UNI SPK
UNISPEAK ISSUE 2 AUGUST 2012
DO WHAT YOU DO BEST *
UNI SPK UNISPEAK / ISSUE 2 AUGUST 2012
BE STRONG If it’s worth having, it’s worth working for. UOW people know this. They know sometimes you need to focus on a distant goal, to give something away for a shot at something better, to put more in, try harder and invest yourself. They know sometimes you need to be smart, and sometimes you need to be strong. (Of course, when you’re both, the sky’s the limit.)
Contributors
Xirui Zhou
Simon Potts First-year Law and International Studies student. Team player and human rights advocate.
First-year Commerce (Marketing) student, was up all night cramming to get this article done on time.
Alice Matthews Third-year Journalism and Arts (Spanish) student, luggage enthusiast, starting a year-long exchange in Mexico.
Jess Bramley-Alves
Dane Sharp
PhD candidate, scientist, adventurer, climate change skeptic skeptic (she can’t believe they still exist).
UOW Bachelor of Arts (Communications) graduate. Marketer, surfer, world traveller, puts in the hard yards.
C O V ER P H O T O Iceberg in Antarctic waters near Casey station. Photo courtesy of Jess Bramley-Alves
When hard work’s not enough WRITER Xirui Zhou Bachelor of Commerce (Marketing)
We tell ourselves that hard work pays off, especially for study. If you have ever spent a sleepless night reviewing just before exams like the trial HSC, you want to believe it’s true.
I have had a lot of nights like that, to be honest. This year before the final exam of one of my major subjects, I felt more nervous and stressed than I normally do, so much that I doubted my ability to pass. Not surprisingly, I found it very hard when I actually faced the exam. Afterwards, I went to my friend and cried for my ´failed subject´, since this final exam decides if I will pass the subject or not. After a depressing period of waiting, I went online and checked my exam result with shaking hands. I actually passed! In fact, I did much better than I thought I could have.
But what I have learned is a bit different to the traditional perception that ranks ´hard work´ number one. I have learned that most of the time, there is something even more necessary for dealing with the big exams: confidence. I can now see that passing exams isn’t just about putting in enough work. You need confidence in yourself when facing challenges. Before you really judge your performance, before you sit the exams, believe that you can do well! Follow Xirui at xiruiuow.tumblr.com
Marketing is a tough break Dane Sharp RIP CURL – INTERNATIONAL MEDIA & DIGITAL MARKETING MANAGER Bachelor of Arts (COMMUNICATION STUDIES) 2001
“You need to work hard. Whether you do that hard work in high school or you do it in university or you do it afterwards, if you want to be successful you can’t escape hard work.” In my job I oversee the planning of Rip Curl’s media and digital marketing for all of the brand’s global initiatives, across mainstream media (TV, newspapers, radio, magazines and so on) and also online and social media. On top of that, I also oversee our planning of global events like the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach or the Rip Curl Pro Search event, which travels around the world. I work with our sponsored surfers and snowboarders who represent the Rip Curl brand and I help coordinate global product launches across wetsuits, boardshorts, swimwear, mountainwear, surfboards and watches. The job demands I live a busy lifestyle, but Rip Curl is a great company to work for and I’ve got a very unique role. Weekends don’t really exist. I work with our global marketing team so I’m always on the clock. I have most of the world’s time zones memorized! I will often need to be on a Skype call with our European marketing team when they start work (which is our afternoon here in Australia), then I’ll check in with the Brazilian team when they get to work (which is close to midnight here) and I’ll be on Skype early in the morning before work with our American team (their afternoon). I work with people everywhere! I’ve had the chance to travel a lot, to events with our athletes. New Zealand, the USA and Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Indonesia, Mauritius, Reunion Island, Madagascar, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Norway, England, France, Spain, Portugal. You meet new people, you do new work, see new places, experience new cultures, and I don’t think there’s anything like travelling. It’s what life is all about for me.
On a typical day, the first thing I want to do in the morning is surf. After that I come into work, start the day on whatever we’re doing. Sometimes that means 5.30am starts. And that carries over to the weekend. Lots of meetings, lots of phone calls, lots of emails, but also lots of fun in between. You need to work hard. Whether you do that hard work in high school or you do it in university or you do it afterwards, if you want to be successful you can’t escape hard work. I think it’s really important to be fully engaged with your job, your career and obviously the employer you’re working for. I’d hate to be someone who rocks up at 9.00 and clocks off at 5.00 and that’s it. Especially in the media and marketing industries, I think it’s important to be involved with the company. One of the best things about working for Rip Curl is that we live it and breathe it.
