The
VOICE Third Edition
Editors Nicole Cairney Basel Hindeleh
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Contents Commencement .......................................................................................................................4 Block Wars .................................................................................................................................6 Volleyball ...................................................................................................................................7 Holi ............................................................................................................................................8 Jenny’s Exchange Experience ..................................................................................................12 University Guidelines ..............................................................................................................13 One University Struggler to Another .......................................................................................14 How to not be a flaky pastry ....................................................................................................16 Humans of RMC .......................................................................................................................18 Grooves Around College ..........................................................................................................20 Happening: ..............................................................................................................................21 the Wiretap ......................................................................................................................22
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Commencement Ties and fancy dresses started off the first formal dinner of the year, where we celebrated the old and welcomed the new. Many people receiving scholarships and enjoying lovely music and food. Here’s to 2016 and the commencement of 2017.
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Block Wars One of the more exciting events of the year where all the blocks battle it out against each other for bragging rights. With balloons, cotton balls, and plastic cups everywhere, it was a constant tug of war between A and N/S including the actual tug of war at the very end. But ultimately they tied for first place, with C coming 3rd, B coming 4th and D coming in 5th. But all hope is not lost for there will be more civil wars to come.
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Volleyball After the rain postponed the original beginning of Intercollege Sport, Menzies didn’t leave disheartened. With extra training sessions and time to perfect serving skills, our volleyball skills were more than ready once the day arrived. Menzies girls stepped onto the court in fine form. Rivalry screamed through the air with Dunmore Lang stepping forward as their first opponents. We played hard but unfortunately, loss was present but this didn’t take our courage as we took the court again. With fierce moves and encouraging teamwork, they thrashed the Village. The Menzies boys took the court- an intense standoff as DLC were challenging us first. Intensity bounced off the walls as the boys engaged in a fast and skilled game. The afternoon training had paid off with their calculated moves and teamwork. With precise calls and terrific slam dunks- the boys smashed DLC. Unfortunately, the Village gained victory in the last game but it didn’t stop the boys from performing. Well done to all players! Definitely showed the Menzies team spirit!
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Holi Holi is a Hindu festival that marks the arrival of spring. It draws upon various mythologies. The most popular is the tale of Radha and Krishna. Krishna loved Radha, but was self conscious about the difference in their skin colours. So due to the advice of his mother, he went and painted her face so it was the same colour as his own. It became popular in college when the exec celebrated it for the first time at college seven years ago. And this year was no exception, people dressed in white showed up despite the rain and the hangovers, and reveled in the explosion of colour, that is Holi festival.
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Jenny’s Exchange Experience I can’t believe we are already a month into this semester at Macquarie University. I’m currently on exchange from the University of Calgary in Canada. I’m a third year Commerce student, majoring in accounting. The contrast between the two universities is huge. There is the obvious temperature difference. I left Calgary and the temperature was -27 and was greeted by a balmy 37 degrees. I’m not complaining though, the warm weather allows for Macquarie’s beautiful and spacious campus. It’s amazing how you can just walk outside without a second thought. I appreciate just being able to walk from one lecture to another. In Calgary the entire campus is connected so you can go the entire day without venturing outside in the freezing winter. I have to mention online lectures. In Canada you have to rely on your friend’s notes and whatever the professor has posted if you’re sick or sleep through it. Recorded lectures are the best concept and every university should be doing it. RMC is definitely the best difference between the two universities. The college experience is so amazing and it’s hard to imagine how you could start university any other way. I live at home in Canada and the residences that are available at my university are separated by year so they miss out on the community that RMC has created. There are some things about Canada I do miss though. The Rocky Mountains, waking up to fresh snow, maple syrup, and Tim Horton’s coffee are just a few. I’m excited for what the next months will hold and I’m so glad I chose Macquarie as the place to study. I recommend that everyone go on exchange for a semester or a year. There is an exchange university for everyone and it’s an amazing experience that should be taken advantage of.
Jenny Faithful
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University Guidelines •
Use your free time wisely
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Take advantage of freebies Feed your caffeine addiction Learn your way around campus - don’t be afraid to ask where to go or download ‘lost on campus’ app. Buy extremely expensive textbooks - just to resell them for half the price Find cheap ways to eat (two minute noodles please) Learn how to pull an allnighter Practice taking legible notes Highlighters will be your best friend Stay healthy Join clubs and attend campus events Balance your studies, social life and work commitments Learn techniques to avoid pamphlet handouts Attend ALL tutorials and lectures Cooperate during group assignments ‘Due tomorrow?! Do tomorrow…’ Sleep lots (naps are essential)
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Ask for help if you need it Accept procrastination as a part of your daily routine Take advantage of student deals Prepare to have no life during exam period It’s normal to be confused
Just remember time flies- it will be over before you know it. Balance your commitments and enjoy the roller coaster ahead!
