Something to stop mulling over

Back in Sydney and already trying to figure out how to move out. I miss living on my own. Having my freedom and privacy beats the loneliness and doing housework any day. 

I miss Greyhound. Having my coworkers and the drivers around pretty much made for the best work environment I've ever been in. That includes Uniqlo, Sunglass Hut, one shift at Dominos and Apple. At Greyhound, the boys and I managed to make it work through a mutual fondness for each other. The best thing about only working with guys is that there's never any hard feelings. The moment something's wrong they will let you know about it, you fix it and that's it, never comes up again. Guy are simple that way. Greyhound became my second home in Canberra, in a way. There was comfort and security in the job's predictability. There was no supervisor and my coworkers were like my Canberra family. I was their 'blonde Asian', a little inside joke between us that made them pretend to treat me like their ditzy, hyperactive little sister, which suited me well because we could all be relaxed and goofy and play Bananas in Pyjamas from my iPhone whilst getting paid. But of course, there's no such thing as perfect coworkers. CH sometimes got pissed easily, CA was all up everyone's business sometimes and then there was D.

First thing that comes to mind when I think of him? He was lazy as fuck. I was the one who always had to take the trash out, do manifests and coach delay tracking. I sure boarded a hell of a lot more buses than he ever did.

D was stubborn and stuck to his rigid ways. In one situation he really didn't make sense but still kept on arguing with the regional retail manager. It ended up being a 21 year old employee awkwardly throwing shade at a 55 year old authority figure.

D was sensitive. He once told me he would log off his computer for me to log on. Jokingly I said 'you better'. He turned around and quietly said 'never speak to me like that again'. And he wasn't joking.

D was also super unintelligent sometimes. He was once 2 hours late for work on his 8:45 am shift and his excuse was he fell asleep whilst trying to pull an all nighter. His reason for trying to pull an all nighter? Because his phone was out of battery, he had no charger, thus he could not use his phone as an alarm for work. Never mind the fact that he had siblings and parents that lived with him, never mind the fact that there had to be at least one other technological device in his house that could function as an alarm. For his sake I hoped he was just really bad (like, REALLY bad) at telling lies. Because if that were the truth, I would truly fear for his capabilities at doing anything in life. 

According to D, he was shy as well. Only with strangers, apparently. He let me know that by my 3rd day at Greyhound. He would barely make eye contact with me the entire 5 months we worked together.

Don't get me wrong. D might have been immature and enjoyed bossing me around but was not a bad person at heart. He was funny, sarcastic and not a total dick. If he was ever rude he never meant it in a hurtful way. He would attempt conversation sometimes and ask me questions, or he would talk about random stuff. In all actuality, we barely talked to each other that much considering the amount of time we spent working together often just the two of us. We just didn't connect or mesh or have much in common to talk about.

Oh, and one more thing about D. He was undoubtedly one of the best looking coworkers I'd ever had. He was a tall Samoan guy, and had a rugged Polynesian look about him. He had dark eyes and hair, a pretty nice fit physique and a Samoan tattoo around his upper arm. Admittedly not usually my type, but for some reason I wanted him pretty bad. He wasn't quite black, more a darkish brown (although he would always joke he was black and 'ghetto' and once when I asked him whether he thought he was being too obvious when he took money to the bank in a cloth bag, he pointed out no one would rob a black guy in a beanie).

As for his opinion of me, he thought I was pretty unintelligent, messy (he was a clean freak) and lazy. Which points 1 and 3 were already number one adjectives I'd use to describe him. We irritated each other frequently enough. Never full blown arguments, more annoyed tones of voice. We were the two 'babies' of Greyhound, as CA and CH who were both 27 liked to put it. Me being 19, and D having just turned 21 meant the other guys thought of us the little ones of the 'family'.

We were attracted to each other. That much I could tell from early on. Much as we drove each other crazy sometimes, it was undeniable that we had great physical chemistry. I would 'accidentally' watch him sometimes, just because his face was so damn nice to look at. He would gauge my reaction when he spoke about hot girls or going to the gym. I would giggle and act girly around him. He would 'accidentally' touch me sometimes or ask me to 'help' him with the randomest things which involved us sitting close together, whether it be buying something on eBay or reserving Chris Brown tickets or laminating movie tickets.

