I have now been in Sydney for 11 days and every night I have planned to blog about the first few days here and every day I have been too tired or too busy. Tonight I am in the too tired camp but have decided to force myself to give an update and get over and done with it.

I arrived in Sydney two Saturdays ago at 8.30 in the morning, after leaving Auckland at 7am (which meant a 3am get up time for the flight). We arrived into Sydney at the same time as about 10 other flights which meant it was chaos trying to get our bags and get through customs. In the end it took close to an hour and a half to get out and into the rental car hire queue. The rental car I got was a 2009 Toyota Corolla and by far the smoothest and nicest car I have ever driven.

The first few days in Sydney were spent getting my new flat/apartment set up. It is amazing how much money you can spend in just getting the basics – like food, cooking equipment, and basic furniture. In between all this chaos I also managed to do a few things that got me to see a bit of my new home these included:

• Going to Opera in the Domain with a friend who I had not seen in 9 years.
• Going to Hillsong Church
• Going to Penrith – driving at a speed limit of 110kmh is a new experience.

The second part of my first week here was spent sorting out things like insurance and the like. The most interesting part of this was sorting out Medicare where I had to make a signed legal declaration that I had moved from NZ for good and was living in Australia for the next few years – the guy at the office didn’t seem to believe me even though I had all my uni forms with me! Thought I was some crazy kid on holiday. I also managed to get a cellphone and internet set up. After terrible customer service from Optus I went to Vodafone who set me up with this awesome mobile broadband USB stick which is faster than my old wired broadband in NZ. Although a much smaller data cap so I have to take care about how much data I use.

My second weekend in Sydney was spent having fun in the rain as some of the heaviest rainfall in years hit the city. On Saturday I went out to Bondi Junction shopping mall. Bondi Junction is massive. Imagine the Albany Mall and times it by 2 just for the ground floor, and then make it seven stories high. There is something like 450 shops in the mall. And you know what. I walked through the entire mall and only went into 2 of them! They were nearly all clothes shops – the last thing I need when I am trying to get set up for uni on a budget. On the Sunday I decided to look through town and found this most amazing hobby store in the QVB mall called Hobbyco.

Monday and today was spent at Uni. There is nothing that exciting to report here about my course – Mostly what I was expecting with a few minor hiccups around enrolment. What is amazing though is the size of the campus. Having come from Massey Albany with only around 6000 – 7000 students it is so weird to be on campus with close to 50,000. There is a sign at the front gate that welcomes the 9,000 new first year students! Almost twice the numbers of the entire Massey Albany campus.

The one thing that I will get sick of very quickly, and already am, is having to catch the bus to campus. I have not had to use public transport in years and while the Sydney transport network is far better than Auckland – I love the underground trains, the buses remain as noisy, as crowded, as bumpy, as slow, and as annoying as ever. Given that I have no plans, or money for a car for around a year I guess it is something that I am going to get used to – I just wish there was a train to campus rather than a bus!

P.S. I may have used to complain about the humidity during summer in Auckland but it is nothing compared to heat here. Last night was 25c overnight it makes it so hard to sleep!

I have now been flatting by myself for a week. It is an interesting experience. So far I am enjoying most of it. The room/flat that I am in is probably close to half the size of my entire old flat that had 3 people living in it. It is so nice to be able to move around!

The one major downside to flatting by yourself though is you are the only one to blame for any mess! It particular I keep on getting grumpy that the toilet seat has been left up and that dishes have been left in the sink. I want someone to blame. I am in denial that I am the cause of the mess. But I can’t escape it. So I get grumpy at myself. It is weird. I swear I am going to create a sign on the toilet that says make sure the seat is put down after use or else… I will just have to work out what the punishment for the or else is… I wonder if the clean me can win over the lazy me.

I have been asking this question myself over the last few days and had quite an interesting discussion with a true friend yesterday about it.

Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Live Journal and others have given us these great tools to keep in touch with people – often long lost friends from school and others who are on other sides of the planet. However, as all of these sites proudly boast lists of friends and in particular the number of friends that each person has a silent competition has formed for who can amass the greatest number of social network friends amongst their peers. Or this competition existed at least until about early 2009 when the opposite competition became the game, that is to remove or defriend as many people on your contact list as possible. I know people who have removed over 500 people.