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One University Ba When one is expected to give advice, a person has two options, be meaningful, clear and succinct, or to have a laugh at the other person’s expense. I find after too much wine, the former is far more often to occur. So let’s assume I’m not consuming a beverage and I’m feeling funny. Just like a dad does. Because, without a shadow of a doubt, in another life I was definitely a dad and my children definitely felt that my jokes were appalling. So this is my advice about how to University. Rule 1. – Say yes to everything As a general rule this will get you places, providing it’s not the situation where you volunteer to high five a lion while cooking a large piece of steak. Saying yes will teach you a great deal of things. The first being all the reasons to say no, but that’s neither here nor there and ‘no’ only gets you a disgruntled response and a declining sense of achievement. Rule 2. – Do the readings As a law student the social expectation is to be arrogant and opinionated. The more arrogant and opinionated you become the more likely the social order will favour your presence, it’s a twisted system. The only way to do this is to do the readings. Read the outlandishly convoluted text, remember the author and the summarising paragraph and you can usually wing the rest. The fact that you read the final paragraph puts you in the top 10% of the classroom. This is your University class of course, all RMC residents will have read the required readings so I’m essentially preaching to the choir, but it pays dividends - so keep it up humans you’re doing each other proud. Rule 3. – Speak up! This isn’t really a relevant point but it’s a pet peeve of mine. If you’re in a tutorial and the tutor asks a question don’t settle for a long period of silence where you pretend to look through your comprehensive list of notes to fill up the awkward silence and to limit attention being drawn to you. Speak up! You have an opinion, don’t let the fear of being wrong get in the way of covering your fellow students that don’t do the readings! Besides participation marks are easy marks, and if you’re the only one talking (providing its relevant) that looks pretty good. The other alternative is letting the mature age student preach for 50 minutes. I’ll say nothing further in that regard.
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attler to Another Rule 4. – Networking is the most significant responsibility you have to yourself while at University. Expensive Ubar, Strike, Ranch, Pontoon, Star bar, Soda factory, Ivy, Argyle, Maccas nights shouldn’t be seen as a guilty pleasure or a time to switch off. Every time you go out you are looking out for future you. Let me explain. It’s a decidedly big evening, you’ve pre’d in the forest, said some outlandish things far too early in the night so you just know people will be paying you out all night and into the following years of your life. That however, doesn’t deter you from the stresses of getting past the bouncer which coincidently (after a half an hour wait and a glass of water, and a stern then progressively apologetic discussion with the bouncer) you get in. So by 10:00 you’re on the dance floor thinking you’re busting moves better than Alex Wall can slut drop. It just so happens a group of individuals are pretty impressed – you become friends. Long story short one of those individuals, let’s call them Taylor (gender neutral name), proceeds to projectile vomit everywhere. I won’t get any more descriptive than that, I imagine it would all be rather unpleasant and in no way do I condone such behaviour. If that’s happening, you need to reassess a couple of things. Jump forward 10 years. You’re going for an interview for your dream job; pays well, you get a Bentley driven by your own driver named Harold, plenty of vacation time and business trips to Milan. That would make for a nervous wait outside the office I imagine. You walk in… Bam! It’s Captain Projectile Vomit! (Insert strange surreal jingle here). The jobs yours! So invest in light nights and beverages – it will get you places. Rule 5. – Don’t be easily swayed by emotional Facebook/ column article rants about how to live your life. You do you. Be you. Challenge you. Be proud of the things you do. Be spectacular! Now get back to eating your chicken and rice. That kid from A-block
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How to not be
(but a nicely held ‘got-their-li Zoe Speer has recently taken it upon herself to call me ‘filo’. No, I’m not Filipino, nor do I have any Filipino blood in me. No, she’s given me this nickname because I’m flaky. I tend to flake out on plans in the last minute because I have ‘work’ to do. And by work, I mean sitting in my room watching YouTube videos on creative fish keeping or ASMR or something while everybody else is out socialising at Strike/Ranch/ UBar. Because I do this, naturally it means that the next time I make plans to go to the gym or go out with my friends, I’m more behind on my workload than I was the night before, and so ‘flaky Cindy’ re-emerges from the shadows to cancel on these new plans to actually do work. DON’T BE A FLAKY CINDY. EVEN I DON’T WANT TO BE A FLAKY CINDY. I’ve been working hard to not be a flaky Cindy in recent times, and I think it’s been going fairly well so far. I think I’ve evolved into more of a pie-crust like pastry – still kind of flaky, but holds itself together well. Last year I managed to get good grades, worked a few days, spent a few hours each week doing acapella at the uni, and still somehow stay friends with the people who accused me of flakiness (even though I missed about 100% of strike and ranch nights last year). So while I’m in the zone, Nicole’s asked me to write a small article on how to properly balance university, work and maintain a good social life. My BIGGEST piece of advice for you all is to learn how to manage your time effectively. Realise that you only have so many hours in a day, but it’s actually enough to do everything if you use it wisely! • • •
No, you don’t have to spend every waking hour in your room doing your readings or assessment – you’ll burn out. No, you don’t have to spend all of your time with your mates in order to maintain friendships with them – that’ll start to be annoying. Yes, you can have a job and still manage the above mentioned things.