The first time we had a closing shift together CA went, 'you have a closing shift together next week, that should be exciting'. Then proceeded to smirk at D. There were other instances like that too involving drivers hinting at things.

But we never outright flirted, especially not in front of our other coworkers or drivers. There was me and my low self esteem, and him and his ego and fear of being rejected most likely.

I guess it's not much of a plot twist for me to admit I ended up sleeping with D on my last day of work. I'd been thinking of doing it for awhile. I'd even jokingly told my best friend a month prior that I would. But I didn't think it would actually end up happening. My last shift was last Thursday. Last Wednesday, he lingered around after work and waited for me to finish my stuff after he'd done his work. We walked together towards the direction of his car. He asked me if I wanted a lift, him knowing full well that I lived 5 minutes walk away from work. I refused, if only because my place was super messy so I wouldn't have invited him up anyway no matter how attracted I was to him. That's when I knew he was open to the idea. He'd never offered me a lift before.

The next day at work, everything went as normal. For the whole day. Then, with 15 minutes to go, I stated 'today was boring'. It took him a few seconds to respond 'I wish I'd taken the bus'. When I asked him why, he said it was so we could go for drinks after work because I hadn't been out yet in Canberra, as I'd previously mentioned to him. I convinced him we could still go for a few drinks. I wanted him pretty badly so to speak, at the risk of sounding like a poorly written romance novel.

We had more than a few. We had six each. I started getting drunk drunk. I was holding onto his arm. At one point I recall us playing video games. I remember confessing embarrassing drunk stories to him. I remember him confessing to me that he thought our previous 50 year old manager was 'pretty hot'. Eventually I suggested going back to mine, but I was still sober enough to conceal it under the guise of there being 'more vodka in my fridge'. Whilst we were out, he never made any moves on me or even touched me. He'd previously mentioned his hatred for PDA's, plus he was still an immature 21 year old who feared rejection and needed his ego stroked.

We were attracting the bemused looks and stares of Chinese international students on the way up to my room, because no Samoan guy with drunk Chinese-Australian girl had probably ever set foot in the building together before. As soon as we entered my room, I collapsed onto the bed, he grabbed my face and we started making out.

It's pretty easy to deduce what happened next. He left at 11, because he had told his mum we had gone out for drinks for the 'casual who was leaving'. There wasn't any cuddling or intimacy. Neither of us are like that with people we know. Halfway through he marvelled crudely, 'I can't believed we just fucked'.

I never liked D. I tolerated him because he was a coworker. That isn't to say I didn't not like him, and I wouldn't exactly have called it hate sex. But still now, a week later, if feels funny. There's something so bizarrely sentimental about one night standing with a coworker you knew (but weren't quite friends with) for 5 months, then moving to Sydney and knowing you probably won't see him again. I've never felt the same about any other guy.

I saw him again on Monday when I left on the bus for Sydney. I could tell he had probably told CA what happened, because they were both smirking. Heck the day of the iPhone 6s launch, incidentally the morning after we slept together and 5 minutes before my shift at Apple started, a driver who had my number called me up and went, 'I heard you went out for a couple drinks on Thursday'. I asked him what else D had said, but the driver wouldn't tell. He left my shirt at mine, so I gave it to him on Monday. All he did was laugh. We never mentioned what happened at all, not alone or in front of my coworker. On this day, my last day in Canberra, I had horrible food poisoning which meant leaving Apple early and having to go to Greyhound as I already had checked out of my room. D offered to let me lay down in his car because I wasn't feeling well. This was something that was uncharacteristically nice of him to do. And I'm glad my last memory of him is a relatively nice one. We hugged (I hugged all the Greyhound boys) and that was it.

I don't know why I can't stop thinking about it. I've never been this sentimental over anyone I've slept with.

