On Dit Edition 81.12

Edition 81.12

INSIDE:

CHANGING YOUR MIND ABOUT EXCHANGE

Volume 81 Edition 12 Editors: Casey Briggs, Stella Crawford and Holly Ritson.

On Dit is a publication of the Adelaide University Union.

EDITORIAL 2 ON THE WEBSITE

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WILD HORSE!

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On Dit is produced and printed on the traditional country of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. We recognise and respect their cultural heritage, beliefs and relationship with the land.

CORRESPONDENCE 6

The opinions expressed within this magazine are not necessarily those of the editors, the University of Adelaide, or the Adelaide University Union.

EXTREME HOARDING: ALICE BITMEAD

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Talk to us: ondit@adelaide.edu.au auu.org.au/ondit facebook.com/onditmagazine twitter.com/onditmagazine

HOW TO UNIVERSITY: GENEVIEVE NOVAK

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TALKING TUTORIALS: ANTHONY NOCERA

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SURVIVING HONOURS: BEC TAYLOR

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Published 22/10/2013

NEWS

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FROM THE PRESIDENTS

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WHAT’S ON

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VOX POP

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COLUMNS

(EX)CHANGING YOUR MIND: SOPHIE BYRNE

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GETTIN’ HITCHED: NICHOLAS HENRYS

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SUMMER STAYCATION: ALEX CROKER

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TEXTBOOK TROUBLES: SEB TONKIN

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DIVERSITY WITH YOUR CUPCAKE?: ELEANOR LUDINGTON

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APPLY PRESSURE HERE: GABRIEL EVANGELISTA

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ME, MYSELFIE AND I: HEATHER M c NAB 36 WHO ARE YOU?: KAROLINKA DAWIDZIAK-PACEK

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LIFE AFTER DEATH: MAX COOPER

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DIVERSIONS 44 STUDENT MEDIA 2014

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CLASS OF 2013

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Cover art by Ariane Jaccarini.

Inside back cover art by Madeleine Karutz.

Thanks to Angus, Tim, Tom, Amy, Kearin and the Union angels for distribution; Channel 7 for covering the real news; Jack for drawing us good; Madeleine for indulging our weird last minute requests.

Unthanks to all the haters.

EDITORIAL GOODBYE POSSUMS, much time complaining about on the internet, and coming up with idiotic ideas for diversions like ‘People ‘N’ Their Pets’.

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I have a lot of affection for this magazine, as much as it has spent this year driving me crazy. Which I think is the point I was trying to make about feelings, and the point that I’m now going to try and awkwardly shoehorn into some kind of moral.

CASEY SAYS:

I’ve been thinking about feelings.

They’ve never really been my strong suit, just ask Holly or Stella to confirm. But now that we’re reaching the end of our time as editors of this magazine and I’ve got this little bit of page to write about my feelings, I figure it’s a good time to, you know, have some.

Great, now I sound like a sociopath.

When I entered this office for the first time as editor almost a year ago, there were two thoughts that immediately went through my head. Firstly, ‘I wonder if that couch is comfortable enough for napping on’, and secondly, ‘Shit. I’d better not fuck this up.’

There are not many better motivators in life than fear of fucking up (why is FOFU not an internet acronym yet?), but I’m glad to say that the year hasn’t just been me lurching from one mistake to another. Because soon after those initial thoughts, we began to be visited by a steady stream of amazing writers, illustrators, photographers, and supporters.

I’m pleased to be able to say that, on reflection, I have had feelings after sharing some of the deeply personal stories of students, getting to the bottom of some of the issues that you spend so

I get that not every student is going to be passionate about their student magazine, their student union, the quality of their education, or even anything related to their studies at all. But it’s important that you give a shit about something.

Giving a shit is the positive, motivational version of FOFU, and it leads to opportunity. If I didn’t give a shit at some point I would never have learned how amazing Dazzle camouflage is, never have discovered how nifty kissing boys is, and never ended up sitting here writing this awkward moral tale.

Okay enough feelings, feelings are icky, right guys?

On Dit has had hundreds of editors in its life, and it’s going to have hundreds more. All of us are merely lucky custodians, chosen to look after it, cuddle it, share it with the rest of the students during the day, and make sure it comes back in and gets enough rest at night.

It’s been a privilege to be a tiny piece of On Dit’s history and I wish next year’s custodians much happiness and luck with their bundle of joy.

Fat loves to you all, especially Holly and Stella, Casey

STELLA SAYS:

I’d like to go out in a blaze of pithiness and wit, but I can’t seem to find the right words. I mistakenly read the final edition editorials of the past few years and now all I have is their better words, stuck in my head.

I guess that’s the point. One minute I was reading the magazine obsessively – picking it up between lectures, reading every page and feeling like I was a part of something and the next I was actually a part of something. One minute after that and there are just a lot of blank pages every fortnight and we’re supposed to be the ones making it?

Student media is small and it’s easy to rise to such giddy heights as ‘editor’ or ‘supreme arbiter of taste’. It’s truly a bootstrap world, out here. But it’s never really about being good yourself – it’s about learning from people who can write better than you, and draw better than you, and people who care more or know more about something than you do. It’s about skill sharing. Bootstrap sharing.

There will always be people that can phrase whatever it is better: in this case, there are people that can make inclusive, supportive communities sound exactly as

romantic as they should sound.

I will love this magazine until forever because it let me do things even though there were people that were better than me. I will love it because it helped me get better.

anyone else want to hear them?

Why was Julian Assange singing ‘You’re the Voice’?

I’m still not really sure. But I’ve realised this: there are a lot of people in the world with a lot of different opinions. While I might feel really strongly about kissing noises, bellybuttons, and polystyrene, my co-editors have no problem with any of these.

In short: everyone is shit, and everyone can get better. I’m pretty sure it’s all luck, anyway.

In which case, I owe luck a lot.

Thanks, lady, for the opportunity to work with some cool people and watch them get better, mostly without any real help from us and almost certainly without ever having read our style guide (nobody ever read our style guide).

Thanks for the office with the substandard hygiene conditions, the best youtube playlists and the two people in the world whose wardrobe I know as well as my own. Casey and Holly, you are the only people I’ve ever broken into a truly spontaneous rendition of Vitamin C’s ‘Graduation’ with, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

If I were feeling particularly optimistic, I would say On Dit has been my growing up. But I’m not, and I haven’t, and so On Dit can be my refusal to grow up. It’s mucking around in the sandpit after everyone has gone inside. There’s not enough money and no time and at 4am nothing is ever proofread properly and it’s a bit cold out.

Making the sandcastle, however, is just as much fun as it used to be.

Pithy enough?

I hope you’ve had as much fun as we have.

Love, Stella

HOLLY SAYS:

Apparently, at the beginning of the year I agreed to co-ordinate the Vox Pop section (p14). ‘We have to do it!’ I said, ‘It’ll be fun and a great way to engage students.’ Secretly, I was probably thinking ‘it’ll be a great way to meet cute boys.’

Vox Pop is short for vox populi, which is Latin for ‘voice of the people’. What Vox Pop means for you, dear reader, is getting to hear the witty/thought-provoking/ bizarre opinions of other students.

What it’s meant for me is lots of running around the uni, accosting friendly looking people with a ‘Hi, would you like to be vox popped for On Dit?’. Mostly, people would stare at me blankly, as though I’d just said something in a foreign language. (Which I had: On Dit is French. So it’s pronounced on dee).

Over the year, it got steadily more disheartening to discover that not only did most students not realise how much work I was putting into this magazine, they didn’t even know the thing existed. Let alone the fact that most of their responses were along the lines of ‘Uhhh, I don’t know. Can you just make me sound funny?’

As the year went by, I couldn’t help but wonder, was the people’s voice really worth listening to? Did

And that’s really okay. Variety is the spice of life, and if the Spice Girls have taught me anything, spiciness is what makes amazing things happen, like driving a double decker bus over the Tower Bridge. Or, in our case, editing 1.64 million pages of students’ opinions, stories, pictures, and voices.

While you might think your opinions on pornography, pub crawls, true love or icecream aren’t that unique, as someone who’s heard a lot of opinions, I’m telling you: they probably are.

So it’s important to really think about your opinions, justify them (though not in print, ew.), and talk to people about them. You might change the way someone else thinks. Or just meet someone cute.

To next year’s editors: eat well, don’t drop Vox Pop, and I’ll see you for Elle Dit in 2014!

To my friends, family, housemates and chickens – I love you all so much. And I’ll never ask you to contribute to On Dit ever again.

Stella, thank you for the clipboard – you really helped me hold things together. Casey, I always knew there were feelings under that ridiculously soft hair/face of yours.

Good job team.

Much love, as always, Holly

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ON THE WEBSITE

4 WILL YOU MISS US WHEN THE ADELAIDE FESTIVAL LAST COPY OF ON DIT IS GONE? OF IDEAS NO? OKAY. BYE NOW. MAYBE? CHECK THE WEBSITE. AUU.ORG.AU/ONDIT BEST OF THE (FILM) FESTIVAL

Whether it’s french films or Australian locals, the Adelaide Film Festival has you covered. And so do we. For reviews, recommendations, or a good critique, head to the website. To see a film, you should like, go see a film.

Yeah?

WE’VE GOT YOUR BACK

Back editions of On Dit, that is.

You’ll find editions from the good old years of 2011 and 2012 online, as well as all your favourite from this year. Plenty of holiday reading there!

The Adelaide Festival of Ideas is on again, this time featuring speakers such as Annabel Crabb, David Marr and Julian Morrow.

Wanna think about the sexuality of bonobos? Or memes? We review the biggest ideas just for you.

FESTIVAL OF UNPOPULAR CULTURE Wanna spend a Friday night at an event called ‘Queue’ or a Sunday arvo talking about aliens? No? Well, we did, and we’ll tell you what it was like.

WANNA JOIN THE FUN?

Next year is pretty soon now! Really soon, in fact. It’s almost guaranteed to be a party. If you’d like to get your year-long party RSVP in a little early, fill in the contributor form found at auu.org.au/ondit/contribute and you’ll hear from next year’s editors in a jiffy.

WILD HORSE!

BY ROWAN ROFF

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CORRESPONDENCE

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Dear Anna,

Dear On Dit,

Re: ‘From Russia with Love’, Edition 81.10

I am going to fail this semester because Pokémon X and Y is taking up all of my time. Why doesn’t UA recognise Pokémon addiction as the disease it is, crippling the minds of our youth?