See more from Dane uow.edu.au/future/graduates
Strength in numbers Words with SIMON POTTS Bachelor of international studies – bachelor of laws
Law degrees are challenging, and the first-year subject load can be intense. That’s why the UOW Faculty of Law started seminar groups: small classes that stay together for mutual support through all their first semester classes. The students just call them “pods”. According to first-year student Simon Potts, they work. “I had a great pod,” Simon says. “We still meet up over the holidays. Right now we’re organising our tutorials for next semester, trying to get into the same classes.
Despite this sense of purpose, he still had reservations about starting university study.
He says the study group quickly became friends.
“Between high school and uni you start to worry. I felt I’d forgotten how to study, that I was going to fail every class.”
“You get so close to these people, you bounce ideas off them, talk about classes, they help you through it.”
“The pod really helped me through. In the end I got two Distinctions, two Credits, a pretty great first semester.”
Simon, who is studying a double degree in law and international studies, hopes one day to use his degree to advocate for the rights of others.
To become a lawyer in New South Wales, your law degree must follow external requirements that dictate a lot of what you learn, but not how you learn it.
“Ever since Year 7, I’ve been involved in programs like St. Vinnie’s Night Patrol, helping the homeless in Sydney. I think everyone deserves to be advocated for.”
At UOW, professional skills subjects are another distinctive feature of how you learn. Simon says he was surprised by the subjects, and happy with the results.
“I thought the skills subjects sounded odd,” he admits. “Writing skills? I can already write, I can research. I was wrong, though: they teach you how to write professionally. Proper referencing, research, communication: these are the building blocks of all university degrees.” He’ll follow up with other skills subjects, including advocacy, negotiation and communication. “Make sure you check out what a law school can do for you, that it’s not just chucking you in the deep end.” “At UOW, I knew I was studying almost the same law content as anywhere else, but thanks to the pod, I was doing it with a class full of instant friends.”
Leaving a life behind WRITER AliCE MATTHEWS
Preparing to move away for a year is like shedding a snake skin. I received a present in the mail today, from my first college roommate from my first semester at UOW. I’m in the middle of getting ready to leave on exchange to Mexico when it arrives. It was a CD: to listen to when I get to Mexico so when I come back home I can listen to it and be right back overseas. The first track is To Just Grow Away. It’s fitting, because that’s why I’m going on exchange. Preparing to move away is like shedding a snake skin. You get rid of all the useless stuff you can live without. For me it was around 15 bags of old clothes and countless bags of rubbish. I went through all of my possessions — clothes, books, photos — and packed them away neatly in boxes.
It’s not just possessions, exiting the safety zone is hard. It means being stingy for months and saving, leaving my family and friends and yes, leaving a certain boy as well. It’s okay, though. I know the most important people will not wither away in my absence. I don’t plan on coming back a new person, but I do plan on coming home a changed person. Getting away is relieving and leaves you clear minded. Packing things away is a nostalgic ritual, and I feel like I’ve done it before. I felt it when I finished high school. I packed my bags and left home for the first time, got on a plane and moved to London for the year. I felt it when I came home to Canberra and packed my bags yet again, for uni in Wollongong — and I feel it now, packing for a year in Mexico.