All of this adding and removing of friends in the virtual environment appears to have weakened the true meaning of friendship in real life. Now instead of building relationships and friendships with people through social interaction and communication we are typically bumping into people and then adding them as a friend on a social networking site and getting to know them that way. This is all very good if you are some sort of paedophile but for most normal people it is very unsatisfying. This is probably a primary reason why once the initial fad of adding as many random people as possible had worn off as the reality of having a whole lot of strangers knowing your intimate details and stalking your photos became a very good reason to participate in defriending as many people as possible.

But from my own experience this natural selection process of stabilising the behaviour of most people in online social networking has also crossed into the real world and now people who are considered close, good, trusted and loyal friends are participating in the behaviour of defriending true real life friends just because they can, completely not aware of the physiological or emotional difference that comes with it.

I have just gone through, and I guess that because I am writing this, I am still going through the process of someone trying to do this exact process to me, the only thing is it is a whole lot harder to do in real life than a virtual environment. Until early December my best friend was someone I had known for six years and over the past few years had become someone whom I have shared a number of good life experiences with – tramping, skiing, and the like.

However, in early December their new partner (whom I have never met) decided that they did not like me because of my sex and the color of my skin – yes racism is alive and well in New Zealand and it is not your stereotypical situation either. Because of this my [former] best friend decided to defriend me in real life – that is to completely block me in the virtual world from social networking, instant messaging, email and the like. But also in the real world including (and I am not making this up) having someone who I do not know try to lay a complaint that I was harassing them – a brilliant attempt at character fraud and defamation (too bad the person handling the complaint saw straight through it). So far I have not responded to the bait for a good old fashioned grudge war – I guess this blog may be the initial punch.

The thing that really gets me about this whole situation though is how silly it is. But on a higher level just how much the concepts of friendship have been altered and blurred through the use of the online world. Maybe the defining moment of the last decade is not terrorism but how social networking has weakened the true meaning of friendship.

It is amazing how fast a year, and then a decade goes by. I have spent almost half my life in the noughties and the events of the decade both locally and abroad will forever change me.

2000 of course was the start of the new millennium and despite it being 10 years ago I still remember the New Years celebrations well. In Auckland it was pouring with rain the entire night of New Years Eve there was fireworks launched off Sky Tower, the Harbour Bridge, boats in the harbour and a number of other buildings in the central city. Unfortunately, the rain did extremely well at ruining the party and all you saw was glowing clouds but no fireworks. However, early the next morning my family went out to Okahu Bay to see the first dawn of the new century. The rain clouds cleared just in time for an amazing sunrise shared with thousands of other Aucklanders. 2000 was also the year that I started high school.

2001 will for a long time be remembered as the year that the entire world changed. The terrorist attacks on America changed the world and no longer could you trust anybody as being the person they said they were. I remember waking on the morning of September 12 2001 to my mom’s radio running the news this was not unusual except it was 5.30 in the morning and not 7. Furthermore the news was turned up loud talking about attacks on America. As I lay in my bed I thought world war three had broken out. 2001 was also the year that I hurt my cartilage in my knee mucking about at school, an injury that still mucks with me today.

2002 must have been a pretty boring year as I cannot remember much from it. I believe this was the first year that I tramped to the Pinnacles but I am not sure on this.

2003 was the year that I started maturing from a kid to an adult. On April 27 I was baptised beneath Hunua Falls. I late May I started working at my first part time job as a checkout operator at the local supermarket.

2004 started fantastically well when I tramped to the top of Mt Ruapehu. It remains the best thing I have ever done in my life. 2004 was also my final year at high school.

If 2003 was the start of maturing to an adult then 2005 was the coming of age year. I started university and started to independently set my own direction in life. I also tramped the Tongariro Crossing for first time in complete white out and terrible weather conditions. An experience that still haunts me to this day.

2006 was the year that I moved out of home; it was also the start of my involvement in student politics. Other than that I can’t remember much else of what happened.