I thought I would give you the courtesy of a reply, since my article left you so confused. I thank you for your input and appreciate your opinion and criticism, it has given me the opportunity to clear things up.

I am bewildered at how you came to the conclusion that I was throwing dirt at Russia. At no point have I said anything suggesting that Russia is inherently a bad country with bad people. Quite the opposite – Russian people have endured and survived through things many of us can’t even imagine, and we should applaud that. However, due to these struggles, some aspects of Russia’s social culture have not yet developed, such as acceptance of same sex relationships.

Secondly, I am very much aware of Russia’s geographical location, in fact my hometown is located in the east. Yes, Russia does indeed have a large Muslim population (although they are still a minority group), but I am not ignorant enough to assume that all of them are homophobic. Aside from that, this is a rights argument. Allowing same sex relationships does not infringe on the rights of Muslims. Denying same sex relationships, however, is infringing on the rights of gay people. And in case you take issue with it being a right – yes, I (and I don’t believe I’m alone on this) believe that having a relationship with whoever you happen to fall in love with is a right.

Finally, yes I call myself a Russian by heritage and also an Australian by citizenship. That said, I do not and will not blindly follow unquestionable patriotism.

People are not perfect, we can only better ourselves through constructive criticism and self evaluation.

Best, Alyona

SO SORRY

In Edition 81.7 we incorrectly credited the piece ‘Try Shaving’ to Rhia Rainbow, when the author was in fact Ruby Niemann. Sorry Ruby!

In Edition 81.11, we incorrectly identified one of the Vox Pop respondents as Nelson. In actual fact the photo belongs to Lawrence. This was an error introduced in the production process.

Apologies to Lawrence.

I know people who’ve had to skip meals just to keep up their Pokémon training regime. I think we need to get together and create a support group for Pokémon addicts on campus where we can inspire each other to complete our Pokédexes, compare our grooming techniques and streetpass for those precious Pokémiles.

Glory to Kalos!

Roland Bedford Dear Lester-Irabinna Rigney, I am so ecstatic to read a confirmation in writing that no Indigenous Australian History courses have been deleted. I am very happy to hear the University of Adelaide reaffirming their commitment to playing a leadership role in the nation’s recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s, knowledges and culture.

In doing this I hope students can take your reply to Vivian to be a commitment that no Indigenous Australian History courses will be cut in the foreseeable future as well. I look forward to seeing that commitment in writing in the next On Dit and I thank you, and students thank you in advance.

With that commitment from you I am so excited to be able to study Jenni Caruso’s course ‘Aftermath: Aboriginal Lives in 20th Century Australia’ in 2015.

She is one of the most fantastic guest lecturers I have had and brings experiences and knowledge that I have so far not experienced doing History at the University of Adelaide.

I have had phenomenal feedback from students currently doing this course and I know that this course could be one of the strongest History courses in future at Adelaide University if given the chance.

Lucy Small-Pearce Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty Board Undergraduate Representative

To the Editor, On Dit, Cogito. Ctrl. Alt. Del. I had a Ferris Bueller day today, or at least the beginnings of one. It included a stroll along North Terrace, through the Art Gallery and around The University. The Philosophy Department had moved on but On Dit had not.

Your plea for contributions could be met, without fear of discovery of the plagiarism, by the cutting and pasting of correspondence and articles from any of the last hundred years of On Dit - Including the letter re: Ondee.

That is not an indictment or criticism of you. It is meant to be my reflection on the un-changing nature of university life. I think it means that you reflect accurately, as did your predecessors, what is, and what you see, happening around you. I think it means that does not change.

There are, at least, two ways of approaching University studies. The aim for the docket and the aim to learn to think.

When I came late to university I was a sponge, the waves that had once washed over me were there to be soaked up. I could have, still could, taken multitudes of courses just for the taste. My first disappointment came when I thought I tried to think and got marked at 65 per cent in two different subjects in two different faculties. I needed to average around 74 per cent to get into law. At that point I suspended trying to think. Although upon reflection that may be as Stephen Fry once unkindly put it, ‘...a strange use of the word think...’

Happily, I learned quickly that undergraduates are not required to think. I learned that the best and quickest way to maximise marks per unit of effort was to carefully choose the topic. Not on the basis of personal interest. But on the basis of the predictability of the markers opinion. In politics, with a lefty lecturer it was the Gough Whitlam revolution for me.

Hurray for Gough and down with Frasier. In Family Law with a reputed gay feminist in charge, I wrote to support gay marriage, and so on.

This is what I call aiming for the docket. On top of this I found that Adelaide Uni Law School was very academic and the LLB did not prepare a student for legal practice. I did not criticise that then, nor do I now. If the Adelaide university is not the place to study academic law, where is? Never the less it was my intention to practise law. In Law school I needed to

aim for the docket and to learn law as she is practised.

In Law school I studied everything twice, for two purposes, I prepared my own practice manuals for each subject as well as aiming for the docket.

Although this was new for me, I can’t have been the first to do it.

Imagine a person like you, relatively smart, inquisitive, relatively open to new facts, ideas and thoughts and then imagine that you are able to maintain those faculties for the next forty years. You are me and I am you. It is almost inconceivable that the you in forty years time will not be worth listening to now.

I think that my (not new) point is: university gives you little option but to aim for the docket. You can also choose to learn. In forty years time you will be glad that you did both.

Ctrl. Alt. Del. This is an abridged version of a letter we received that was too long to print in its entirety. If you’d like to read the full letter, visit auu.org.au/ondit.

THANKING YOU SOFTLY WITH OUR LOVE

There are many people behind the scenes that help ensure the magazine runs smoothly. Thankyou to everyone that has helped this year, but particularly: Everyone at Graphic Print Group, especially Graham and Brian The Adelaide University Union, in particular Dianne, Kearin, Sarah, Bek, Danielle, Kim and Deanna Angus, for ensuring every edition of On Dit reached your hands this year Alice Bitmead for dutifully forwarding Clare Voyant’s horoscopes to us every fortnight.

Frank and Sandra for being so lovely and understanding Everyone whose vox we popped All the student reps we quizzed: Sam, Rebecca, Mikaela, William, Caitlyn, Yasmin, Sarah, Deanna, and Catherine You, for reading.

Our friends, family, housemates, teachers and supervisors for their understanding, tolerance and support.

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NEWS

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CHANGING NAMES

The university body responsible for recruiting and supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and delivering the Indigenous Knowledge major has recently changed its name.

Formerly known as Wilto Yerlo, the body is now called Wirltu Yarlu Aboriginal Education, to reflect the correct Kaurna spelling of the term. Wirltu Yarlu means ‘Sea Eagle’, which is the totem of Gladys Elphick, a South Australian Aboriginal community leader.

Wirltu Yarlu was established by the university in 1996 in response to the development of Aboriginal teaching programs in the 1980s and increases in the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students at the university.

Wirltu Yarlu has also recently moved offices to level one of the Schulz Building, North Terrace Campus.

Holly Ritson

SLIPPING DOWN THE RANKS

The University of Adelaide fell in the recently released Times Higher Education World University Rankings – from 176 to equal 201-225.

After last year’s climb into the top 200, the University failed to successfully defend its super prestigious position.

On top of this, the fall makes University of Adelaide the sole member of the Group of Eight that doesn’t hold a top-200 position in the rankings.

The university also lost ground to University of Western Australia,

which was the only major winner in the ratings game, sliding upwards to number 168.

Other universities in Australia performed similarly poorly.

University of Melbourne remains the top performing Australian university, although dropping to number 34 overall.

University rankings are heavily dependent on research output, which means good performance often has little to do with the quality of the education an undergraduate student would receive.

Research ‘volume and funding’ and ‘influence and citations’ combined receive double the weight in the rankings calculations than does teaching.

Stella Crawford

FONES ATTACKED

The iconic ‘Fones’ on the Barr Smith Lawns have been damaged, likely as a result of vandalism, with one of the three pieces of the sculpture being knocked from its base.

The sculpture was attacked on Saturday October 12, in the middle of the afternoon. CCTV footage of the Barr Smith Lawns have been passed onto SA Police by the university.

The Fones were installed in 1992 and created by local artist Johnnie Dady. The work was commissioned by both the University of Adelaide and the Adelaide University Union and is reportedly worth $10,000.

The university is concerned that it might not be possible to repair The Fones.

Casey Briggs

Ready to get some real experience in your degree?

Sign up for Green Steps 2014 NOW, the University of Adelaide’s very own sustainability-focused training and internship program, which gives YOU a chance to make a change around campus. adelaide.edu.au/ecoversity

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STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE COLUMN CATHERINE STORY

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This year has been pretty hectic for the higher education sector. We have had five different higher education ministers, all with their own different perspectives of how higher education should be delivered in Australia.

We have seen $2.8 billion in cuts, then some of it (suggested to be) restored, then it cut again.

Through these cuts we’ve seen the poorest students targeted, with the conversion of Youth Allowance start up scholarships to loans.

We have seen the National Union of Students, the peak national body for student organisations, organise national rallies to protest against these cuts.

We’ve seen our newest higher education minister Christoper Pyne attack the SSAF fee and threaten to recap places. We student representatives joke that the government is creating ruckus just to disturb our study.

At the University of Adelaide we’ve seen some changes too.

The university’s strategic plan the ‘Beacon of Enlightenment’ has been driving changes all over the shop, such as rolling in Small Group Discovery, a review into the structure of the academic year, reviewing the graduate attributes, and the university supposedly still ‘doesn’t know what’s going on in HumSS’ (answers please, University, because if you don’t give us them we will keep bringing up that there are cuts).

The SRC has also been pretty active. We have fought (and are still fighting) the government cuts to higher education. We have fought against cuts in HumSS on a campus level, campaigned against youth wages, and worked on structural change to create a safer campus.

Seeing as this is the last edition of the year I would like to say it’s been lovely to meet with all the students that have come along to our meetings or events, and I would like to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to be the President of the SRC this year.

We have campaigned against the University’s relationship with Taib Muhmud, and exposed the allegations coming from many sources against this man.

I would also like to say that you all have the capacity to get involved in some way or another, whether that’s running to be on SRC yourself next year, filling in one of our petitions, or coming to a rally or event. Your participation, however small, warms our little hearts.

We have run events focused on student health and reshaping disability stigma, we have run film screenings, worked with community organisations, run all-student meetings, run an art exhibition, encouraged people to enrol to vote, run a conference, and written submissions to the university.