I guess mulling over it won't really help. What's done has been done, I don't really regret it (although we didn't use protection, I don't think I'd get pregnant or anything). I probably won't see him again, heck I never even really liked him.

It's over, a random one time thing, I don't have to think about it or make sense of it, and that's that.

What it's really like working at Apple

Oh, Apple.

Thank the fucking Lord I only have FOUR shifts left.

Jesus Christ.

Nothing in my entire life has ever induced the same level of anxiety as being a part-time Specialist at Apple.

Working at Apple makes you realise there are two different types of people in this world: you're either an Apple person or you're not an Apple person. And it has nothing to do with whether you have an iPhone or an android. Very occasionally, someone (like me) manages to bypass four interviews and trick everyone into thinking they are an Apple person. You know how most workplaces have a mix of different personality types? Not at Apple. The top performing employees are basically like clones of each other.

Apple people are:
-Articulate in speech
-Smiley
-Loud
-Energetic
-Enthusiastic
-Obsessed with their job
-Rule followers
-Polite
-Confident
-Extroverted
-Fake empathetic
-Fake concerned
-'Friendly'
-In general, fake af

Naturally, I'm none of those things.

It's like as soon as I step foot into that store I freak out and get major anxiety. I'm fine with talking to coworkers outside of the Apple store. I just can't socialise with any of my coworkers on the sales floor. I clam up and just act the opposite of normal. I get jumpy and paranoid and super self-conscious. At first I was like, oh it's fine. It's only been two weeks, I'm just settling into the job. AFTER FOUR MONTHS, THOUGH? After 20 people have already been hired after you and you're no longer the newbie who's just finished the Apple 'Core' training program? You start to think you're a bit abnormal. You go, wait a minute. I'm never going to be settled in, I'm never going to feel less anxious because THIS IS NOT FOR ME. And it's not just because I'm working two jobs 7 days a week. I don't feel like this at Greyhound. Working at Apple makes working at Greyhound feel like paradise. The 3 boys I work with at Greyhound and me, we're pretty affectionate towards each other. I walk into the Greyhound office at the start of my shift and I might punch Chris on the shoulder, be like 'what's up Cary Canary' or tell Dom about running into Peter Cook, one of the quirky Goulburn bus regulars on the way to work. I rock up to Apple, and I can barely say hi to any of my coworkers let alone socialise with them and I feel myself sweating and feeling super exposed and my voice drops by like a hundred decibels and every second polishing iphones feels like an eternity. I literally get anxious to the point where from an outsider's perspective I act like I'm high or something.

I've never perfected the art of faking knowledge about tech specs. It doesn't help that everyone in store treats working at Apple as a privilege, not a job. Like we're fucking doing a service to the world or something.

So many random moments that have just made me shake my head in WTF mode:

-Some of those customers. Rich bogans. Enough said. Just a random one off the top of my head: a woman goes, 'I want to get my phone screen fixed'. Me: 'Did you want to book in a reservation for today'? Woman (coldly): 'Well considering I just drove an hour from Goulburn, yeah.' And I've had many, many customers like that.

-The 'fearless feedback' system. Where your fellow coworkers are encouraged to give you 'feedback'. Does not work. Period. That super blurred line between leader/trainer/coworker/friend. I can't be friends or go out for a drink with the same 22 year old girl who trained me and lectured me on 'visual standards' (aka rearranging the colour order of my whiteboard markers before leaving for break). It just doesn't work like that. The problem is when Apple encourages your fellow coworkers who are also earning the same wage as you to not only train you but lead you and give you 'feedback'. It gets fucking awkward. It's not in my nature to view authority figures as candidates for forging friendships with. To me that's a no no. It's like being best friends with your school principal or something. We can be civil, and nice to each other, but we keep our distance. We ain't getting drunk together anytime soon. In fact I shouldn't even be seeing you at all outside of work uniform.

-The fact that a LOT of people in store have no idea wtf they are talking about. Let's face it, some of us employees are 18/19 year old uni students. It's when you ask 3 people who have worked here since 2012 how to turn on a bluetooth keyboard and they have no idea (answer: the ipad needs to be ON the keyboard), that you really start questioning whether Apple is better off hiring people who actually know what they're doing.