2007 saw me serve as the Vice-President of the students’ association, it was also the final year of my undergraduate degree at uni.

In 2008 I served as president of the students’ association. It was a good experience and allowed me to gain a lot of life experience.

2009 can be summed up in three words: first class honours.

2009 has been a very odd year for me, a year of many highs and extreme lows. Of trials and triumph, of hurt and pain, of joy and euphoria, of sorrow and misery, and of anticipation and expectation. And while the fifty words I have written as an introduction may be nothing more than cliché they compactly summarise my feelings at the end of one of the most dramatic years of my short life.

My year started in January (as all years do in the Gregorian calendar); at the time I was exhausted after a year of intense stress serving as President of the Students’ Association at University. The experience of student politics had left me very bitter and in a way messed up. I was in a state where I wanted to be left alone to my own devices and at the time I was actively working to avoid people and block out the year before. I managed to find some space and time to myself in the middle of Parachute music festival in late January. It is ironic that I can find solace in the middle of 30,000 people but sometimes being around people but not knowing people can be a good form of rehabilitation.

February was a much more exciting month. I spent a number of afternoons and evenings perched on the top of North Head watching America’s Cup Class yachts race in the Auckland Harbour for the first time in more than five years. Later in the month I left NZ for the first time in my life to spend two days holidaying in Melbourne. While I was over there I set myself a goal of moving to Australia to study in 2010 (a goal that I am pleased to have achieved). However, February was also the start of an intense drama in my life that carried on as a drawn out and ridiculous soap opera until mid December. For the last two years I have been going out with on and off with Malaysian Girl. However, I was not comfortable with this and after picking Malaysian Girl up from Auckland Airport at 5am one morning after flying back from holiday I explained that I was sick of the games and I wanted things to either be going out or not going out. Unfortunately for me I was not firm enough and the games continued for another 11 months.

The memories of March, April, and May are all lost in a blur. In March I started my honours degree and for the semester I put my head down and didn’t lift it to breathe again until June.

June will be remembered most for the marks that I achieved on my first semester papers. Although I have always been relatively smart and typically get good grades I have never been a straight A student, however, this changed in June when my marks for my first semester came back with 2 A+ and 1 A grade. To celebrate I went skiing at my happy place, Mt Ruapehu. The first day of skiing was in typical Whakapapa misty shit, but the second day was a beautiful bluebird day on the slopes of Turoa after 10cm of overnight snow fell.

July saw university restart for Semester Two and the rest is a blur.

August was the beginning of the end for any friendship or future with Malaysian Girl. As mentioned I was not firm enough with stopping the game playing back in February and by August it got to the ridiculous situation where I was being played off against someone else of closer ethnicity. I didn’t have a hope and within two weeks of being told that Chinese Boy was on the radar I was flicked off like an ant that tried to follow the wrong pheromone trail for far too long. This left me in a state of intense distress and the pain of how I was treated by someone who I really cared about still leaves a bitter aftertaste even now. August also saw a nice weekend away in Christchurch skiing at Porters Ski Area where I rocketed down a 400m vertical double black diamond run, not once, but twice, it is an awesome way to get the adrenaline pumping and one of the absolute highlights of my year.

In comparison to the hell of August, September was like being in another world. Early in the month I was successful in being awarded a travel grant to fly to Sydney to visit University New South Wales (UNSW). Having spent the last five years studying at the awesome but tiny Albany campus of Massey University the experience was eye opening. I also began an ill-fated relationship with West Auckland Girl.

October was a month where the hell of August began to set back in. As the end of the semester and exams drew near I began to have nasty panic attacks (something I have been fighting for two years). In an urgent bid to get my head back I decided at 2am one morning to drive to my happy place, Mt Ruapehu for a day of skiing, this was great until a) I hurt my leg and b) four days later the panic attacks were back with a vengeance. October also opened my eyes to just how bad an employer can treat a staff member and after my workplace fired a staff member and close friend on the basis of unsubstantiated and circumstantial claims shit really hit the fan. On the morning before one of my final exams I had a massive panic attack which spelt the end of my part time work, but fortunately for me I somehow aced the test.