We have been in a whole range of media, local, national, and international, and most importantly, we have chatted to students throughout the year, and provided forums to get involved.

Overall lovelies, please take care during this stressful time of the year. Book those appointments you’ve been putting off, talk to the counselling service or student care if you need help, or take a leaf out of my book and don’t be ashamed of crying in the hub when times get tough.

Catherine Story SRC President

I recently unearthed a whole bunch of photos from the SRC archives, and it was sad to see that the campaigns from years gone past ‘Bring Youth Allowance to the Poverty Line’ ‘No HECS hikes’ and ‘Public Funding to Education’ are still very much things we are fighting for.

srcpresident@auu.org.au facebook.com/adelaidesrc Twitter: @adelaidesrc

And while there hasn’t really been any ‘wins’ for students this year on a federal level, there have been many real losses.

Stress Less Day, October 30.

Check the SRC Facebook page for more details closer to the date.

In fact, the only real win is the amazing response students have made to these losses. We have seen the biggest mobilisations of students for 10 years. This, I can say confidently is something that we as students should be really proud of.

SRC EVENTS:

Student BBQ and rally against HumSS cuts. October 24, LG Napier Lawns at 12pm.

QUIZ YOUR REPS

STATE OF THE UNION

LUCY SMALL-PEARCE, DEANNA TAYLOR SRC PRESIDENT-ELECT

Q: A:

What are the biggest issues for the SRC in 2014?

One would be the federal government education cuts and the impact that they will have on the University of Adelaide and quality of education. Also the possibility of the Student Services and Amenities Fee being cut.

Q: A:

What events are you looking forward to running?

We had a SALA event this year in fix, and hopefully we can do another one next year.

We’ve also registered as a Fringe venue so hopefully we can get an art exhibition happening during the Fringe. I’d also like to invite groups like Dancing Room to come on campus.

Q: A:

When did you stop wetting the bed?

I’m gonna say six, or seven?

Q: A:

What do you think of The Fones on the Barr Smith Lawns being damaged?

I hope whoever did it gets caught and gets a very stern talking to and pays for the repairs. Art on campus is important, and they are staple to the Barr Smith Lawns and I like them.

Q: A:

How many fingers am I holding up?

Eight. [Eds: wrong, it was four] You’re lying to me.

[Eds: after being told that we weren’t lying] Well you know, two times four is eight, so, I’m right.

Warning: this column will include a lot of vain selfreflection and feelings.

As a student, time goes quickly.

One day it’s O’Week and the next you’re cramming for your final exam of the year.

It can be hard to take time to recognise achievements. But it’s important to take pride in your successes.

Whether it’s finally being brave enough to speak during a tutorial after six weeks, completing a semester without handing any assignments in overdue (no mean feat for many students), or a High Distinction on an exam, I think it’s crucial to reflect on what you’ve achieved through the year.

Dwelling on what you perceive to be failures won’t make you any more successful. You, like everyone on this planet, probably have a long list of people around you who won’t waste any time telling you you’re crap – why bother adding yourself to that list?

It’s only now that I’m writing this column, my last as Union President, that I realise how close I am to the end of my term.

And it’s only now that I feel a sense of accomplishment (as well as a sense of impending irrelevancy).

Accomplishment on a personal level (mostly with just managing to conjure up material for this column every fortnight ), but also on behalf of the Union.

2013 has been a great year for us – albeit a challenging year. By the end of this year, through the different arms of the Union, we will have assisted students with over 7, 500 issues, administered $40, 000 worth of grants to clubs,

and had student representatives sitting on over a dozen different committees of the University.

We will have run over $260,000 worth of events across three campuses, and provided over $230,000 worth of training to students.

Hundreds of students will have used Union facilities like the Prayer Rooms, the Women’s Room and the Rainbow Room, and thousands of students will have walked through the doors of The General. We have a lot to be proud of.

The Adelaide University Union has been around since 1895 providing services, fostering and supporting student communities and creating the best campus experience we can for students. The Union has a long, rich history and I feel very lucky, as well as proud, to have been part of it.

I hope that you also look back on 2013 with a sense of pride over your achievements, no matter how big or small.

Good luck with your final assessments, and enjoy your summer break – you’ve earned it!

See you on the flip side, Deanna Taylor Union President auupresident@auu.org.au facebook.com/auulifeoncampus Twitter: @auulifeoncampus

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WHAT’S ON. 12

AHOY CHEESELOVERS!

WELCOME,

Here’s where you’ll find information, gossip, shout-outs, news, events, bake sales, pub crawls and anything else you could possibly want to know about your university.

Have something to add? Think you know what’s on? If you’re running an event (pubcrawl or otherwise), let us know at ondit@adelaide.edu.au

HANNAH KENT

♥ S THE BARR SMITH LIBRARY

So much that she’s coming to the library on Thursday 31 October (at 6pm for 6:3opm) to talk about her debut novel Burial Rites and how cool Iceland is.

We think Hannah’s pretty cool – she’s the co-founder and publishing director of Kill Your Darlings, and in 2011 won the inaugural Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award.

RSVP by October 29 to robina.weir@adelaide.edu.au.

Gold coin donation (or two 50c pieces will do) gets you wine and fancy cheese!

RECLAIM THE NIGHT

Calling all women (including those who identify as women) to take to the streets on 25 October 2013.

Reclaim the Night draws together women in all their diversity to help raise community awareness about the need for women and children to be safe and free from all forms of violence in their homes, on the streets and at work.

This year the event starts at Tarndanyangga [Victoria Square], and will then walk down King William St and Hindley St to the Yungondi Couryard [Uni SA] for food, drinks, music and readings performed and created by women.

Please bring along your friends and family!

The Reclaim the Night Collective asks that any men who wish to support this event show their respect for women’s autonomy by cheering the march from the footpath.

For more info, contact gem.beale@ gmail.com

DAYS UNTIL: 63 124

Christmas: On Dit 82.1: Final Exams 2014:

381

THE ADELAIDE UNIVERSITY CHORAL SOCIETY PRESENTS:

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: IN WINDSOR FOREST, LINDEN LEA

Conducted by Peter Kelsall 7:00 PM, Saturday, 26 October Pilgrim Uniting Church, Flinders St Tickets $25/$20 online or at the door.

For more information, head to aucs.org.au or contact secretary@ aucs.org.au.

Cheesefest is Australia’s premium cheese festival.

This year, Cheesefest will be held on Saturday 26 October 12.30pm-7pm and Sunday 27 October 11am-5pm in Rymill Park / Murlawirrapurka Adelaide.

Get your fix of stilton/camembert/ edam/cheddar/haloumi/chevre/Babybel/ Kraft Singles all weekend.

Don’t worry if you’re lactose intolerant – they have wine too!

For more information, head to cheesefest.com.au

HE Y! SLACKER!

Need a summer job? Trying to find a way to fund that brilliant indie film project? Have your parents/hosuemates banned you from making any more lemonade with the lemons from neighbour’s tree?

The Union has gathered all the best jobs and listed them right here: lifeoncampus.org.au/employment.

If you’re struggling with that pesky CV/Cover Letter business, the Union employment service can help you out if you book an appointment.

OVERHEARD @ THE UNI OF ADELAIDE Person 1: ‘Waterbreathing?’

Person 2: ‘It’s like firebreathing but you drown.’

‘I don’t drink energy drinks ever. I stick to coffee to get natural energy.’

‘Have you ever drunk vodka through a Tim Tam?’ 1: ‘Do we even have a museum in Adelaide?’

2: ‘Are you joking? We have a sick-ass museum!’

STRESS LESS DAY

The Student Representative Council invites you to procrastinate with a purpose!

ROLL UP! ROLL UP!

Head to the Barr Smith Lawns on October 30 to relax with sweet tunes, play a game of chess or croquet, score some free condoms, pads and tampons and enjoy some general fun times before the onslaught of exams.

For more information, check the SRC’s Facebook page closer to the date.

SAVE OUR HUMSS No cuts to courses!

No cuts to staff budgets!

No cuts to tutorials!

Join the SRC and student activists on campus to demand the university increase funding to HumSS. It’s absolutely pivotal that as many students as possible come out to show the University that we are serious about our education. Students of all faculties are welcome to attend!

FREE BBQ provided by the SRC For more information and updates, go to facebook.com/ events/167528913449636/?fref=ts

MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

SRC and Union meetings are open to all students.

SRC meetings are held fortnightly on Tuesday (October 23 is the next one) in FIX Lounge. Union meetings are held monthly in the Union board room; the next one is November 20.

We’re not ready to say goodbye just yet. So once we’ve caught up on some sleep and study, let’s all hang at the pub and share stories. Keep an eye on the On Dit Facebook page for details.

The Lolly Jar Circis is a new circus school open to everyone aged 6-26.

That includes people with disabilities which is awesome – there is nothing else like it in Adelaide.

Classes are held on Wednesdays in St Peters, an easy bus ride from the city. Circus is a magnificent activity for anyone because it is easily adapted to whatever skills one has. Did you see the guy on X-factor in a wheelchair who climbed up a 5 meter rope using just his arms? Yeah... they won’t be teaching that.

But the point is you can learn to do anything if you set your mind to it and are willing to adapt your technique to suit.

The skills that will be taught include juggling, slapstick, tumbling, poi, tube, rola bola, how to be a clown, diablo, flower sticks and sooooo much more.

To register or find out more details email lollyjarcircus@gmail. com.

Alicia Strous

TIME TO SAY GOODBYE :’(

Email: ondit@adelaide.edu.au Facebook: facebook.com/onditmagazine Twitter: @onditmagazine Snail Mail: On Dit, c/o Adelaide University Union, Level 4 Union House, University of Adelaide, 5005 In person: Casey’s office is in Eng Level 7, Postgrad room, but unless you’re a Maths postgrad, you can’t get in. Holly hangs in the SRC Hub (something something 2014Women’s Officer), and Stella’s home number is 1800 Call Me Maybe.

CALENDAR: WEEKS 11 & 12 TUESDIT 22 OCTOBER SRC MEETING WEDNESDIT 23 THURSDIT 24 HUMSS CUT RALLY/BBQ FRIDIT 25 RECLAIM THE NIGHT SAT’DIT 26 CHORAL EVENT SUNDIT 27 CHEESEFEST!!

