Studying for exams is probably the biggest waste of time for me right now. I have a project I want to start working on, I have about 10 grand I need to save by January (not gonna happen) and there is plenty of TV I need to catch up on.
Why then, over the past few days have I been cramming like crazy for exams? Because I need to pass them to get my degree.
BUT in the long run what will this cramming do? absolutely nothing. Everything 'important' in the subject has already stuck from tutorials and lectures, and all the little things that I need to cram in my brain will be forgotten about 2 hours after I walk out of that exam, talk to everyone about how stupid the questions were, and start cramming for my exam on Friday.
My parents are always telling me (well mostly my Mum because she seems to care about my uni grades) that back when she was in Uni she was studying for exams like a month in advance learning everything. Today cramming is a skill, and going back to my tests in year 7, the night before was always spent thinking about how screwed I am for the test, and then always pulling through with pretty decent scores.
Anywho I should probably get back to cramming for this Sports Marketing exam tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Monday, June 8, 2009
That time of year again
With exams coming up, expect to see a couple more posts from me as I procrastinate like only Uni students know how!
Exams are another thing which annoy me in relation to Uni. Now I know that it is important in the academic world and exams are an easy way to mark where people are at and blah blah blah, but realistically they are quite crap.
This semester I have only received 1 credit, and that was for a group presentation, which we got told afterwards, if we had of mentioned the name of one of the particular references we used, it would have got us an extra mark, putting us up to a distinction, but that is all beside the point.
I am not a terribly good student, in fact this semester has probably been my worst study/work wise with most of my time and effort going into the Brandstorm competition (which we came equal third in Australia, and I will talk about in another post). BUT I have still managed to receive Distinctions and High Disctinctions for every one of my assessments bar one.
But when it comes down to the exam, I expect to fail at least one of my subjects, because I can't write exams to save myself. Mainly due to the fact that I can't write essays too well, but given the time to do write an essay and actually think about everything I will be perfectly fine.
How does giving students 2 hours, to write as much crap as they can differentiate students all that well?
Thank god that employers don't just look at Uni marks!
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Where I left off ...
Alright, so my first post in a while and after re-reading it a couple of times I realised that in my true style I started off writing/thinking about one thing, then went off on a bit of a tangent and then finished on a different point to both the original and the tangent.
If you ask Zac Martin, who I am working on the L'Oreal Brandstorm competition with, he will tell you that I always jump in at random points and bring something up that we were talking about an hour prior, or even something completely irrlevent to what we are talking about, and might have absolutely nothing to do with anything. Kind of like what I am doing now.
This is probably not a good thing to do with blogging as I suppose each post should have a point, generally speaking, and if I keep up with the way I talk/act, it will mean each post will make absolutely no sense to anyone .. except maybe me, although even that isn't a given.
Already I was going to have a post explaining the main point of my previous one, but instead went off and wrote about how I write ...
Sunday, May 3, 2009
A Students Perspective
As all 3 of you who read this blog are aware, I attend Monash University. I did so because a) I wanted to do a marketing degree, and b) it is one of the top universities in the country.
I would say that 83% of students, if asked what their main motivation is for attending university, would say "to be able to get a better job" or something of the equivalent.
Herein lies the issue with tertiary education in Australia. Students attend Uni because they want to get a better job, yet almost everyone who I have spoken to who has completed their degree and are now working in that field, say that 90% of what they learnt at uni is irrelevant and they haven't used it once. Of course this is quite a big generalisation and extremely broad, as they might be using Maslow's hierarchy (the only thing I can remember from first year Management, but I will get onto that in another post), but will not specifically say as such, they might just be using the theory subconsciously.
Anywho, back on point, students believe that going to univeristy will put them in good stead to get a better job, and whilst that is true, it provides absolutely no training for students to be able to have the job, it simply gives them a piece of paper that says they have managed to get greater then 50% in at least 24 subjects.
Universities on the other hand KNOW that their main priority is not the education, but the research. Therein lies the major issue.
There is a massive difference between what students believe University is about, and what the Uni's think they are about.
I would say that 83% of students, if asked what their main motivation is for attending university, would say "to be able to get a better job" or something of the equivalent.
Herein lies the issue with tertiary education in Australia. Students attend Uni because they want to get a better job, yet almost everyone who I have spoken to who has completed their degree and are now working in that field, say that 90% of what they learnt at uni is irrelevant and they haven't used it once. Of course this is quite a big generalisation and extremely broad, as they might be using Maslow's hierarchy (the only thing I can remember from first year Management, but I will get onto that in another post), but will not specifically say as such, they might just be using the theory subconsciously.
Anywho, back on point, students believe that going to univeristy will put them in good stead to get a better job, and whilst that is true, it provides absolutely no training for students to be able to have the job, it simply gives them a piece of paper that says they have managed to get greater then 50% in at least 24 subjects.
Universities on the other hand KNOW that their main priority is not the education, but the research. Therein lies the major issue.
There is a massive difference between what students believe University is about, and what the Uni's think they are about.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
School of Peter Wagstaff
Looking back, I am extremely happy that I only got an enter score of 89 point something .. I forget. If I had gotten just 4 points higher, I would be doing a commerce degree at Clayton campus and would have missed out on one of the top 5 teachers I have had in my 15 years of school/uni, and definitily the number 1 at Uni
When I started University 2 years ago, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do or how I was going to get there, all I knew was that I wanted to be at uni. Within the first 4 weeks of taking the first year marketing subject at Monash Caulfield with Peter as the lecturer (and Cori as my tutor, hey Cori) I knew what I wanted to do.