If there was one month that was a bellweather indicator of the rest of the year it would be November. The main stress of the month was getting my thesis complete and handed in on time. No easy task when your supervisor is on the other side of the world and because of all the dramas of August and October in particular there had been little progress on it since July. In the midst of the stress was the ending of my relationship with West Auckland Girl – the second breakup in 4 months, and when I have had less than 5 serious relationships in my life it was quite a blow. However, the good thing to come from the month was starting to play summer Hockey. I am completely useless at team sports – especially ones that involve hand and eye coordination so I was stoked to score a goal in my second ever game (and since then have only scored one more).

The final month of the year, December was by far the best, all because of a few simple words: “first class honours” and “full PhD scholarship”. Despite all the trials, challenges, pain, and torment the year had thrown at me I had made it through with a few battle scars and a massive piece of treasure at the end. In hindsight there are things that I would have done differently, there are still many things that I am very bitter about, and there are things that I am sorry about, however, in saying that you cannot celebrate the good times until you have first felt the pain and suffering of the bad times. Now the question is what does the new start in life hold?

The last eight days have been simply amazing. For most of the past year my life has been like a giant jigsaw puzzle. A whole lot of pieces messed up, some missing, and some from the wrong puzzle set. But this week they have all slotted together perfectly and the result is simply awesome.

As I blogged a week ago I achieved first class honours for my honours degree. This was the centre piece to my future. I had applied for PhD programmes at Massey University, Monash University, and The University of New South Wales, however first class honours is the prerequisite into all three universities.

The next piece of the jigsaw was non conditional acceptance into the PhD programme I had applied for at The University of New South Wales – I got this on Tuesday. This left me with acceptance into the programme I wanted to do but no funding to actually do it.

For funding I had applied for the relevant PhD scholarships at all three universities. I was not expecting to hear back from any of them on the results of these scholarships until Monday next week. However, to my surprise around midday on Friday I got an email informing me that I had been awarded a scholarship for Monash. This was great news, although Monash has been my backup plan to UNSW, at least going into the weekend I would be calm that no matter what my future had been secured for the next three years.

Then even better news came at 6.45pm on Friday night. I got an email informing me I had been awarded the Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship and an Engineering Research Award scholarship at UNSW. This is exactly what I wanted and will allow me to complete PhD at UNSW, Sydney. The total combined value of these two scholarships over the next three years is in excess of $110,000 NZD. And is the best Christmas present anyone could get. It is as close to winning lotto as I will probably ever get – (especially as I don’t pay as the stats say it isn’t worth it!).

To make the week that much better I started a new job on Monday which runs until the end of January. I am working as a Web Monkey (yes that is the job title) for Mighty Ape – if you need Christmas gifts avoid the malls and shop online.

I am so stoked with the way that all of this has fallen into place. The last year has been incredibly tough on so many levels but to finally see the rewards at the end of it is such an awesome feeling. I have a new jigsaw to sort out now – planning and moving to Sydney in less than 7 weeks, but I am now sure that jigsaw will fall into place a lot more smoothly.

Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Psalm 103:1 NKJV

And if you read this expecting a blog about a real jigsaw puzzle check this out: Ravensburger Jigsaw Puzzle: Bombardment of Algier (9000 pc)

It is currently 1am as I write this and unless I am sleep blogging I am still up.

There are two reasons for this. The first is my desktop system is currently trying to work through the process of building Google Chrome OS from source – I will blog on that when it is complete. The second is my mind going nuts about what the future holds.

I have yet to really blog in detail about the last few months of my uni career as I am yet to receive my official results so I do not know if I should rejoice or cry. However, I feel like I am at a major turning point in my life.

At the start of this year, after visiting Melbourne, I set myself a goal of getting a PhD Scholarship for next year. Throughout this year I have worked towards that goal my working my hardest and producing some of the best assignments and research I can possibly deliver. I have had much pain through this process mainly through stress and anxiety which have both at times felt overwhelming.