-Endless amount of shit you can get trained on. To the point where you feel like it's never ending, and you will never be able to do your job to the best of your ability because EVERYDAY there is something new that you and 5 other people you ask don't know how to fix or do.

-The pressure to constantly be enthusiastic and smiley and articulate.

-The fact that from an external viewpoint (in terms of store politics), there is no pressure whatsoever. The managers all try to be your besties and God forbid you ever bitch about a coworker, manager (or even a customer for that matter) to another employee. In the Apple staff breakroom this simply doesn't happen. Unless a customer very obviously complains about you (and yes, I have had that happen by the biggest fucking bitch in the history of my list of shitty customers), a manager will never ever comment on your interaction with a customer or how you could have improved (which isn't to say a fellow coworker won't). What's weird is this is perfectly normal at Apple. But you still feel the underlying sense of pressure. It's strange and hard to explain. It's like the company tries to hard to give off a 'do your own thing, we don't give a shit or discipline our employees' vibe, but beneath the surface, you know the pressure's there to perform and socialise and be super extroverted and polite to everyone.

-There being nothing to do in store when there's no customers around. You legitimately stand around awkwardly doing nothing. Which is fine when you work in a clothing store and can casually stroll around or hide behind a row of jackets. It's not fine when you're just standing there with your hands behind your back behind a table of ipads and 20 of your fellow coworkers are all occupied which makes it glaringly obvious that you're the only one who hasn't managed to snare a customer.

-The entire store is so exposed you feel like you're on a stage. All the tables are low and you can see/hear what everyone is doing, every minute of the day.

-The moment when there are so many new people who get hired in such a short space of time, that when you look around you realise that like out of 20 specialists only 2 actually know how to do a phone contract confidently. Which is pretty shit, considering there are customers out there who do come in asking for a phone on a contract. Which means every customer who wants to do a phone contract has to wait around until you can manage to nab a specialist who can 'reverse shadow' or watch you do the contract, because you're terrified of making a mistake. Because screw up something like a contract and shit will go down, whether it's with the phone carrier or the customer.

-Customers grossly overestimating the amount of knowledge specialists actually have (sales assistant would be a more fitting term). I've never worked at a job where there are like 6 moments a day at least where you don't know how to do something (sim swap, phone contract, reuse recycle, financing, blah blah blah) or you don't have access to a system because your username/password doesn't work, or a customer asks a not even that complicated question which you and 3 coworkers you ask don't know the answer to and have to google in front of the customer and hope that Macrumours isn't the first link that pops up.

My last 4 shifts are at the start of the Iphone 6s launch. That'll be interesting. At least there'll be something to do at each shift. My pet peeve is when there are no customers and the store is dead. And there's pressure to socialise with all your coworkers which I can't do when I'm anxious, which at the Apple store is always.

APPLE IS THE EPITOME OF A GLORIFIED RETAIL JOB.

I still love the brand itself, and the fact that employees get 25% off everything plus $700 credit towards a Mac purchase every year and a free gym membership and phone contract discounts and money towards educational courses and a bunch of other benefits. It's amazing to be able to buy a $2799 retina 5k imac for like $1300. But there's one thing that disappoints me a lot and that's the amount of pay the specialists get. We work our asses off, walking around seeing if people need help. Having to talk and socialise and converse and promote Apple for 4 hours straight without a break sometimes. Spending 30 minutes trying to fix people's goddamn Apple ID issues. Having customers who don't understand that bigpond.com has nothing to do with Apple, and proceed to senselessly abuse you when you explain to them that you can't magically recover their bigpond password for them. For $20 an hour I'll have a much easier time sitting at the Greyhound desk selling bus tickets, thanks very much.

