmate received one copy, read it through while I read aloud scribbling their comments as they went and then we discussed it with them giving me some comments and one classmate designated to act as scribe and write everything down. I thought it might be soul destroying but everyone was really kind, so kind I’ve tried to incorporate as much as I possibly could almost as a thank you. Some of it wasn’t possible as they hadn’t understood the concept I was getting at, but that was feedback and it made me leave it out instead; actually, I suppose that is incorporating the feedback as I left out those words. Hmmm, interesting.

Who do I turn to for help?

I’m still figuring that one out. I’ve read everything really carefully and I thought one document said to ask a particular person for help with work but when I double checked before sending it to her I find I’m wrong. Maybe that’s only for a particular subject, I don’t know and I’m not taking the time to check as there’s just so much to do. She did tell me who I should take this particular problem to and I’ll do that later today as I’m still not sure what standard of work I need to be at and whether I’ll ever get to that standard.

Peer Mentor Program

I joined the Peer Mentor Program which consists of people who are further ahead in their studies in the same faculty and help to guide you through the first few weeks. I should have asked them about my problem in the previous paragraph but I didn’t. I’m putting together a list of questions about Cloud Deakin which I’ll ask when I see them on Wednesday. We meet like adults in cafes and have coffee while we meet. I’m obviously an adult, maybe.

With 700 odd words I think that’s more than enough rambling for today. I have things I want to say about study spaces, cafes and the bookshop but for now this is enough. I did edit out 100 or so words to make the whole thing read a bit better, maybe I’m learning already.