Now I am at the point where five days ago I handed in my thesis and now I am in limbo for the next two weeks awaiting the marks of this and three other papers. While I have hopes and expectations of good grades the wait is agonisingly painful for someone who always wants to know now what the outcomes are. And that brings me back to PhD scholarships in three weeks from now I will know if and where I will be studying next year – Auckland, Melbourne, or Sydney.

If I am successful in getting either of the two Australian based scholarships it is more than likely that in ten weeks from now I will be living in a different city, in a different country, without any family or friends immediately around me to support me. It is a scary prospect. On one hand it is a very exciting opportunity for growth and development. On the other it is the point at which you realise you are no longer that kid who always wants to grow up and see the world, instead you realise that the world is a very different and somewhat scary place from what you imagined.

One of the scariest things about growing up is money. As a kid my parents always told me that money doesn’t grow on trees. But somehow I never quite believed them. Throughout my undergraduate years at uni I was never a rich student, however, I was never poor enough or dumb enough to drive myself financially into the ground either – although I did come close on a number of occasions. Now having just finished my honours degree and looking out on this exciting and rewarding opportunity ahead money is suddenly a huge issue again. Most importantly where do I get the few thousand dollars from that I require to move country? It does not cost a lot to move across the ditch, however, it does cost more than I currently have and with no fixed job it makes for an interesting scenario.

The next ten weeks are going to be interesting. Normally I look forward to the summer holidays – as a chance to relax from uni, get out and enjoy the sun, and spend time with friends. However, this summer is looking very different, it is a summer that I would rather just hurry up and finish, I have a burning passion and desire to reach that goal that I had at the start of this year. The outcome of this goal is now out of my hands as I await the results of my efforts but inside I am in turmoil I want to know, I need to know, can someone please let me know!

I need something to get my mind off things, a distraction that does not cost money, but is enough to get my mind focussed on other matters. Anyone got any ideas?

On Friday I got Rob Bell’s latest book Drops Like Stars.

So far I am 3/4 the way through it and loving every page and every image. The bit I was reading last night was to do with possessions and ownership and Rob Bell quotes 2 Corinthians 6. Here is the full version from the NLT.

2Cr 6:4 In everything we do we try to show that we are true ministers of God. We patiently endure troubles and hardships and calamities of every kind.
2Cr 6:5 We have been beaten, been put in jail, faced angry mobs, worked to exhaustion, endured sleepless nights, and gone without food.
2Cr 6:6 We have proved ourselves by our purity, our understanding, our patience, our kindness, our sincere love, and the power of the Holy Spirit.
2Cr 6:7 We have faithfully preached the truth. God’s power has been working in us. We have righteousness as our weapon, both to attack and to defend ourselves.
2Cr 6:8 We serve God whether people honor us or despise us, whether they slander us or praise us. We are honest, but they call us impostors.
2Cr 6:9 We are well known, but we are treated as unknown. We live close to death, but here we are, still alive. We have been beaten within an inch of our lives.
2Cr 6:10 Our hearts ache, but we always have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, and yet we have everything.

I can’t claim to have experienced half the things that Paul and the early disciples experienced. But the words of these scriptures still hold true today. No matter what I pray that I would be able to show that I am a true minister of God in everything I do, and through that God will be able to give me the patience to endure troubles, hardships and calamities of all kinds. I pray that I won’t be beaten, put in jail for my beliefs. However if I ever do I pray that I will always know that God is right there by my side as my saviour and best friend.

As a part of my cleaning yesterday I ended up throwing out lots of bank statements and the like.

Before I did this though I recorded the closing balance of my accounts at the end of each month for the past five years.

It is interesting to look at how your cash flow is affected as you going through various stages of being a student.

This first graph is of cash available (i.e. max overdraft and max visa card) compared to that of cash used.

During First Year (05) I was living at home and it really wasn’t until the end of the year that my cash flow started to slip.

During Second Year you can see a huge collapse at the start of the year when I moved out of home. The next two years show the attempted recovery from this.

During Third Year you can see the ups and downs of the bank balance as various stages were gone through. The first peak is just before the start of semester and then the drop shows what happens when you have to buy all your text books. The second spike is when my tax return came in, before collapsing again at the start of Semester two, finally you will see a large drop at the end of the year when my car needed urgent repairs costing almost a grand.