MONDIT 28 301 ST DAY OF THE YEAR TUESDIT 29 WEDNESDIT 30 SRC STRESS LESS DAY THURSDIT 31 HAPPY HALLOWEEN FRIDIT 1 NOVEMBER UNI’S OUT FOR SUMMER SAT’DIT 2 SWOTVAC BEGINS SUNDIT 3

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VOX POP

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HERE ARE SOME QUESTIONS THAT WE ASKED SOME PEOPLE. IT WAS LOTS OF FUN AND EVERYONE HAD A REALLY GOOD TIME. 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

What has been your favourite moment of 2013?

What’s the difference between a selfie and a self-portrait?

Are you staying in Adelaide over the summer? Why/Why not?

Is there life on Mars?

Where do you buy your textbooks?

If you were a food truck vendor, what would be selling?

BROCK, ENGINEERING (SPORTS/MECH), 2ND YEAR

1. I don’t know if I’ve had a favourite. Probably when my brother came home.

2. Portraits are fancy. Selfies are not.

3. Nah, I’ll be going home to Townsville.

4. Yes, but not intelligent life.

5. I don’t even buy textbooks. Who needs textbooks?

6. Chilli.

CHRISTINE, BACHELOR OF LANGUAGES, 3RD YEAR

1. That’s a hard one – I’ve just been stressed. I’ve formed a close relationship.

2. I don’t take selfies. I think it’s embarrassing taking selfies. It’s unhealthy to need other people’s praise to boost your self-esteem.

3. Most likely yes – I’ve got work and family commitments. If I could, I’d go to China.

4. I want to say yes – I think there’s got to be life everywhere.

5. Unibooks.

6. Something healthy. I believe in healthy food. Probably cold rolls.

STEPH, ARTS/PSYCHOLOGY, 4TH YEAR 1. Probably the day that election advertising stopped.

2. If you can see the arm it’s a selfie.

3. Yep – I have nothing interesting to do.

4. Of course – why wouldn’t there be?

5. Online or at Unibooks.

6. Doughnuts – cinnamon ones.

JASON, BACHELOR OF COMMERCE, 1ST YEAR

1. I’m a soccer fan, so probably when Arsenal (my favourite team) got a good result.

2. One is like art and the other is just an expression of your own emotions.

3. No – back to my home country (China).

4. I think there is. They’re currently trying to find people to go live on Mars.

5. I like owning new books that I buy from the Union bookshop.

6. Something hot – hot chocolate or coffee. I’d have an espresso machine.

SUNNY, PETROLEUM/GEOSCIENCE, HONOURS

1. Going to Alice Springs on a field trip. It was part sightseeing, part studying.

2. Selfies have a filter on them.

3. Yes – I have some summer work and the weather’s great. I’m looking forward to spending time with friends and going to the beach.

4. Right now? Definitely. There’s a robot up there – that counts as life.

5. Bookdepository.co.uk. You can’t beat free shipping.

6. Burgers – my truck would be different because customers could customise their burgers.

PATRICK, INTERNATIONAL STUDIES/ARTS, 4TH YEAR

1. Seeing Metallica for the second time.

2. Selfies are narcissistic, while self portraits are a more balanced celebration of yourself.

3. Yep – Adelaide’s the best.

4. Yeah – there’s water there so it’s probably a given.

5. I don’t usually have to buy them, but if I do, I buy them at Unibooks.

6. Something vegetarian.

MARZIEH, BACHELOR OF PSYCH. SCIENCE, 1ST YEAR 1. My brother’s engagement.

2. A self portrait takes more hard work.

3. Yeah – I live here. But I might go overseas for a holiday.

4. Yeah, there should be, but I don’t really know.

5. From Unibooks.

6. Icecream.

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(NOT QUITE) EXTREME HOARDING ALICE BITMEAD REALLY LIKES A LOT OF STUFF

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The ornaments came first – the oversized white cat with the faintly sinister smile, the luridly painted birds eternally perched on china branches, the egg cup in the shape of a squat little man in a badly fitting suit that always reminded me of a teacher I never really liked – followed by the novelty tea pots, the collection of themed lamps, the apparently endless parade of royal family themed mugs.

Bits of newspaper and bubble wrap swirled around the air like snowflakes, or particularly virulent dandruff.

I, Alice Bitmead, have moved for the forth time in as many months.

That’s a pretty impressive number in and of itself; I would challenge even the most seasoned of urban nomads to pack and repack each and every one of their no doubt sensible, khaki-toned possessions with the precision of a tetris champion so often and not hurl them all at some unfortunate passerby. But this isn’t taking into account the sheer vastness of My Things.

I have, as my friends and family have suggested/ accused, a bit of a problem with hoarding. I’m not quite at the ‘EXTREME HOARDERS: RETIREE EDITION’ level yet, but that’s not to say I haven’t given it a red hot go. My eyes are open to the fact that if all my knitwear was to suddenly fall on me simultaneously, I would be subject to a very plush, insulated death. I have separate wardrobes for costumes, ball gowns and furs (THEY ALL DEMAND RESPECT OKAY).

It is, I will openly admit, a problem. Moving house has been a multi-vehicle, trailer-obligatory affair. But I reject all and any allegations that immense, teetering piles of possessions are detrimental. Nay! I would argue that these things are an asset to my share house, a shining beacon of safety and forethought on so many fronts! For instance:

PROTECTION

Picture the scene: it’s 11pm at night, and you’re sitting on the softest patch of carpet you can find because no one has bought a couch yet, watching reruns of Beauty and the Geek. You hear a noise – it COULD just be the door of your letterbox flapping in the breeze. Sure.

OR, it could be that murderer/thief with the love of secondhand, student shit and mi goring that you’ve always dreaded. It’s your time to shine. In a matter of minutes, you could create a rudimentary barrier consisting of colour coordinated penguin classics, oversized cardigans and clogs against the threshold, effectively obscuring entry into your home and saving your instant noodle supplies from a very real and serious danger. You are welcome.

PREPARATION

You’ve just received a Facebook invite to a famous animals from history/petty felonies/bad taste themed party. Oh no! That sensible wardrobe of tasteful summer frocks and muted slacks of yours won’t do the trick! Whatever will you do? Once again, wise old roommate Alice comes to the rescue. If my standard everyday wardrobe of offensively lurid kaftans and Fran Drescher-themed sequined everything doesn’t do the trick, my five suitcases of specialized costumecentric ensembles will surely fill that niche. Oh, you needed a turban/stingray costume/Mount Rushmore mask/series of wigs? The Things will have you quite literally covered.

PREVENTION

You’re in the kitchen attempting the whip up a Bombe Alaska to surprise That Special Someone but wait, are those white pants? You wouldn’t want to get some stray Alaska on them! Any one of my SEVEN NOVELTY APRONS would protect them like a Union condom. A series of unfortunate mishaps have resulted in it becoming a charred mess in the oven, leaving the house permeated with an unpleasant charcoal-based aroma? Surely a scented candle would come in handy! Feel free to select the flavor of your choice from my extensive range.

So, yes, I have a problem. I’d like to say I’m dealing with it, but unless ‘dealing’ means ‘buying a life sized sulfur-crested cockatoo statuette because it is an investment piece’, that’s a lie. But when the day comes that you need to borrow the entire boxed set of Are You Being Served?, or a teapot depicting classic scenes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, you know where to come.

Alice Bitmead sometimes has to crouch to get through doors, but she’s pretty sure no one saw.

HOW TO: UNIVERSITY GENEVIEVE NOVAK HAS BEEN THERE, DONE THAT

This will be my final contribution to On Dit. Not because next year’s editors suck or anything – it’s just that as of 4pm on Wednesday week 12, I am no longer a student. Finished! Done! Free at last!

Four years, a distinction average, countless hangovers, truly innumerable bad choices and one well-paid job in my chosen field later, I feel competent – nay, confident – giving you first-, second- and third-years some tailored advice.

Whether or not I have actually taken something from my degree (wassup, Creative Writing faculty) seems entirely irrelevant: the university experience is not to be dismissed. I want you to have THE BEST TIME and GET SOMETHING out of your degree except HECS DEBT. So listen to me, okay? I’m wise.

HAVE SEX WITH A LOT OF PEOPLE

Everyone at university is bad at sex (wait, are they? …

Just me? Shit). You should practice with each other to get decent at it, so when you meet someone outside of uni, you’re not a total starfish/jackhammerer and it’s significantly(/somewhat) less embarrassing to wake up next to them.

Lose your head. Date people. Make out in dark corners at UniBar (hint: every corner is a dark corner at UniBar. It’s designed for hooking up). Get obsessed with the pretty girl in your Politics class and get the courage to actually talk to her. It’s so easy to meet people at uni: don’t waste the opportunity to have some great experiences (or crash and burns).

Wear condoms, don’t take your daddy issues out on some poor engineer’s penis, and treat everyone nicely. If you’ve had your heart stomped on before, you know it sucks. If you haven’t, I’ll tell you: it sucks. If you have to get your heart stomped on, at least get it stomped on by someone who knows where the clitoris is.

GO TO THE PARTIES

A degree takes a long time. Make friends! Buy hideous pub crawl t-shirts and regret the whole evening! This isn’t America and our college experience isn’t the college experience you see in the movies – but it is an experience, no less. You change so much between 18 and 22, don’t make yourself do it alone!

You don’t have to join clubs (spoiler: they’re probably shit. I never joined or anything, but they seem shit and you have to pay to join) or participate in those awkward O-Week activities, but do be outgoing. Do talk to people in your classes. Do tag along to parties you’ve been invited to. I promise, I understand how nice it is to sit on the couch with a mega bag of salt and vinegar chips and the entire second season of Mad Men on a Friday night, but you’re not getting anything out of it.

Don’t be a boring fuck. Come out of this place with a decent handful of oh-man-guess-what-happened-lastnight stories. You’ll be a better party guest for it.

FUCKING DO INTERNSHIPS

The job market is atrocious and it isn’t getting any easier. In class you’re all friends, but as soon as you put your degree up on the wall and head to seek.com.au, you’re all competitors. Maybe it’s just lucky that my employers haven’t asked for my transcript – but I’m pretty sure no one gives a shit that you got a HD in Latin. Be better than your peers; be more impressive.

Erase your competition. And start trying now.

It’s hard to convince someone to let you work for free.