Since then with Peter's guidence along the way, I have worked up to being the MINDS director for the Marketing Club next year which I probably would not have known existed had Peter not given me a few pushes throughout the year.
The university will never give Peter the credit he deserves because uni's are all about the research and not about the students for some reason. It is for that reason that we are showing Peter that even if the uni doesn't think so highly of you, the people who truly matter, the students definitly do.
Along with just some of his other students from the School of P.W. Zac Martin, Julian Cole, Josh Strawczynski and Rick Clarke, I would like to say thank you to Peter Wagstaff for guiding us along the right path and being there for us when we just needed someone to talk to about how bad some of our other lecturers are!
Thank you Peter.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Inbox (1)
You know what I hate? People who don't respond to emails.
It is the 'new' way of contacting people rather then calling them and you cause no disruptions to them, and allow them to respond in their own time. However if I send an email about something important and it is clearly expecting a responde relatively soon, I don't want to wait 2 weeks to get a reply.
This is what is happening at the moment.
With a team, I am busy putting together a Marketing Career Guide for students, we have emailed overall about 40 companies asking them if they are interested. Within the week we got reponses from those companies that we have had previous contact and experience with, as they know that MMSS is a good contact to have to reach Uni students.
The rest of the companies? Well most of them still havn't replied, so I am busy calling them up, disturbing them, and making them give me an answer, of which being the businesses that they are, they didn't do, they simply asked that I re-email them and they will get onto it today.
Now being the nieve guy that I am, I am assuming these people will actually get back to me today. The chances of that actually happening? Slim to nil.
Why do these people even have email?
Seriously if they aren't going to use it properly, don't bother using it at all.
And if they aren't replying because they are not interested, then they need to get over their fear rejecting someone.
It is the 'new' way of contacting people rather then calling them and you cause no disruptions to them, and allow them to respond in their own time. However if I send an email about something important and it is clearly expecting a responde relatively soon, I don't want to wait 2 weeks to get a reply.
This is what is happening at the moment.
With a team, I am busy putting together a Marketing Career Guide for students, we have emailed overall about 40 companies asking them if they are interested. Within the week we got reponses from those companies that we have had previous contact and experience with, as they know that MMSS is a good contact to have to reach Uni students.
The rest of the companies? Well most of them still havn't replied, so I am busy calling them up, disturbing them, and making them give me an answer, of which being the businesses that they are, they didn't do, they simply asked that I re-email them and they will get onto it today.
Now being the nieve guy that I am, I am assuming these people will actually get back to me today. The chances of that actually happening? Slim to nil.
Why do these people even have email?
Seriously if they aren't going to use it properly, don't bother using it at all.
And if they aren't replying because they are not interested, then they need to get over their fear rejecting someone.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Seeing Green
Shell Petrol you are gooses!
I will start by saying that I ALWAYS fill up at Shell, not because I have discounts for Coles, but it is more just a habit and I have had bad customer dealings with Safeway ones.
My latest occasion filling up at Shell however, did not got as planned.
For those of you that aren't aware Shell stations, as probably all petrol stations, have different colour pumps for different types of petrol. Eg. the normal unleaded is yellow, the V-Power stuff is red, and at the one station I usually fill up at, green is unleaded 95.
This afternoon I went to a petrol station close to me that I haven't been to in a while, and there were a few things wrong. First off their board saying the prices of petrol doesn't even have the regular unleaded price, which I didn't realise until I was already filling up, instead in small print next to the price it says it is for this new E10 petrol they have, which is 10% ethanol. Now I know very little about cars, however from what people have told me, that's not exactly the best thing to use.
The second issue I had which was the major one, was that they managed to trick me into using this crap petrol. As I mentioned earlier I always use the unleaded 95, which is usually the green pump. At this station however that was not the case. Not only did they not have any unleaded 95 that I could see, and in fact their green pumps were now this E10.
Obviously I am the idiot for not actually looking at what I was putting in my car, however the fact remains that green used to be 95 and now suddenly it swapped to E10.
At the very least all they had to do was choose a new colour for this E10 and all problems would be solved, instead they switch the colour of 95 and confuse people. I am sure I am not the only one who has started filling up thinking I was using unleaded 95 only to find that I was in fact using E10.
I will start by saying that I ALWAYS fill up at Shell, not because I have discounts for Coles, but it is more just a habit and I have had bad customer dealings with Safeway ones.
My latest occasion filling up at Shell however, did not got as planned.
For those of you that aren't aware Shell stations, as probably all petrol stations, have different colour pumps for different types of petrol. Eg. the normal unleaded is yellow, the V-Power stuff is red, and at the one station I usually fill up at, green is unleaded 95.
This afternoon I went to a petrol station close to me that I haven't been to in a while, and there were a few things wrong. First off their board saying the prices of petrol doesn't even have the regular unleaded price, which I didn't realise until I was already filling up, instead in small print next to the price it says it is for this new E10 petrol they have, which is 10% ethanol. Now I know very little about cars, however from what people have told me, that's not exactly the best thing to use.
The second issue I had which was the major one, was that they managed to trick me into using this crap petrol. As I mentioned earlier I always use the unleaded 95, which is usually the green pump. At this station however that was not the case. Not only did they not have any unleaded 95 that I could see, and in fact their green pumps were now this E10.
Obviously I am the idiot for not actually looking at what I was putting in my car, however the fact remains that green used to be 95 and now suddenly it swapped to E10.
At the very least all they had to do was choose a new colour for this E10 and all problems would be solved, instead they switch the colour of 95 and confuse people. I am sure I am not the only one who has started filling up thinking I was using unleaded 95 only to find that I was in fact using E10.
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