Thoughts From Places: UWA

Right. Wow. Okay. Exams are over.

I'm finally going to do this Thoughts from Places post. I know it's not this week's topic, but it was one of the ones I suggested, and I already have notes for it, and yes. Anyway.

The first thing anyone will say to you if you mention that you go to UWA is something along the lines of "Oh, it's such a lovely campus." While I guess this is technically true, it's not something I can say really played into my choice of university. But I think it tells us a lot about how we see and think about places like universities. They're not just learning factories. They're places that people have to spend a lot of their time, and whether or not that time is pleasant - whether in surroundings or in company - is actually important.

The lawn near Hackett Hall, Home of the Postgrads, Where Undergrads Doth Fear To Tread.

The other thing this made me realise is that, like Ali, I don't pay nearly enough attention to the environment around me. It took dragging a camera around for a day to make me realise that actually, the campus was beautiful, but that I was pretty much just rushing through it to get to places rather than actually spending time there. I spent some time a couple of weeks ago (yes, this post's been a while in the making) revising for exams in on the grass front of the library instead of inside it, which I've always dismissed as something which only happens to the unnaturally happy students on the front page of the website. It was actually really pleasant and, strangely, much quieter than the library.

Peacocks, which live in the Arts courtyard. There is a rumour that anyone who touches them is kicked out of the university.

That said, there's some stuff I realised I don't like as well. Like, there are these "friendly" rivalries on campus between faculties - Engineering vs. Law is the big one, but Everyone Else vs. Arts is the one that pisses me off the most - which I don't think are particularly productive. And this is sort of codified in the actual physical layout of the campus. One side has arts, social sciences, economics, and law, and on the other side is engineering, computing, mathematics and physics. I've never been one for the hocus pocus surrounding architecture and layout and stuff, but I have to say that maybe, if they weren't quite so physically separated, we might end up with groups which are slightly less isolated by faculty. Like seriously. All my friends from high school are engineers, and it makes finding somewhere to meet a right pain.

This is the library, which for some inexplicable reason, has a moat

So now that I've covered the philosophical, and the critical, it's time for the whimsical. If the east-west axis of my campus' cartesian plane is the humanities-sciences continuum, then the north-south axis is labeled something like 'fields, in order of obscurity'. At the north end there's arts and physics and such - big, broad, important ideas. And then, the further south you go, the stranger things get, until you reach - I kid you not - this:

Which is about as ludicrously specific as you can possibly get.

Anyway, that's my thoughts from uni. Hopefully with assignments and exams out of the way I can put some more time into this kind of stuff - after I get through my Youtube backlog, that is.

It's me, Rocky!

Ahoy there, mateys.

Who are ya?
My name’s Rocky, which is short for Rockwell. (Yes, there’s a story behind that name. One day I might even tell it.) I’m 19 years old, and I’m studying a Bachelor of Arts at the University of Western Australia.

Whatcha studyin’?
I’m double-majoring in Communcation studies (which, in Australia, is more like media/film/journalism studies - I’m told in the US especially Comms is more about rhetoric and speeches) and Linguistics, although the latter might well change. I’ve taken Classics, economics, and Français as electives. It was a toss-up between this course and Astrophysics - I chose the one with less maths and marginally more career prospects. Not being in the northern hemisphere like (almost) everyone else, I’ll be starting my second year in February.

Why’re you here?
Perth is the most isolated major city in the world. It’s expensive to fly out of, and boring to fly into, which earns it the nickname ‘Dullsville’. While this isn’t entirely fair (I love it... well, I don’t hate it.), any contact with them foreign types is difficult to come by. I’ve always been vaguely envious of people with friends overseas, so you guys are my shot at being one of those people.

Whaddaya like?
I’m a big fan of space, and space exploration, and astronomy (which I’ve been meaning to get properly ‘in to’ for a while). I read boatloads of books, especially classics (I once read Great Expectations in one weekend, although it was for a Lit class. I don’t recommend it. Reading it in a weekend, that is.). I’m on a fantasy hit at the moment, so if you have any recommendations let me know. Since everyone’s including it, I’ve yet to read TFioS (no spoilers please?). I like Doctor Who, Firefly and (don’t judge me) Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother. I like too many movies to list. I don’t listen to a lot of music, mostly comedy stuff like Tripod and Weird Al. I’m an archer, though not a brilliant one. I can program a little and I use Linux, throwing me in the deeper end of the nerd pool.

Where else do you internet?
My wobsite: http://rockym93.net/
My blag: http://blog.rockym93.net/
My (rarely updated) Twatter: @rockym93
My (even more rarely updated) YowTube: youtube.com/rockym93

What’re you gonna do here?
That depends on what we decide! I’ll probably be the one guy posting when everyone else has exams (and vice versa), because I live in the wrongbest hemisphere. I’d also like an excuse to post campus-based shenanigans - pranks and stuff - so maybe some of that? Who knows?

DFTBA!
-Rocky.