You’ll get 20 nos before you get a yes. So start in your first year – look for full-time internships every winter break, every summer holiday. Don’t stop until your resume looks freaking amazing. Because once you get out of here and you’d like to earn more than $18 an hour as a waiter, you’re going to want the job you’ve studied 3 long years for. But if all your resume says is that you have a degree and lies about how you’re ‘enthusiastic!’ ‘hard-working!’ and ‘super good with people!’, you’re basically screwed. Be proactive now so you’re not broke later.

I have loved university. I will miss university. I am done with university. Guys, it’s the best and it’s the worst. Don’t work too hard, don’t stress too much, don’t pour your drinks too strong. Just enjoy those Centrelink benefits and remember: The Austral has $5 base spirits for students.

Genevieve Novak is the only person in history to turn a BA in Creative Writing into an actual job. She isn’t really sure if you should follow any of this advice at all. SEE YA, SUCKERS.

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TALKING TUTORIALS ANTHONY NOCERA WANTS TO HEAR YOUR OPINONS. AND A SNICKERS ART: KATIE HAMILTON

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Coming to university, I was promised two things by my high school teachers: that year twelve was the hardest work I’ d ever have to do and that university would be a beacon of intelligent and unrestricted discussion.

Neither of these things have turned out to be true. I read a lot, I stress eat and cry a lot because of all the reading (which may, now that I think about it, be a bonus. Because Snickers), and I’ve sat through more idiotic discussions then I thought possible.

For those of you who are (un)lucky enough to have avoided the general idiocy of my class mates, here are a couple of my favourite examples: The Soil Feminist: A particularly enthusiastic female law student who tried to argue a straightforward nuisance case about moving soil from a feminist perspective. I wholeheartedly support feminism and find it an interesting discussion topic.

But do you know who doesn’t find it interesting? Soil.

The Dickens-Baptist: A drug addled arts student with a blue beard who gave a sermon about how Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations was actually just a re-telling of the story of Jesus. Don’t worry; ‘fuck off’ was my reaction too.

But as frustrating as both of those experiences were, they were nothing compared to an English tutorial I had a couple of weeks ago.

We were discussing Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The conversation turned to the depiction of women in the film and how Kubrick manipulates the viewer into (temporarily) justifying the domestic abuse of a female character before condemning it entirely. After the point was made a girl turned around and said ‘Wow. You just made excuses for a wife-beater!

SUPPOSED to do. It may not be politically correct but neither is art a lot of the time.

That type of thinking and behaviour at university is the antithesis of what we’re here for. Not every history student is a Nazi, but they’ve talked about Hitler. Not every psychology student is obsessed with their anus (hopefully), but they’ve talked about Freud. When we study something subversive, which is everything in English, you need to expect to sometimes talk about things that are immoral and wrong. Because, often, such discussion fosters the understanding that helps combat those wrongs. Or at least makes for an enlightening tutorial.

Now, I need to clarify something. I don’t think I’m more intelligent than anyone else. Or intelligent at all, for that matter. I cut myself on a muesli bar wrapper the other day and have spent the last week recovering from a neck injury that I sustained as a result of ‘Bangarang-ing’ too hard and, up until writing this column, I thought ‘muesli’ was spelt ‘museli’. I’m a dick. But I think that, as university students, we are all mutually intelligent enough to get past tossing accusations at each other.

Maybe I’m intolerant and just need to calm down by eating a Snickers or maybe (definitely) I needed to not trust my High School teachers so much, but I feel a bit shortchanged. The Soil-Feminist and the DickensBaptist were ridiculous and wrong, but at least they had developed thoughts. And if I can sit through that, then I should be allowed to hear what someone with a valid critical opinion has to say, even if it’s controversial. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Now I know, it’s a difficult and incredibly sensitive topic to discuss. I understand that the discussion may have hit a sore spot for that person. However, abuse exists. It exists both in the context of the film and in the real world. It’s the point of university (and art, for that matter) to foster discussion so that we can gain perspective and understanding.

Just because we discuss something (especially in the context of a fictional work and in the sensitive way that it was discussed this instance) that doesn’t mean we support it. It means that we’re talking about it.

We were doing what students do. What students are

Anthony Nocera has had to sneeze for three weeks. Brace yourselves.

SURVIVING HONOURS BEC TAYLOR IS ALMOST AT THE END OF THE WORST YEAR OF HER LIFE

As you read this, hundreds of students doing their dreaded ‘Honours’ year will be proofreading their 15,000 word theses.

Including me.

You may be wondering why would people do this extra year of study if everyone ever has always said that it’s so terribly hard and possibly the worst year of your life? I ask myself this on a daily basis.

I chose to do Honours for several reasons: 1. I had an epiphany about a topic I wanted to research in my final year!

2. Didn’t get any interviews and / or missed boat with graduate applications.

3. Lecturer was persuading me to do it....

4. Supposed to make you more job-worthy (some people need Honours to get a job in their field) 5. The potential to undertake an independent year of study and increase skills.

6. It provides options for later doing a PhD if I wanted to.

If you’re considering doing Honours, here are some tips.

PICK AN INTERESTING TOPIC

If you get a choice, pick something that you find interesting and that motivates you. You will have to read a lot on your topic (and after that, read a lot more).

By ‘your topic’ that could mean many different areas of the literature, which you need to understand so you can make a judgement as to where there is a gap is and what it is you can do.

If you don’t get much choice, as with Physics for example, well the topic is probably there because the supervisor needs it researched. They might have already done papers that have half your literature review / technical stuff in it, hurrah!

PICK THE RIGHT SUPERVISOR

You need to mutually want to work together, so getting along is ideal. You want to be able to complement each other, where you feel comfortable speaking about your ideas. Pick a supervisor that understands the (a) literature on the topic and (b) type of research that you are undertaking.

ETHICS APPROVAL

If you are dealing with humans or animals, you must do ethics approval, and can take up to 6 weeks to get back.

So either figure this out early and get it in early, or just do non-human related data collecting.

SAY GOODBYE TO MANY THINGS

During this year, you do not want bothered by too many other things, so you’ll have to cull your commitments.

Try and get the most out of (a) Centrelink and (b) scholarships. I know both of these aren’t accessible to everyone, so you might have to work. Get used to nights in when your housemates are having nights out.

You may forget how to talk about other things besides your thesis, and weave what you’ve learned into every conversation – beware of others not understanding what you’re talking about. Try not to worry that you’ve become a hermit and that your social time is restricted to those things that you can do with other people, like eat and exercise – in fact, these are excellent things to pencil in your diaries! Food and sweat dates!

GET IN THE RIGHT PHYSICAL SPACE

Get yourself a good set up from the start: Desk away from bed, a computer and keyboard that won’t cause you pain, and an ergonomic chair. Make sure you have good lighting – fluoros are great at keeping you awake!

And keep a notebook of all your ideas – it makes it much easier to organise your thoughts.

GET IN THE RIGHT MENTAL SPACE

You need to focus. Everything I’ve mentioned above will help you focus, but make sure there are also supportive people around you – your family, housemates, friends, supervisor – to encourage you, to bring you food occasionally or drive you to the markets so that your life can function.

If Honours becomes your top priority – which it should, unless you have a baby, in which case don’t do Honours – you need to do those things that will keep you sane and healthy, or your project will start becoming insane and unhealthy.

This is a snapshot of advice, and you’re going to need more once you start, but hopefully it’s enough to stop you experiencing the myth of ‘Honours being the worst and hardest year of my life’.

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(EX) 20

CHANGING YOUR

WORDS: SOPHIE BYRNE ART: MICHAEL LAWLESS It’s easy to write off going on exchange as an overrated experience: one long continual drinking binge with the occasional half-hearted essay to write and a fair amount of Google Translate1.

You might also think that going on exchange is yet another university cliché, up there with pub-crawl t-shirts and being madly in love with history lecturer Gareth Pritchard.

However, you would be sorely mistaken. That ‘cliché’ at the University of Adelaide is only applicable to a tiny percentage of the student population (only 500 students studied abroad this year).

Going on exchange might just be the ‘life-changing’ journey you need to take to ‘find yourself’. I spoke to a few students who have recently undertaken the journey from the green expanse of the Global Learning Office in the hub to their host university overseas.

WHY GO?

So, like, what motivated you to move to another country for six months to a year, bro?

Learning the Language Mike and Dale went to very different places for their exchange.

Mike studied at the University of Mannheim in Germany and Dale at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile in Chile.

They’d both been studying their respective language before leaving for the language equivalent of a baptism of fire. ‘I’d been taking German courses at WEA the year before but really wanted to get to a level where I could actually communicate’ says Mike.

For Dale, ‘the chance to go to a Spanish speaking country and develop my language skills was pretty appealing’. There’s no better way to learn a language than immersion, so the theory goes.

Here is what the survivors had to say…

Kate, another Adelaide Uni student who studied in Avignon, was living, breathing and writing essays in French, which meant there was no choice but for her skills to improve. She sounds totally badass now rattling off French slang and swears.

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Mind you, Kate recommends lots of patience, ‘Anyone who says

Half of my exchange photos are of the Swedish notices on my apartment’s laundry corkboard for translation later

that you’re fluent in six weeks is a genius or lying!!’

‘Chasing the Adventure’ ‘Wanderlust: a strong desire for, or impulse, to wander or travel and explore the world’ (text imposed over a picture of the ocean, or a forest, or a sunset).

Yes, I’m talking about a corny instagram, but this sentiment might be the biggest pull for some to pick up for six months and live in another country, and go to another uni.

As Dale put it , ‘I’d always wanted to experience something different (better?) but always felt like a holiday for a few weeks was too short of an experience. I wanted to know what it was like to actually live somewhere not just be a tourist there.’

Pik Kaye went on a mini study tour first, going on the International Law Study Tour in Germany and The Hague for two weeks.

This first bite from the exchange bug led to a decision to spend a semester at Mannheim University, studying such fun subjects as Commercial Arbitration and International Business and Finance Transactions (which she assures me she’s really enjoying, though I don’t know if I believe her).

MIND She, like others, also felt a genuine spiritual pull towards Mannheim, explaining to me that ‘God probably wanted to reposition me here in Mannheim’.

Eddie went to China for his exchange, on a shorter exchange trip. He feels exchange ‘not only allows you to go on holiday in another country (the exchange I did was academically relaxed, focusing on ‘cultural’ aspects as much as Chinese language study), but also allows you to engage in social interactions which do not seem to be available at home.’

Kath agrees, and adds ‘undertaking an exchange is an entirely hedonistic process. Building a resume is simply incidental. It’s not even comparable to spending a few weeks backpacking here and there.