At the end of the day, Apple is just to cultish in the culture it tries to make its employees forge. The mindset is very 'we're loyal Apple fans, we get up at 3am in the morning to watch the latest products keynote, we research the hell out of everything in our spare time because we have nothing better to do, we love our customers, all hail the customer, the customer can do no wrong, we're literally going to grovel at our customers' feet even if they try to return something that's 3 months past its return date'.

And for that I'll be glad never to work at Apple for the rest of my life, no matter how shiny it makes my resume look.

Courage

The only subject I have successfully completed this semester is French. Mais, c'est seulement parce que le français n'était pas trop difficile.

Technically, I haven't failed a subject yet. Sure, I've gotten 52 in an IR essay. But I've also gotten mostly distinctions/high distinctions in both my law courses. At least my only solace is knowing I'm not dropping out of uni because I was actually failing. Instead, I've dropped all my courses before exam period so I now have a Withdrawal with Failure on my academic transcript, and a neat sum of fees added to my HECS.

But I'm the happiest I've been since I've moved to Canberra. And at least it was a semester's worth of wasted fees, not five years.

Fuck prestige. Fuck being rich, or having a 'respectable' career. Who needs that when you're completely depressed all the time?

I want happiness.

And I'm finally mature enough to understand this. I used to think of uni drop outs as lazy people who never bothered with life. Now I understand.  Everyone is different. Not everyone can study law at uni and not be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Just like not everyone can practise piano for 5 hours straight. As for the people who simply force themselves to study because it's the 'right' thing to do, well it's the dropouts who are brave enough to go for what they want in life. Funny how all the airy fairy 'not conforming to societal expectations' shit we learnt throughout high school English actually does apply to life.

Of course my mum wants to kill me, but she'll come around. I live life for me, not my family.

These past couple of weeks leading up to exam period I've been working over 40 hours a week as a part time specialist at Apple and also as a casual travel consultant at Greyhound (quit Sunglass Hut, thank God). And I realised this: I'm happy earning minimum wage. I'm not happy getting 4 hours of sleep four days in a row and having to explain to coworkers that no, I'm not hungover on a Thursday morning. Nor have I just done a walk of shame from a random's dorm room. I'm simply fucking tired and depressed as shit because I have two 1500 word essays due for privacy and negligence law, an exam on statutory interpretation and another exam on a shitload of philosophical international relations theory. Oh, and sidenote: I've missed out on 6 weeks worth of lectures and readings for all of my subjects. And I have work every single day that isn't an exam day.

So I finally dropped out of uni today. It was almost like I woke up a couple of days ago and simply had an epiphany: 'I can't do this'. I'm an all or nothing type of person. Black or white. Not grey areas. I'm the type who either gets a high distinction or fails (and I always unreasonably manage to convince myself that anything other than a HD is me not reaching my full potential because I was procrastinating). And I can never survive at uni with that sort of personality/mindset.

Music degree it is. It's the only subject I've ever been willing to put in hours and hours and hours for. It's the only subject I know I can survive at.

I will try to stay in Canberra until December because I can't face my mum's disdain, and it's nice not to know anyone really here. It's also nice to be working two jobs and earning money. If I can find a piano teacher and most importantly, a piano to practise on at odd hours throughout the night, that is. Hopefully ANU will be the solution, even if I have to pay. Otherwise if I can't find a piano, I'm going to have to move back to Sydney.

I get the feeling that AMusA graduates have something that kind of stays with them for life. Just the sheer effort involved in getting that diploma, regardless of your age. There's always going to be a lingering sort of aching feeling of loss when piano isn't a part of my life. What it took to get that diploma when I was 16 kind of proves the dedication. I don't know what else would signify the fact that a music degree is the right option for me. The other night I listened to old recordings of beautiful compositions by incredible composers and for the first time I kind of realised, with awe, that it was ME playing in those recordings. And I was actually good. I've never before allowed myself to come to that conclusion. When you practise the same piece over and over again for hours and hours over a couple (or even more) years, you forget to credit yourself with the good things and start becoming overly perfectionist nit picky. And I want, so so badly, to be able to have that sheer satisfaction of watching my fingers fly across the keyboard playing a Liszt etude, that unique feeling of playing a delicate passage in a Chopin nocturne, or experiencing that amazing togetherness when playing chamber music with insanely good, professional musicians.