Everyone wished me luck, told me be to be careful and commented on what a great opportunity this is, but one friend told me to ‘embrace this feeling’. I know what she means: a brew of excitement, anticipation, uncertainty and wonder. Sometimes, there’s a sneaky shot of worry in there too. When I get back, I’ll be able to speak Spanish properly, have done a journalism internship in South America, hiked the Inca Trail and been to Carnival in Rio. But to do all of this, to move forward, I have to let go of some things—for a while. Alice is headed on exchange to Mexico for 12 months. UOW offers exchange to over 40 countries. See more at www.uow.edu.au/student/exchange
THE COLD Coast WORDS WITH Jess Bramley-Alves
PhD candidate Jess Bramley-Alves is studying moss on the frozen shores of Antarctica to predict the future of climate change. It’s important work with global implications. It’s also an adventure. “I love it. It’s incredibly exciting. It’s beautiful there. A featureless white landscape, and there in the middle of it, the lego-land buildings.” She is talking about Casey station, a research base on the Antarctic continent, about 4,430 km south of Sydney. Its resemblance to the toy building blocks come from its facilities: large rectangular metal structures colour-coded in bright shades of red, yellow and blue. The colours indicate what’s in the building at a glance—red for living quarters, yellow for science, blue for power. It’s an important consideration in an environment subjected to blinding blizzards. “It’s physically challenging. We work in extreme conditions, often in locations that we have to trek to carrying all of our equipment. Of course, it is also incredibly cold. It doesn’t take long for your hands to go numb.” “And it’s dangerous. For example, on my most recent trip, the day after we arrived we had a blizzard with 120 knot winds. The reality is that there are crosses on the hillside down there. People have died on expeditions.” Jess recently went there to study Schistidium antarctici, Ceratodon purpureus and Bryum pseudotriquetrum, slow-growing moss species that may have a lot to say about climate change. “The research conducted by the Robinson Lab, which my work is a part of, hopes to use these slow growing moss species to investigate past climate in unstudied coastal areas. If it works we can use this technique to gather information, that will generate models for predicting climate change in the future.” Looking back through the cell history of the moss, Jess can derive a lot of information about the climate in a particular year. She determines the mosses’ age by looking for carbon-14, a radioactive isotope released in vast quantities during nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 1980s. After that, it’s just counting forward, like counting the rings in tree. Jess has also worked on Macquarie Island—or Macca, as it’s known to expeditioners. It’s a little closer to home, about 2,400 km south of Sydney, and is a paradise of undisturbed wildlife.
The remoteness of both locations makes them tempting sites for climate science research. Climate change can be observed and measured directly, without worrying about distortions caused by human habitation. They are also the regions responding most rapidly to the effects of global warming. She believes the information locked in the humble mosses is worth the risk, expense and effort. The research group Jess belongs to is modeling climate changes that will affect the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. “The work we are doing is hugely important. Antarctica acts as a baseline environment for the rest of the world.” Jess came into science sideways, starting from a high school education that included very little science. “In high school I was the most unlikely candidate for a career in science. I’d studied English, textiles and design, and dance. I almost went to dance school,” she says. “In my first science degree, a Bachelor of Environmental Science Advanced, I had to learn from scratch. I didn’t even know what a mole was.” It wasn’t the disadvantage it might have been, which probably has something to do with her attitude to learning. “Science is about curiosity and creative thinking. You can always learn how to do something. You don’t have to think you’re locked into a career just based on what you’ve done up to that point.” She says in another ten years, she could be doing anything—if not climate science, she says she’d be happy working on development projects like the Tiplyang Project. This project, established by her godmother Elizabeth, is based in a remote region of Nepal that Jess recently visited to create systems to support the sustainability of a school. “I don’t believe a career necessarily goes in a straight line. Who knows where I will be in ten years time. My only requirement is that I am in a job that is contributing in some way. I want to make a difference.”
Photographs courtesy of Jess Bramley-Alves
coming soon & things to do ACCOMMODATION Living in a UOW residence will give you access to new friends, secure housing in great locations and learning support. UOW Living is more than a roof overhead, it’s one of the best ways to start uni. WHERE TO LIVE UOW Living owns and manages nine different residences, with a major expansion under construction right on the campus grounds at UOW Wollongong. The new development will add an extra 360 beds to the existing accommodation. Find out more at www.uow.edu.au/ about/accommodation/residences/expansion Almost all the residences offer single bedrooms, and depending where you stay, a mix of shared facilities and living areas. They offer a range of meal options: self-catered, where you cook for yourself; fully catered, where you’re provided meals through the residence cafeteria; and flexi catered, where you can eat from the cafeteria but only pay for what you eat. Find out more including video tours at www.uow.edu.au/about/accommodation/residences
HOW TO APPLY Applications for living at UOW are done online at apply-accom.uow.edu.au. Places fill up fast, so you should get your application in as soon as possible.
GUARANTEE YOUR PLACE Everyone who gets a successful outcome in UOW Selective Entry is guaranteed a place in UOW accommodation if they apply and pay the application fee before 12 October. See www.uow.edu.au/future/selectiveentry/living for more.