On exchange you get to know people and cultures, rather than simply observing them.’

Finding Security in Risk But maybe the best thing about going on exchange is the security you have while at the same time taking this giant risk.

Laura is a student from Melbourne University who went on exchange to Lund University at the same time I did. She explains ‘[going on exchange to] Lund with Melbourne University was so organised and

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Photos: Emma Jones

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structurally supportive with all the friend-making activities and things to do. It was a perfect platform to get unrivalled international experience.’

The experience as an Adelaide uni student is pretty similar. While you’re having these overwhelming feelings of being totally out of your element trying to do your laundry or find the right classroom to go to, you are also completely supported, both by the Adelaide Uni Global Learning team, but also the exchange university’s international student network.

Your host university truly becomes your second home, your base for exploring the rest of the continent (wherever you end up going, from Chile to China) and you are never alone.

Eddie agrees: ‘On exchange, people generally arrive without their friendship groups from home, paradoxically creating a

greater community feel in which individuals are able to mix with a wider range of people than who they tend to drift towards in ossified social groups at home’.

DIFFERENT FOLKS

But, friend, do you think exchange has ex-changed you?

Mike feels like he just became more of a beer snob; for Dale ‘it just really cemented what I don’t want and convinced me that whatever my future holds can easily be done in another city or country. It’s odd because I love Adelaide a lot more having been away, but I now want to live here even less.’

Pik Kaye had a defining ‘I am now a grown up’ moment when ‘my housemate fell ill with pancreatitis and I had to take her to the hospital’ and Laura has since started a successful magazine dedicated to Nordic style, called Mr Wolf.

YOU GET TO KNOW PEOPLE AND CULTURES, RATHER THAN SIMPLY OBSERVING THEM

While in Sweden she had a formative experience, ‘Totally Stockholm, a magazine in Stockholm paid for me to go up every few weekends and write stories on new bars and coffee for example, and I ended up hosting a student radio show with my Swedish corridor mate.

Not to mention all the friends/ professional connections that I now couldn’t do [Mr] Wolf without.’

And of course, becoming best friends with people from all over the world has its benefits in itself; ‘my best friend is a Peruvian girl’ says Pik Kaye ‘which means now I have someone to visit in Peru!’

It’s actually inevitable. I mean we change all the time regardless of going overseas or not. But once you’ve lived abroad, had to be almost completely self reliant and get over any hang ups you once had about life in general, you are practically coming home a New You.

MONEY TALK

But, it’s like really expensive, isn’t it?

No! Well, it does depend on where you want to go. But if you are accepted to go on exchange you are generally eligible to receive an OSHELP loan of around $6000 that

Photos: Holly Ritson

goes on your HECS debt, and that will magically appear in your bank account before the exchange begins.

On top of that, there are tons of grants of up to $8000 that are available for students when they study at certain universities.

Cate went to Indonesia and did a development studies exchange, spending half her time on campus and the other half living in a rural Indonesian community.

She received a grant to help finance the trip, and while studying at uni ‘we ate out every night (which cost $3 or $4), regularly went to the salon, got our laundry washed and ironed (for 30c) and that kind of thing.’

When she lived in the village, ‘we lived in a house of 10 or so people, hand-washed our clothes from a well and ate very basic food as our families often could not afford meat. This is where I’d say I learnt the most and probably changed the most. Corny but true!’

It’s totally do-able. Kath, an Adelaide Uni student and a veteran of exchanges says, ‘People always talk about how unaffordable exchanges are... and well... it’s simply not true! I’ve never paid a cent and I’ve been on four exchanges now.’

LIFE LESSONS:

So, last question, because you’ve totally sold me but… what was THE life lesson you took home (along with all the postcards)?

Mike: ‘The exposure to so many different cultures, languages and viewpoints… it made me realise that we are not as bound to one place as people may have us believe.

I also learned that it’s always a good idea to check hostel beds before you decide to drunkenly flop backwards onto one in the middle of the night. [Ed. We since learnt he unintentionally crushed a sleeping man]

I knew that I had the option to do two exchanges and one of the first things I did upon returning was apply for the second one. I’ll pack way lighter this time though, I guess that was a pretty good life lesson too.’

Essentially, exchange is the best.

You party, you learn life lessons, you dance, you feel inspired and you get to come back one big walking talking cliché.

But, like Kath says, ‘I think the biggest motivation isn’t why, but why the hell not?’

Pik Kaye: ‘I can make friends from anywhere in the world!’

Eddie: ‘Travelling offers many things to be learnt, I guess the primary one being that it allows a reassessment of life choices back home, what is important.’

Cate: ‘I think now I’d be more inclined to jump at opportunities and just see where they lead rather than to try to plan a path.’

Dale: ‘It’s so easy (relatively speaking) and so rewarding to go somewhere new and establish yourself there.’

‘Being enrolled in a double-degree

If this article has at all piqued your interest in going on an exchange, there is brilliant information on the University of Adelaide Global Learning website that will answer all the frequently asked questions (including a really helpful flowchart!). Head to adelaide.edu.au/student/ study_abroad/faq/ to find out everything else you need to know about going on exchange.

Jag heter Sophie Byrne. Jag gillar korv och bröd.

Tvätten är stängd på söndag.

Photos: Alex Weiland

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GETTIN’ HITCHED WORDS: NICHOLAS HENRYS ART: MADELEINE KARUTZ In some ways university represents the opposite of diversity, in that most uni students are there for the same reasons and have the same values despite being different cultural backgrounds.

We like to think that we are open minded and enlightened individuals; but this can be illusory if we stay in one environment, like the bird who believes he can see the whole world from his cage, when really it is just the room that the cage is in.

For this reason, I wanted to get out, to see the vastness of Australia, to meet the toothless bogans, the truck drivers, the hippies, the farm hands, the coalition voters, the country people who never have and never want to visit a city – everyone who I never get a chance to meet in my daily university life.

I was in a Lawn Bowls team at Unigames on the Gold Coast.

We had initially planned on road tripping there as a team, but that fell through and I was left with a choice: book a flight with the others and get there on time and in relative comfort; or hit the road with nothing but a tent and a bag full of clothes, with no way of knowing who I would meet, what places I would pass through and

when I would eventually arrive.

Naturally I chose the latter.

I caught the train out to Gawler one sunny afternoon and walked up to the Sturt Highway, carrying what would be my only possessions and shelter for the next four days.

It was almost dark when I got to the on-ramp where I was to begin my real journey.

After waiting for two endless hours and, realising that no one is likely to invite a stranger into their car after dark, I set up my tent and decided to try my luck again at dawn.

An hour later as my tent started to get damp in the throes of a thunderstorm, I was having doubts about the glory of life on the road. I looked up flights to the Gold Coast and told myself that if I didn’t have any luck the next morning I would give up. I would make the journey in isolation from the belly of a giant

metal bird, looking at the route I would have taken and the places I would have seen through perspex from thousands of metres above, self respect and pride lost in a trail of vapour.

As fate would have it I was offered a ride to Renmark first thing the next morning by a self employed hydrogen fuel cell fitter and part time conspiracy theorist who carried a copy of the Australian Constitution with him in his car.

He told me he was part of a group of thousands of radically liberal Australians who would soon stop paying taxes and passively disobey the Government.

He turned out to be one of the more ‘normal’ people I met on the road.

Sharon from Broken Hill was an unemployed witchcraft expert and blues guitar player. She had been

25 in the Riverland visiting cousins and was going to Mildura to buy her husband an aquarium. When I asked whether there was a pet store in Broken Hill she told me that she would catch the fish from a lake in the local park.

Tom the old toothless woodcutter gave me a lift ‘just down the road’ to a highway rest area in the middle of nowhere (he was working nearby), had a tiny Scottish Terrier puppy in his ute and laughed uproariously with a deep chesty guffaw after every sentence as if it were the funniest thing in the world.

There were times when I thought that I wouldn’t make it; I waited for hours by that rest area in the middle of nowhere on the windswept Hay Plains.

During the day it was dry and hot, and populated with unusually

persistent flies. After night fell it turned bitterly cold and I had to sleep in a onesie inside my sleeping bag to stay warm. I was as far as possible from any city, and I knew that trying to get back to Adelaide would be just as futile as pressing onwards.

The next morning a ute sped past, and the driver having evidently decided to take pity, pulled a handbrake turn in front of truck to come back and get me. My doubts about this ride grew when the passenger door opened and half a dozen empty XXXX cans rolled out, dozens more littering the cab and a pitbull leered at me from a cage in the back. I knew I had no choice though; I had to get out of that place.

The driver and his tattoo covered passenger were shearers on their

way from Coober Pedy to Hay. They were already 20 hours and a case of beer into their roadtrip/ bender. When we stopped at the next town to buy more beers I offered to take over the driving and we balled our way along the highway in the hot country NSW sun, sharing cones and having singalongs to Urban Classics Volume III. Between Hay and Dubbo, I got a glimse into the secret solitary life of a truckie; how to cook homemade calzone while simultaneously driving a 90 tonne vehicle; the danger that an echidna poses to truck tyres; and the benefits of a meal replacement milkshake and No-Doz diet versus greasy road house meals.

Once you befriend a truckie, hitchhiking becomes a breeze. We pulled into a truckstop in Dubbo after dark and my new best mate asked over the UHF radio whether anyone going towards the Gold Coast the next day would like a passenger.

I got a ride to Brisbane in a meat truck which swayed back and forward at traffic lights with the inertia of tonnes of cattle carcasses hanging from the trailer roof.

The driver’s dad was going from Brisbane to the Gold Coast the same evening so I got a lift on the final leg of my journey without even trying.

As the obscenely tall glittering

26 towers of Surfers Paradise came into view like the fabled Emerald City, I felt relief that I had made it on time and in one piece, but more so I felt a sense of achievement. I felt as if the only facilitator and the only barrier to my success was me.

The decline of the hitchhiker may be due to a few highly publicized murders and horror movies (thanks Wolf Creek), but I think it is part of a deeper trend.

So many people had told me that I would be late or murdered or end up in a rape dungeon, but it was my choice to ignore them and make the journey anyway.

We live in a world where everything can be done online and there is less and less need for interaction with other humans. We travel to foreign countries and view them through bus windows with other tourists.

I was told more than once that there are less and less hitchhikers on the road since the glory days of the 70s, and the countless confused stares I got from families on holidays in SUVs and grey nomads in campervans seemed to confirm this.