Steps on being a sturdy pastry: Step 1. Write out and schedule out your week a few days or a week in advance. Figure out what days you have assignments due, what days you have tutorials and what you need to do for them, what days you have work, what days you want to go out for dinner with your friends, to go sightseeing etc. Plan these things early and keep them visible so you’re always constantly aware of them! By knowing your schedule early, you know exactly how much uni work you need to do during the week in order to comfortably go out during the weekend or in the evenings to have fun. The more work you neglect to do, the higher your chance of flaking on plans. Step 2. Attempt to start work earlier in the day – I’ve found that if I can force myself to start work at 9 in the morning, and work solidly until lunch time, I get a lot done. Otherwise there comes a point where you wake up at around 10, get dressed and ready around 11, but by then lunch is only an hour and twenty minutes away, so you can’t actually get any work done during that time, right? So you might as well just browse Facebook/Reddit or watch Netflix for an hour before lunch, right? And you’ll surely start work after lunch, right?
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e a flaky pastry
ives-together’ kind of pastry) Step 3. I feel like that awkward hour before meal times can either go two ways – you either work really hard for the hour until the clock hits 12:20/5:20pm and you reward yourself by going to dinner and meeting up with all your friends, or you kind of just sit around and wait for 12:20/5:20pm to roll around, because you feel like you won’t get any quality work done during that hour. In the case of the latter, when you’re filled with restless anticipation and energy, it’s better to just go outside and socialise. Because once you’ve been socialising for an hour, and then also an hour or so at dinner, the slow sinking feeling of assessments will start to creep back up on you and you’ll run back to your room to actually do work! Step 4. Don’t be afraid to say no! If your friends are real friends, they’ll understand when you have to bow out and say no to plans every now and then. There will ALWAYS be more Ranch nights to go to, more UBar nights to go out to. They’ll have the same themes next year for sure. However, you only have a given amount of time to work on your assignments. It’s not a great feeling waking up hungover AF and realising you still have so much work to do, as opposed to waking up hungover AF and remembering that you did a lot of work the week before and now you don’t have to spend the day attempting to do work while fighting the urge to vomit every now and then. Step 5. Special tip: Don’t underestimate small little spontaneous moments with your friends. Like I said before, you don’t necessarily have to spend every waking moment with your friends to show them that you care. Small moments - chatting in each other’s rooms, going for a walk, driving to a strange new suburb, having coffee at a café you’ve never tried before, dropping off some food because you think they deserve it, watching an episode of dance moms together… you get the picture. Small things like these amount to large things – they don’t take much time, but your friends still know you care. I feel like what I’m basically trying to say is – you will usually be able to balance uni, work and a social life if you plan well enough. Know how much time you might need to finish an assignment, and plan for that. Know how many days you have until you want to go out, and plan your work around it. Know how many hours you will be working this week and plan for it. You don’t have to be a flaky pastry. You can be a sturdy and well put together pastry, it is possible.
Cindy Diep
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Humans
“Since my early childhood, I always have had numerous dreams. The first one was to be a mermaid. As you can probably see, I am a boy and I can’t change this; however my favourite hobby is still to be a junkie at night. There is a reason why I act like this and have these kinds of dreams. In fact, I am born with the embarrassing pleasure to enjoy having multi personalities. It is also very annoying. RMC was really helpful for myself in this way: I have for instance been into the pond which repulsed me to the idea of being a frog ( I come from France so that makes sense). I have been to jail which was terrible but also a social experience where I made a lot of friends. Follow your dreams is the best advice I can give you. Without coming to Australia and living the life I never expected, I would know less about myself and about what I really want to be.”