UOW’s new Marketview Accommodation, located in central Wollongong
POINTS TO UOW
SCHOLARSHIPS
We know that if you’ve done well in relevant HSC subjects, you’ll be better prepared for university. With Points to UOW, you can score up to three extra points for doing well in subjects relevant to your UOW degree.
Our scholarships and grants will help you reach your goals.
How to apply It’s all automatic, and is processed through UAC.
How many points? You can earn a maximum of three extra points for each UOW preference. Use our bonus points calculator at www.uow.edu.au/future/pointstouow to estimate how many points you may be eligible for.
LOCAL BONUS POINTS You may also be eligible for three bonus application points by attending a regional, rural or local school. We offer bonus bonus points to over 400 schools from Kogarah to Queanbeyan—find your school online at www.uow.edu.au/future/bonuspoints/bonus3
FEATURED DEGREES Like what you see? These are the degrees helping our people get where they need to be. Xirui studies marketing. Bachelor of Commerce (UAC 753899)
Some scholarships are designed to reward the most academic and talented students for their outstanding achievements. Others recognise the personal attributes and community contributions of well-rounded students. We also offer scholarships to students with exceptional sporting ability, which allows them to study and pursue their sporting goals. Each scholarship gives you financial assistance to allow you to focus more effectively on your studies, while some also offer the opportunity for work-integrated learning programs. We offer the following different types of scholarships and grants:
ACADEMIC Scholarships for academic excellence, awarded for exceptional performance in the HSC.
WORK INTEGRATED LEARNING These scholarships combine financial assistance with work experience.
CORPORATE Scholarships awarded to encourage students to study (or continue to study) in a particular field.
EQUITY Assistance for students experiencing social or financial disadvantage.
SPORTING These provide financial support to talented sporting men and women.
COMMUNITY Support for high-achieving students interested in a particular career path or specific to a town or region. You can find out more at www.uow.edu.au/about/scholarships
Dane studied communications. Bachelor of Communication and Media Studies (UAC 753110) Bachelor of Arts (UAC 753101)
Alice studies journalism and Spanish. Bachelor of Journalism – Bachelor of Arts (UAC 751660)
Simon studies law and international studies. Bachelor of International Studies – Bachelor of Laws (UAC 751212)
Jess studied environmental science before her PhD. Bachelor of Environmental Science Advanced (UAC 757618)
Have you made your choice? connect: uow INFOMATION EVENINGs As it’s getting close to the decision making end of the HSC year, you no doubt have lots of questions to ask. You and your parents are invited to attend one of our Year 12 Information Evenings. This is your opportunity to speak one-on-one with staff from all nine faculties and UOW College, as well as speaking with students to hear what they think about studying at UOW. You will also learn more about our bonus points, scholarships and key dates for UAC applications. Book online now at www.uow.edu.au/future/events
Loftus (for courses specific to UOW Southern Sydney) Tuesday 21 August, 6.00 pm – 8.00 pm UOW Southern Sydney campus, Loftus Bookings: email ssydney-enquiries@uow.edu.au or Call (02) 8536 2000
St George Wednesday 29 August, 6.30 pm – 8.30 pm St George Leagues Club, Kogarah
Batemans Bay (for courses specific to UOW Batemans Bay) Thursday 30 August, 6.30 pm – 7.30 pm UOW Batemans Bay, Beach Road Batemans Bay Book online bbay.uow.edu.au or Call (02) 4472 2125
Wollongong Tuesday 11 September 6.30pm – 8.30pm Uni Hall, University of Wollongong
Campbelltown Wednesday 12 September, 6.30 pm – 8.30 pm Campbelltown RSL Club, Campbelltown
Nowra Tuesday 18 September, 6.30 pm – 8.30 pm Ray Cleary Lecture Theatre, UOW Shoalhaven Campus, Nowra
Cronulla Wednesday 19 September, 6.30 pm – 8.30 pm Sharkies/Cronulla Sutherland Leagues Club, Woolooware
The University of Wollongong attempts to ensure the information contained in this publication is correct at the time of production (August 2012); however, sections may be amended without notice by the University in response to changing circumstances or for any other reason. Check with the University at the time of application/enrolment for any updated information. UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG CRICOS: 00102E
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see where it takes you
Photograph courtesy of Jess Bramley-Alves