We use the self-service checkouts rather than have to speak to a person. If you turn up in a town with nowhere to stay and everywhere is fully booked, you are greeted with mild suspicion and confusion rather than offers of help.

If we want to reduce this trend of isolation and suspicion of strangers, we all need to get out of our respective birdcages and see the world. The ultimate choice to do this lies with each person.

It may be uncomfortable, it may be unpredictable, and it may be slightly dangerous.

But you will probably learn things and become a better person. You’ll probably have fun doing it most of the time. There are multitudes of generous, funny and loving people in the world and not all of them have a full set of teeth and not all of them go to university.

SUMMER STAYCATION

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WORDS: ALEX CROKER Summer is coming and your friends have plans for adventure, but you’re going to be left behind.

Don’t worry; your life won’t enter an eternal death spiral waiting for the next Walking Dead episode.

While your friends are wasting away in cold or humidity, powered by lukewarm baked beans and the fear of foreign disease, relax and enjoy flavoursome food, world class wine, and curious culture here in South Australia.

In case you’d somehow missed the memo, South Australia is the food bowl of Australia. Here, we produce the most unique, delectable delights, unmatched by the rest of the country. Here, we’re fortunate to offer a unique blend to suit all tastes.

Make sure you check out the state’s great wine festivals such as Cellar Door Festival, Crush Food and Wine Festival, or drop into Uncorked at the National Wine Centre which runs fortnightly and includes masterclasses.

If wine’s not frothy enough for you, South Australia is also equipped with it’s share of breweries and cideries. Visit Goodieson, Prancing Pony, Barossa Valley Brewing, Clare Valley Brewing, Lobethal Bierhause and the Steam Exchange on your state tours. Or, if you feel like a local taste without leaving town, head down to the Wheatsheaf Hotel.

Need a bite to eat after all those drinks? Head to one of South Australia’s many festivities of food including Cheesefest, Tasting Australia and the famous Barossa Farmers Market.

Cheesefest is now Australia’s largest cheese festival, and it’s just around the corner. At this great day you can taste the produce of sixteen of Australia’s finest cheese wrights from South Australia, and inter-state. It’s also possible to check out some master classes and learn about cheese production and drink matching.

If you’re looking for a bite, the Barossa Valley Farmers Market is one of the best of its kind in South Australia. It hosts dozens of stores and thousands of guests every Saturday morning in Angaston.

Personally, I suggest investing in a small piece of happiness in the

bargain bacon and egg sandwiches which use two eggs and a handful of bacon before tackling some delicious samples.

So, now that you’re bursting with bacon and stinking of shiraz you are ready to get a little bit of culture.

If you’re a fan of great music the Barossa Blues Festival is worth the trip. This year, three days of blues will be ringing out at Seppeltsfield, another great opportunity to check out their wine list.This event is hugely relaxed, family friendly, beautifully set, and also delicious.

The Feast Festival, Adelaide’s lesbian and gay culture festival offers weeks of entertainment including cabaret, literature, film, and visual arts.

Plenty of South Australians haven’t yet made it to this great festival which celebrates a huge variety and is definitely not just for South Australia’s LGBT community.

If you do miss Feast Festival, there is still the Adelaide Festival in the new year. The festival brings you the best of theatre, dance, music, literature and visual arts. Make sure to have a look at the program as there is always a surprise for everybody.

With all these events available over summer it’s not hard to laugh at everyone who decided to trade it for cold or humidity. South Australia offers everything you’d need in your break; prestigious produce, wondrous wines, and captivating cultural events.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/boostsamurai

Should you like a drop, there are 18 wine regions in South Australia producing some of the world’s greatest wines. There are plenty of options for day trips as well.

McLaren Vale, Adelaide Hills, Barossa Valley and Langhorne Creek are all easily within day tour distance; just make sure you arrange a driver who doesn’t like wine!

The Adelaide Hills offers a fun tour with loads of mini bus tours for you and twenty of your best friends; just make sure to tell the wineries that you’re coming!

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TEXT BOOK TROUBLES WORDS: SEB TONKIN PHOTOGRAPHY: ELIZABETH GALANIS

Last night I asked my large collection of Facebook friends a simple question: What’s the most you’ve ever spent on textbooks in a semester? The stats crept in: $300. $450. $800. $600. $1100. $200. $90. $500ish. $1020. And so on.

There were explanations attached to some of the bigger numbers – ‘I didn’t realise buying everything was totally unnecessary’, ‘I did five subjects that year’, ‘I do medicine’ – but the figures are undeniably high. Even my friend who bought everything second-hand and hogged the library copies spent the equivalent of a couple weeks of rent. For others, the figure adds up to more or less the HECS cost of an undergraduate subject. It goes without saying that the price of textbooks has a direct impact on student welfare, and it’s one that hits poorer students the hardest.

Students without savings or family support often rely on the $1000 Student Start-Up Scholarship – if they can get it1. Others don’t have that option.

1 Next year, the SSS stops being a grant and

starts being an interest-free loan, à la HECS. You can only get it if you receive Youth Allowance, which has its own restrictive criteria.

There are a few things that contribute to high textbook pricing. First up, textbooks tend to have much smaller print runs than your average bestseller – which means a higher sale price before they can be profitable. Secondly, copyright gives publishers a monopoly over a particular work, allowing them to set their prices basically with impunity – and where textbooks are required for a particular course, customers are willing to pay more than they otherwise might.

In Australia, ‘parallel import restrictions’ exacerbate this, by stopping booksellers importing overseas editions of texts when someone else is publishing the same work within Australia.

This means that bookshops like Unibooks are totally beholden to the prices set by the Australian arms of multinational academic publishers like Thomson Reuters and McGraw-Hill, and can’t import the same titles from overseas for a lower price. As protectionism, parallel import restrictions are designed to help out Australian authors and publishers, but this comes at a cost: higher prices in bookshops, and an increasing number of customers ordering direct from overseas websites like The Book Depository.

So textbooks are expensive in Australia. You already know this.

You might even accept it. What you might not know is that some of the institutions at our university are doing some pretty interesting things about it.

Enter Lawrence Ben. As a law student, he’d seen first hand the expense of textbooks, and the way they became totally useless after he finished each subject. He ran for the SRC in 2012 for one main reason – he wanted to start a second-hand textbook shop on campus. You might have seen the SRC’s efforts on that front this year, in the pop-up markets in the Hub at the start of each semester.

At the shop, staffed by SRC volunteers, students could drop off their unwanted textbooks, and come back later and collect cash if and when they sold (sometimes minus a commission).

Ben says the pop-up sales were extremely successful (claiming $3000 profit from the first one), but when he attempted to make his co-op permanent in a proposal to the Adelaide University Union, he was rebuffed and told that his proposal conflicted with the AUU’s own operation in Unibooks, as well as their future plans for delivering cheaper books. AUU General Manager Dianne Janes played a large part in that meeting

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– and she states that while she credits Ben for his commitment to student interests, the rejection was based mainly on pragmatic concerns: ‘If there had been a proper business plan developed, including the actual costs of getting a second-hand book dealers license, registering a business, hiring accounts staff, managing tax reporting liabilities, cashflow, stock management, OH&S, insurance, etc, then it would have been immediately apparent that the proposition is unsustainable.

So yes, it’s a conflict … but also just not a very sound proposition.’

Ben is still openly disillusioned about that discussion. ‘It was unbelievable. I was trying to do something based on student welfare and that was the attitude.

From then on I thought it was a waste of time trying to deal with the Union.’ Fortunately for Ben, he found support in an unexpected place – the University itself. He applied for a Green Project Fund grant from Ecoversity (Adelaide Uni’s sustainability program, responsible for things like the recycling bins in the Hub and LED lighting in the law school).

After a written application and presentation, the deal was done: $4000 in start-up funds, and a space, rent-free, in Elizabeth House on North Terrace, to provide a second-hand textbook marketplace, and investigate expanding into other areas as well (Ben flags second-hand clothing, art exhibitions, and performances as areas of interest).

From speaking to Ben, it seems like the idea is still pretty embryonic at this stage. Ben says the permanent co-op will still be volunteer-run, and use a similar model to the pop-up stalls, reliant on donations and small commissions. On feasibility, beyond plans to register the co-op as a not-for-profit association, it seems like the insurance and other compliance issues flagged

by Janes are still being nutted out. According to Ben, Ecoversity was much more willing than the AUU to look ‘big picture’, and fix other problems ‘along the way’.

On sustainability, he simply says: ‘Because of our low overheads – we’re not paying rent, we’re

volunteers – it’ll be pretty hard for it not to make money.’ Hopefully it’s that simple.

A student union setting a higher bureaucratic bar than the University might seem a little weird, but when it comes to operating a bookseller (at least a traditional one), the AUU should know what it’s talking about.

After all, it owns Unibooks – an independent not-for-profit company started in 1929. It now operates stores at most university campuses in South Australia as well as an online mail-order website. Each year, it returns approximately $1.5 million to students by way of sponsorships, scholarships, and discounts. It’s also a bit of an oddity – interstate campus bookshops are mostly run by ‘The Co-op’, a memberowned retailer with more than 50 locations, which probably makes Unibooks the second-biggest textbook retailer in the country.

But that strong position doesn’t exempt Unibooks from the pressures of what Andrew Stewart, its CEO, calls the ‘highly price sensitive’ textbook market, or from the impact of parallel import restrictions. ‘The high prices experienced by students are a direct reflection of that legislation,’ says Stewart. ‘The market is operated primarily by not-for-profit or University owned entities, as full commercial operations are financially unsustainable in this market.’

Despite Unibooks being under the umbrella of the student union, it’s very difficult as a student and member of that union to find out exactly how business is going – their finances aren’t open for inspection, and public AUU Board meetings go in camera (excluding observers) when discussing confidential business matters.

There are, however, a few things that could indicate some belttightening. A few years ago, Unibooks was open from 8:30am to 5:30pm, and on Saturday mornings.

Those hours have been reduced.

Last year, Ramsay Medical Books (part of Unibooks) moved from a standalone location on Wright St to a single room at Unibooks Adelaide. And for some time now,

novels and other non-textbook titles dominate an ever-present sale table at the centre of the Adelaide store (check it out – there are some for-real bargains). That said, queues around rush time still snake healthily around the shop, and according to Stewart, sales through the website ‘continue to grow with consumer demand’.

Meanwhile, there are other avenues being explored. The AUU registered a new company in January called Campus Online Services (COS). Like Unibooks, its CEO is Andrew Stewart.