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Matt - “Frenchie”
s of RMC
“My whole childhood I tried to convince my parents to get me a pet. I went through some pretty desperate measures. When I was 10, I stole my cousin’s plastic gecko toy and pretended it was alive. I named it Stephen. I kept Stephen in a little cardboard box that I had punched holes in. I wanted him to be able to breathe obviously. I fed him flies that I would proudly catch myself. But they would easily escape through the holes in the box. Eight days later I persuaded myself that Stephen died from starvation. I buried his body in my grandma’s rose garden. She was not impressed. But Stephen was gone too soon. Surprisingly, my parents felt my pain. They decided to get me a fish for Christmas. I could not believe it. I remember gazing happily into my empty but nicely decorated fish bowl as I went to sleep on Christmas Eve. I knew when I woke up, I would have a little friend swimming around in it. When I opened my eyes the next morning, my new pet was not moving. It was lying flat at the bottom of the bowl. I tapped on the thin glass but nothing. Then it hit me. It was a fake toy fish. I guess my parents got Christmas and April’s Fool mixed up. Ten years later, and after all the intensive therapy, I finally got myself a fish. His name is Blueberry Night Skylar.” Priyu (Owner)
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Grooves Around College Top tunes that have been blasted around college! 1. Lowlife - That Poppy 2. Down - Marian Hill 3. The Woods - Evida Remix - Majozi, Trésor, Evida 4. Galway Girl - Ed Sheeran 5. Devotion - SMLE Remix - Coleman Hell 6. Figures - Púr Múdd 7. Shaky Ground - Freedom Fry 8. It Ain’t Me - Kygo, Selena Gomez 9. Green Light - Lorde 10. No Lie - Sean Paul 11. White Tiger - Izzy Bizu 12. So Alive - The Goo Goo Dolls 13. Ready - Kodaline 14. Feeding My Flame (feat. Blue Foundation) - Av Young Blaze
If you have any favourite songs that you would like to share with others, add them to the spotify playlist by following the link or scanning the QR code. If it’s hit, it could make an appearance in our next edition!
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https://goo.gl/O8fwPw
Happening: Wed 22.03.17 - Â Ranch Double Denim Thu 23.03.17 - Ubar Tradies and Tiaras Fri 24.03.17 - Forum Veritatis: Science and Environment Fri 24.03.17 - Outdoor Cinema: Pitch Perfect 2 Sat 25.03.17 8:30pm - Earth Hour Sun 26.03.17 - Ultimate Frisbee Tue 28.03.17 - Postgraduate Supper Wed 29.03.17 - Ancient History Academic Dinner Thu 06.04.17 - International Night Sun 09.04.17 - Netball
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the Wi “Are there wild emus in Australia?!” - Luke Hagley “I love the taste of choking hazards” - Cindy RT “I’ve got balls in the car” -Teagan
“I’m too aggressive to play sport... like putt putt golf I just go at it” - Keely McDermott ready to take Sporting Rep
“Size doesn’t matter ... resolution does” - Mat Topping
“They’re $10 for 30 capsules, that’s like 30c each” -Shrav “I nearly died today, my bus had a flat tire.” - Avanti complains to the nando’s waiter after he said they ran out of peri peri sauce “Can I dress up as Pasi for Halloween Harbour cruise because I have so much swag” - Zoe to Pasi
Cindy: Jonty u look a bit angry here Julian: “Presidential Enthusiasm”
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“How much does a hipster weigh? ... an instagram” - Jim
iretap “I think I’m in love with potatoes!” - Shannon Walsh
Elle to Jonty: “You have lots of shit in your eye” Andrew: “That’s what she said”
Avanti: I don’t know how people’s brains work!!! Jack Bailey: you study psychology!
“He’s 19 now. He was like 17 last year.” - Shrav can’t math.
“It’s a sad sandwich. No, I was trying to say potato. No, it’s tomato.” - Amy Jacks
“My ass isn’t as plump as it used to be” - Dan Lee
“I’m going to print out pictures of the Aladdin cast and stick them all around my room as motivation to go to the gym” - Cindy Diep
Wang: I was at Focus all afternoon Keelan: What were you focusing on? Cindy: She was focusing on Jesus
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Share your voice with everyone! Are you a creative soul and want to contribute to The Voice? Great! Send through your work as a message on our Facebook page, or submit it anonymously by slipping it under the doors of either B206 or B116, or drop it in the ‘the voice’ box in the common room. Any kind of contribution is accepted. Drawings, Articles, Poems, Stories, etc. And don’t forget to send in any funny submissions for the Wiretap. #RMCwiretap If you want to be featured in the Humans of RMC section, send in a small article about yourself along with candid photo of you.
RMCVOICE /thevoiceofrmc issuu.com/thermcvoice
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