During the four period (first year of no uni), you will see the battle to keep the bank balance stable, with a spike mid year when the tax return comes in, but then a decline as bills are paid. This also shows that student president doesn’t pay that well.

This second graph shows the maximum amount of credit I could borrow at any one time and my actual borrowings.

Again it is interesting to note the stages as events happen.

The first decline is in first year when I brought my first car, a digital camera and mp3 player.

In second year the decline continues mainly due to worsening cash flow from moving out of home.

The major drop at the start of third year is when I brought my new car, however from this point forward you can see the improvements as I decide I have had enough of being in deep debt, and you can see this following through into 2008.

Of note on this graph as well is the way that the credit limit keeps expanding. Banks and other agencies are always trying to get you to borrow more so that they can make money off fees and interest rates.

And this leads into the third graph.

This shows borrowings as a percentage of the maximum I could borrow at the time.

It follows a very rough bell curve shape with everything turning to custard in second year and improving since then.

So in all this doesn’t say that much. Other than being a student does cost, it costs a lot, I have deliberately left the actual dollar amounts off these graphs, and haven’t included my student loan balance either. Also when things come out of the blue like car repairs they can have major impacts on your bank balance if you are not prepared for them.

This is what about five years of bank statements, pay slips, ird returns and other “important” documents look like. I have just spent at least 5 hours today sorting this mess out, throwing the majority of it away but at the same time digitially recording important information and data, such as closing balances on bank statements.

If I remember in the next day or so I will post some interesting graphs showing what happens to you as a student when various scenarios hit your bank account.

Ha.

There is a new blog analyser, just like a people analyser but it reads your blog and works out what it is.

I am a:

INTP – The Thinkers

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

Well I am having issues getting the video online, but here are two stills from a debate I was involved with earlier today. I hope to have the full video online in the next day or so.

Update One: The transcript of my speech as delivered is below. My scripted speech was 571 words long. Once it had rebuttal added in and some ad lib on the front it became 916 words when delivered. And near perfect timing to 15 seconds off the 6 minutes maximum.

Update Two: You should now be able to see the video here:

“THAT lecturing has no place in the university of the 21st century.”

Third Speaker – Affirmative.

Good Afternoon,

The university of the 21st century. It must meet the needs of its most important stakeholder, its students.

And it is currently failing to do so.

Instead it is meeting the needs of what is convenient to staff members, and what is cheap, and what saves money, and what cuts down on budgets. It doesn’t meet the needs of its students and what is needed is engagement.

Lecturing does not engage with students, instead they just become passive listeners, with information by all means going in one ear. But straight out the other.

So far, all we have heard from the negating team is arguments revolving around tradition,
and what is best financially for the university,
and what is the most convenient to university staff members.

And it is clearly apparent that these arguments have been as successful as those who tried to argue against giving women the right to vote or equal rights to all races.

I am here today to say that progress is here, not tradition.

And the negating team will have you believe that it is lecturing that is what we do. No. It is eduction [that] is what we do.

Ladies and Gentlemen: The lecture is dead.

Massey University has a rich 80 year history of educating in the ways of the 20th century.
But it is now time for us, as university staff members, to educate ourselves in how to operate in the 21st. To embrace the change.

We may have the best learning environment for those who grew up in the 20th.
But do we really for the 21st?

As Associate Professor Lineham pointed out in his opening address the 20th century university, the past was about the group, educating the masses as easily and as cheaply as possible.

But the 21st century is about the student, and it is about the individual and how we can be the best for them.

To be a successful university in this modern times we need to carefully consider what students are looking for in their education.

And what are they looking for?

Our never ending series of surveys often comes up with the same series of buzz words namely:

Quality
Interaction
Accessibility
Relevance
Enjoyment
and Innovation

I ask you what do these words really mean to us?

But most importantly where does the word lecture fit in?

It doesn’t.
And that is because sitting behind a wooden desk in a lecture hall,
which is modelled on the Colosseum of Rome,
listening to a monotonous drone,
while being actively casted for the next Pink Floyd video
has no place in the 21st century university.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we must stop using these buzz words as buzz words and we must give them clear meaning, definition and use.