My options, in order of preference:

1. BMus in piano performance at Sydney Conservatorium. Holy grail of Australian music degrees. Insanely hard to get into. But if I do, I swear I will practise 10 hours a day.
2. BMus at Melbourne Conservatorium
3. B Music studies at Syd con
4. BMus at UNSW
5. BMus at Elder Conservatorium Adelaide
6. BMus at ANU

Life is certainly interesting. Funny how perspectives can change so suddenly.

A gap year is not the magical solution

It certainly wasn't for me.

Three weeks into an International Relations/Law degree in the Hole That Is Canberra and there are few periods in my life when I've been as depressed.

I'm effed up. I feel like I learnt a lot during my gap year and that's why I don't regret it.

I've changed so, so much in the six months since I got back from Europe. I've done things that relatively goody-two-shoes Joanna wouldn't even have considered. I've gained whole new outlook on people. Relationships. Society. Life in general.

I'm so effed up.

I don't know what happened to me, but over the past year I've just really changed as a person. Strangely enough, I think I may have been deeper a couple of years ago and now I'm just a bit more superficial. Sure, I'm still myself. But I feel like I've lost certain elements of my personality. I read some of my own posts and sometimes I'm like 'wow, I was such a different person back then', or 'I really hit rock bottom' or 'I can't remember the last time I've been that relaxed and carefree'.

Why did I used to care so much about reputation, and prestige, and money, and success, and ambition? Was it arrogance? Was I just way more ignorant and naïve than I realised? If anything a gap year snapped me out of idealistic dreamer mode.

There's something strangely comforting about blogging even when no one's reading. I keep a diary too but this is somehow different. I feel like I'm more of a writer on this medium, rather than just spilling a bunch of jumbled thoughts.

As part of my combined International Relations and Law degree, I do four courses. Intro to IR, French, Torts and Foundations of Australian Law.

I'm doing this course called Introduction to International Relations: Foundations and Concepts and I  hate hate hate it, which really surprises me. I don't know what the heck I thought it would've been about. I don't know what I was expecting. Am I really that surprised about the amount of readings, or the amount of complex theory, or having to see the Communist Manifesto again? At least I now get where my old history teacher was coming from when she said she was trying to prepare us for uni.  I like to describe IR as a combination of the shittiest and most mind-numbing parts of HSC Modern History, except on steroids. The thing with me is that something within me builds up gradually and causes stress, then all of a sudden I tend to make snap decisions and stick with them. I know the source of stress now. My brain's telling me I need to drop Introduction to International Relations: Foundations and Concepts. Now.

The other half of my international relations degree is French. French ain't too bad. It's as bludgy as uni gets, really. Brainless work. That's what's nice about learning a language. You simply rote learn the entire textbook, cram that memorisation in a week before the exam, and voila: satisfactory result. There's no mindfucking going on with languages. No 'discuss a current world issue and apply theories of realism or liberalism'. No actual creative thinking involved. And that's why French is such a relief for me. You know life is effed up when a subject you once dropped in year 11 for good reason suddenly becomes your saving grace.

Then comes law. Oh boy. Law.

As I've said, I used to be very idealistic. Much less cynical towards myself than I am now. It's interesting because I can tell that just by reading my evolving blog posts over the years. Much like I once thought 'Even if I don't like kids I will just put 110% effort in and ace au pairing', I very recently had the same mindset towards studying something I didn't necessarily enjoy. If only life worked that simply. Put the effort into something you don't like, and it's all good. Au pairing made me realise that's impossible. And I'm glad I'm mature enough after my gap year to realise immediately whether something will work for me or not.

