Sunday, February 20, 2011

First Day at Uni

I ran away from the tour group cause I had to pee (slash, had needed to go for two hours and made a break for it as soon as I got out of the lecture theater); never found them again, subsequently got lost (but then again that pretty much is my biggest talent). Found the bookstore and spent $300 on textbooks (and that's only half of them)... call my crazy but couldn't some of my $5000 a year I'm paying for this course pay for my textbooks? Apparently not, so then wtf am I paying for really? Find me a tour guide who can explain THAT to me. And then maybe I'll stop complaining about uni. Maybe.

Returned home to discover a lipstick from StrawberryNet had arrived (YESSSSSS), as did a letter from some insurance company offering me a Bill Relief Plan. Complete with interesting examples and case studies such as Sue, a 44 year old housewife who wanted to 'protect her lifestyle' (I'm not even sure what that means exactly). This is all quite interesting to me as I've actually never paid a bill in my life. But apparently I shouldn't "let such an important decision go by another day"!!! Shit, guys. All I need to do is sign the enclosed form and post it to them. (It says 'read the form, sign it and post it to us'; apparently actually thinking about anything it says in it is not so important)... erm. Dear Insurance Line, how the fuck did you get my name and address?

That's all I have to say with regards to this delightful day.

6 comments:

  1. At least you got a tour. I had no idea where I was supposed to go, I couldn't even find a map of the campus :( Took so long to work anything out, but at least the first day is over, right? :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oi vey, that's no good :(
    Well as I didn't end up on the tour at all, I guess I will have to wing it with the map in the diary. Eek. I only have two subjects in that area anyway...

    You're very right, the first day is over. Thank god! I feel like a 12 year old again.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow sounds like a pretty full-on day! I hope uni gets better from here hun xx

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ahhh! Never sign anything without reading all of it, especially those strange in the mail offers where they know your details. They are often very dodgy.

    Uni textbooks can be ridiculously expensive. Make sure you check out www.textbookexchange.com.au for second hand ones, you sometimes can even find brand new ones where people have switched courses... or just never read them!

    Btw. This is inmypocket from vf... I'm too tired to set up a profile or something so yes.

    ReplyDelete
  5. What are you studying? Depending on your degree, the fees go to various things. I did science, so a lot of my fees went towards pracs (since they had to buy chemicals, keep the labs running, buy equipment, pay the tutors and course administrators, etc).

    Fees from all degrees also pay for administration (including all the paperwork that has to be provided to students, like course information or lecture notes), general campus upkeep, facility maintenance, buying books for libraries, paying for subscriptions to academic journals (unis generally have subscriptions to thousands of journals, which cost thousands or sometimes tens of thousands of dollars EACH per year), providing hundreds (or maybe thousands) of computers for students to use in libraries or computer labs (I think my uni has about 2000 computers for students to use), buying the necessary software for the computers and providing free internet on them, providing free Wifi throughout campuses, running a central IT department to provide students with email accounts and space to save files, partially funding research facilities so that students have somewhere they can do PhDs, paying for student counsellors, providing cheap/free healthcare to students and staff, etc.

    So yeah, uni fees aren't insignificant (my HECS debt certainly reminds me of that, yikes), but it's not cheap to run a university. Which makes it kind of amazing to think about how tertiary education used to be free in Australia. Oh well!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Free tertiaty education! For me that would be living the dream.

    ReplyDelete