Quality isn’t about hiring the best orator to put the students to sleep with.
It is about delivering the best all round package to our students.

We should carefully note that the Government has moved away from a funding model based on how many sheep we can get through the door to one where abouts the quality of education matters.

Interaction isn’t about brave students asking questions in class. It is about group discussions and group projects,
It is about building networks that will last into the workforce
and it is about developing innovative teams of people who will actually go out there into the wide world and define and change it.

Accessibility and Relevance is not about putting some content on Web-CT or Moodle.
It is about being realistic.

It is about the lecture having no place in the university of the 21st century
because it has no place in the world.

Can you hear the funeral bells?

THE LECTURE IS DEAD.

The negating team can say all they like about:

Indigenous knowledge. But have we forgotten that indigenous cultures never had lectures. They had group discussions and tutorials. It was about interaction.

They say that young people like to work with their mentors. I completely agree. Lecturing does not do that. Lecturing makes the young people [become] the people who are being dictated to. And I can tell you now no young person likes to be told what to do.

Why is it that students complain about how their parents are lecturing them? They don’t enjoy it, do they?

I ask you if lecturing was so full and so great to the university then why is this very lecture hall, with you great lectures so empty?

If lecturing was so great, then why are lecturing halls filled with 10% of the class, while the other 90% are sitting on facebook at home?

Why do we have to have open entry? Surely if education, if lecturing was so great, our attendance rates would be 110% and people would be queuing up at the door. It is not happening because lecturing is dead.

And nothing the negating team can do will resurrect the dead lecture.

Change isn’t coming.

It has come.

We must embrace the change or we will be left behind.

We had a mention of a university being ranked 20th in the world. Where are we? We are way down, we are about 200th if not below. They’re not lecturing, they’re being interactive.

If we do not change, we will end up a relic like the Colosseum, looking beautifully stunning with our rich ivory towers but in terms of real relevance we will mean very little to the world.

Thank you.

It is late so I will keep this short and maybe expand it in the next few days.

But something to ponder.

What is the point of judging people?

Isn’t it better to accept them as they are? as they come? as who they are?

We are all different shapes, colours, sizes, and people because God is a very creative artist.

So why try and make people to conform to your ideals?

What makes your ideals right?

Why can’t people be as they are because that is the way God has created them?

Why judge? Why not just accept what has been created and especially accept people as who they are!

I was asked by a fellow student President today about what defines me.

Well my immediate response was:

• Computers/Programming
• Tramping
• Church

I was then asked how much of that I was doing this year given how busy I was.

My response was very muted because all three have been essentially zero. I have started on a computer science project but haven’t touched it in about two months. I have been tramping twice but that is it all my outdoors exercise this year. And church, well I have been twice, I have been to youth group three times as well but given that a quarter of the year has gone by I have not done much of the things that define me.

I was just reading something someone else I know had written, it was a list of goals. The only problem I noticed with this list of goals was that the majority of them actually had nothing to do with the definition of this person and instead were most of the things that this person’s friends define themselves through. So that made me think. Should we be defining ourselves in who we are or who we could pretend to be by copying the acts of others?

I don’t think we would achieve much more then heartache by trying to take the defining aspects of others and stuff them into our lives. Because at the end of the day we are all unique and all different. If we were all the same we would be boring!

Now I am not saying that we should not have goals and not have role models. However, what I am saying is our goals should be what we can achieve and our role models should be people that we want to be like; not clone.

Life. It is a celebration of diversity not of similarity.

These goals have only been written up quickly, they are based on my 2007 goals, and I will add to them in the coming days.

• Lead the ASA with professionalism
• Get a real job or do Post-Grad
• Live everyday for God
  • Continue to build and grow relationship with God
  • Regularly attend church
  • Read the Bible regularly
• Keep time for personal space
• Get Fit
  • Go tramping/outdoors at least six times
  • Go to the gym at least twice a week
• Take over the world
• Live life with a foundation of honesty, trust and integrity