You see, law is a funny subject for me. I don't hate it like I hate IR. There's no bullshitting with law, and in a way I like that. There's a lot of bullshitting and long-winded essays and personal opinion involved in subjects like IR, History, English. Whereas in law, as my tutorial teacher once pointed out, you can have a guy going way over the speed limit but no one is going to question the moral implications of that. Lawyers don't give a shit about why, or morality. All they care about is what the law says, and whether it is legally right or wrong. And there's something nice about being so straightforward in your writing. There's none of that fluffing around to fill up that space in your essay like high school English was all about. At the same time though, I have a particular talent for bullshitting. I've always been good at hiding the fact that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. And I can't do that with law.

The difference between Law and IR, for me at least (and this is only after 3 weeks), is that I can read a sentence in a legal case 10 times if need be but at least I can semi understand it. IR? I can read a sentence in a reading 20 times and my brain just zones out automatically. It's like my possible ADD-riddled brain won't even attempt to allow me to understand something in IR. And that's why even though I dislike law, I don't hate it. Hence why I'm dropping IR but not law. Not yet, anyhow.

I'm still tempted though. What's stopping me from quitting everything and moving back to Sydney and practising piano intensely for 9 months until I audition again for the con, and this time rather than doing Music Studies/Arts just go all out and do a Bachelor of Music (Performance)? My mum is one of the factors. I think she might disown me if I did that. She is never usually that pushy, but when I told her over the phone I think she almost had a heart attack. As I haven't played properly for over a year, I would never be able to get enough money for piano lessons to prepare me for that intense con audition.

The reason why I hate IR is because it's a bad subject for perfectionistic procrastinators. It has all the hallmarks of a perfectionistic procrastinator's worst nightmare: the type of subject where you have to procrastinate by research the heck out of the topic in order to get the most perfect info, and hence write the most perfect essay. The problem with that is if you actually manage to do it in the perfect way that you intended, you end up with a 24/25. Unfortunately 4 times out of 5 you end up spending 20 hours on the research element because you're too scared to write the actual essay.

Tomorrow, I'm going to attempt to transfer to Music/Law if they say it's ok that I don't audition. In a way Music/Law would be just as stressful as IR/Law, because piano brings out the perfectionist in me in a way that I would spend ALL my time on it. Music for me, as it is for a lot of people, is an all or nothing subject. You don't do a half-assed attempt at it. I could never find the time to study law if I did music at the same time.

I'm thinking either an arts/law or languages/law if they won't let me do music without an audition. I can take the bludgy way out and replace IR with German to make my degree arts or language instead of IR. Or even do music as a major in arts, to see whether I would want to do it at the con.

It doesn't help that I have practically no friends here. The only nice people I've met either do IR or Science. Well I've met one nice person who is in my law torts class, but she's the only exception and she does science as well. That stereotypical view of law students as competitive and lawyers as soulless is actually quite true. I like the people in my French class, there are at least 5 people I get along nicely with. I'm not used to being surrounded by people whose IQ's aren't sheeplike. There was something comforting about the sheep guaranteed to be in each high school classroom. It used to be ok if I found Marx confusing, because hey at least I knew how to spell his name. I don't like how at uni everyone needed a certain mark to get into the course, so there are no sheep. I've met nice people, but I've made no friends. When a change happens in my life I get super antisocial. But I feel like working at Uniqlo, amongst other things, has made me realise I'm not as introverted as I once thought I was. It'd be nice to have a friend, or friends, in Canberra. I've just been to lazy to attend lectures and make any when I can take the online way out.

I should have appreciated that time between coming back from Europe and starting uni more. Life in Sydney for the 5 months I was back was good. Uniqlo was good. The money I made in that full time job was good.  My colleagues were awesome. Going out clubbing every week with my colleagues or old school friends or old old school friends was great too.

I got a new job here in Canberra. Casual at sunglass hut. I know polishing prada sunglasses all day sounds nice but something tells me it'll be harder than uniqlo even though it pays less. I don't start till the 9th. I passed a group interview for Apple because I'm good at acting like I'm a people person for short durations. So now I'm waiting for the one on one apple interview. A job at apple would be high pressure I think but shiny on my resume.

I'm too tired to continue even though this is actually therapeutic. You know shit is bad when you're pulling all nighters three weeks into your five year degree. And just for homework too, not even an assessment.