Unlike Unibooks, COS is based in Singapore. Stewart and Janes were reluctant to talk about it, but Janes notes that COS is in a very early phase, exploring various e-commerce possibilities, including selling textbooks in a trial with certain universities (you can see that in action at universitytextbooksonline. com, which has been promoted by organisations at Flinders and James Cook University in the past few months).

There would definitely be potential advantages to a Singapore-based outlet. For one, it wouldn’t be subject to parallel import restrictions (it’s interesting to note that Dymocks threatened to move off-shore at the height of the parallel import restrictions debate). With competitive pricing, COS could service all Australian campuses, while taking advantage of liaisons with university staff.

Better writers than me have discussed why it might be worth paying a premium to traditional bookstores for the ideals of community and culture, but it’s hard to keep up that romantic bunkum when it comes to academic retailers. The majority of their customers are there because they have to be.

For every customer who comes into Unibooks looking for a conversation and a personalised recommendation there are dozens upon dozens who want to get in, spend as little money as possible on the textbooks their course guide says they have to buy, and get out.

And really, who can blame them?

I don’t think you can fault anyone for attempting to streamline and reduce the cost of those simple

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purchases as much as possible. It’s in the interests of the vast majority of students.

Both Janes and Stewart express ongoing support for Unibooks.

‘We love Unibooks,’ says Janes, ‘It’s a very successful not-for-profit business with a long history that we are proud of. We think it has a positive future.’ And again, it’s very early days for COS so far, which despite being technically operational, is still ‘investigating different markets, including in Asia, for a range of services’, according to Janes. I’d speculate that Unibooks would have to reevaluate its model if COS proved successful, but by all accounts that is a question for a hypothetical future.

So where does all of that leave students? In the heated pursuit of cheap textbooks we’ve found ourselves in a bizarro-world, where student unionists experiment with off-shore e-commerce, and the stuffed-shirt bureaucrats at the University fund scruffy volunteer co-ops. They’re all doing their best in the bounds they have – but it’s not hard to try and imagine a better way.

In The Conversation earlier this year, Phillip Soos explained a pretty radical suggestion by economist Dean Baker to basically nationalise the textbook market.

Instead of leaving textbooks to private publishing houses holding copyright, Soos said, we should give government funding to a select number of firms who would pay authors, produce public domain textbooks, and sell them for marginal cost. Of course, if publishers campaigned to stop the repeal of parallel import restrictions, they’d probably object to this too.

Here’s something slightly less radical. The University doesn’t expect students to pay for online access to academic materials through services like JSTOR. Why can’t we extend the model that works for journals and reports to textbooks as well? Let the University pay a subscription fee to textbook publishers each year in return for each student’s online access to their compulsory texts.

Arrangements could be split up by degree and topic, to keep the subscription costs down. Either way, every student gets access to the books they need, for free. If it impacts student fees, at least that cost is deferrable.

The benefits wouldn’t be limited to welfare, either. Physical textbooks are heavy, expensive, frustrating to navigate, and often obsolete by the time they’re printed. In many disciplines they already include CDs with illustrations, videos, and

interactive exercises. Why stop there? Why bother printing at all?

The entire text could be online, searchable, annotatable, accessible from any device. There would be no such thing as ‘editions’ – texts could be updated on the fly by the authors as new material becomes available, and would never be obsolete. There would be new scope for innovative, interactive content. And in one fell swoop you could eliminate the cost and environmental impact associated with paper production, printing, and distribution. Cut out the retailers, and even, as much as possible, the publishers. Make physical copies the exception, not the norm – leaving hardcover bricks to the rich kids and to professionals who want an impressive-looking office, and ending the gouging of everyone else.

In that world there’d be very little need for Unibooks, University Textbooks Online, or even Lawrence Ben’s co-op. And that’s exactly what we as students should be fighting for.

On Dit editor Casey Briggs was the AUU President in 2012 and remains a non-voting member of the board in 2013. He was not involved in this article in any way.

Seb Tonkin worked as a Unibooks retail assistant between 2009 and 2012. He now creates promotional materials for Australia’s secondlargest wok noodle restaurant franchise.

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WOULD YOU LIKE S DIVERSITY WIT WORDS: ELEANOR LUDINGTON ART: DAISY FREEBURN Jesus Week. Chances are you’ve heard of it – it’s a big event run by the Evangelical Students (ES) club on campus every year.

If you haven’t heard of it, you must be part-ostrich with your head in the sand because in my four years at uni it’s the one event I always know is coming. Jumpers, banners, posters, and an epidemic of your Facebook friends using hash tags are just some of the ways I knew it was on the horizon this year.

But just in case you are a bit of an ostrich and aren’t that familiar with ES or Jesus Week, read on.

The Adelaide Uni Evangelical Students club has over 200 students as members and is a branch of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES), a national organisation that manages and funds evangelical groups at universities across Australia. The AFES website lists several goals, the first of which is to ‘evangelise students at universities across Australia’. I don’t know about you, but I felt a little uncomfortable reading that.

Public Australian universities are secular institutions and should therefore be a safe and inclusive place that students from all backgrounds can attend without feeling threatened or pressured by any religious group.

Sadly, secularism does not hold up at many universities and as year plenty of Australian students are pressured to engage with religions they may not be interested in or believe in. A classic example of this occurs during Jesus Week.

The Friday before Jesus week this year, I stepped outside a tutorial to find a swarm of students in blue jumpers giving away free cupcakes and other treats in the name of Jesus. The condition of accepting one? You have to spend a few moments talking to an evangelical student about Jesus and why he is the one truth. I decided to boycott and refuse a cupcake despite loving sweets and suffering mid-morning hunger pangs.

Most students I know weren’t so lucky (or maybe just not as stubborn), and were pulled aside to discuss Jesus and his teachings.

Friends came back to me feeling guilty and embarrassed after having to admit to their bluejumpered peers that they don’t actually believe in Jesus but that they just wanted a cupcake.

Engaging students like this is surely not the desired outcome.

But this is all part of the greater ES agenda to fulfil Jesus Week’s goals of ‘bringing unbelievers to Christ, training students in evangelism and preaching the gospel’. That’s right, those cupcakes weren’t really just a generous Christian gesture from ES, they were actually there to help recruit as many students as possible to Christ and the evangelical movement.

Other Jesus Week activities such a Christian vs. atheist debate and presentations on topics including partying and student life,and hell and who will spend eternity there (hint: the answer is pretty much everyone, except Christians) further this aim.

Despite the negative picture I’m painting for you from my biased atheist perspective, president of ES, Michael Waskiel, reports that many ES members consider Jesus Week the highlight of their university year and are keen to be involved.

But what about other students?

How do they feel about being confronted daily for up to 2–3

OME TH YOUR CUPCAKE? weeks with paraphernalia and free cake stalls encouraging them to attend events and embrace Jesus?

In short – not happy. Whilst my sample population is most likely biased, all I hear and see about Jesus Week are groans, cringes during promo videos, and disparaging remarks about the power ES seems to have when it comes to religious presence on campus.

But never does anyone step forward and say something or suggest anything be done differently, until this year.

One of my good friends who was particularly irate about Jesus Week 2013 (no doubt it was the endless lecture bashing and promotion all through med school that did it) sent me a link to the website for the University of Sydney’s ‘Interfaith Week’ with a little comment saying ‘Why can’t we have this?!’ And that’s when the eureka moment came.

If Adelaide University continues to accept and allow religious activity on campus, why not do it in an inclusive and appealing way?

Interfaith Week is a large event run by University of Sydney’s union each year. It involes a range of religious groups (and non-religious groups – godless, this could be your time to shine!) on campus and aims to educate students about different faiths by demonstrating their differences and values.

The 2013 program looked engaging for students and had a range of interesting, controversial and fun talks, debates, lunches, and even opportunities to experience various religious rituals.

Finally, it would be a good step towards breaking down undesirable prejudices held by some students towards others who do things differently from ‘normal’ because of their beliefs.

This all takes place in nonthreatening settings without people greeting you at the doors to your lecture theature each morning trying to force a pamphlet about the day’s activities into your hand. It seemed to me to be more of a cultural event than a week of religious indoctrination, and would probably appeal to both religious and atheist students alike.

In essence, Interfaith Week would be a good exercise in practicing humanity, and an event that would nurture an active, philosophical mind amongst modern university students. With any luck, one day our union will consider offering the same experience to us that the University of Sydney enjoys each year.

Some of you might roll your eyes and say Interfaith Week would be just the same as Jesus Week, but this wouldn’t have to be the case.

First of all, Interfaith Week could be an event organised by the Union or University rather than a particular religious club.

This means it would be nondenominational and hopefully every effort could be made to make the week as inclusive and interesting for all students as possible.

Secondly, Interfaith Week offers the potential to stimulate discussion about faith, and the chance to learn about the many different beliefs that exist in our community. It would also provide the chance for religious students from different backgrounds to talk to each other and learn and consider alternative ideas, rather than ignoring their existence.

Eleanor Ludington feels both dread and elation knowing the uni year is finally coming to a close. She wishes everyone well in their final assessments!

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APPLYPRES WORDS: GABRIEL EVANGELISTA

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Once upon a time nurses trained in hospitals.

Around the second world war a student-nurse would make ‘11 shillings and two’ a week – whatever that means – and paid a tiny rent on a room in the nurses home.

Meanwhile, Aboriginal people were barred from superior training at major urban public hospitals, and nurses (like most women who worked) were sacked when they got married and issued a little certificate from the Commonwealth to that effect, confining them to domestic labour as wives and mothers.

If you were over 21 and unmarried when you started your training, you were assumed to be morally impure, and issued a black uniform and the title ‘Black Crow’.

According to an ex-nurse I met, nursing was controlled by ‘strange, irate, grey haired 60 year old virgins with big stupid hats’: ‘Matrons’. Their insistence on perfectly tucked beds and starched uniforms made obsessive compulsives seem messy, and was probably evidence of decades of sexual repression.

Nurses’ homes were another aspect of social control, expressed in Florence Nightingale’s nurse education doctrine, attempting to preserve nurses’ ‘moral purity’.

They had single bedrooms, were surveilled by Matrons, had a nine o’clock curfew, and a strictly no boys allowed policy; the River Torrens became a popular destination for sneaky RAH student nurses and their boyfriends.

Beginning in the late 1950s and continuing until the 70s, a period of social change swept most of this aside. The second wave of feminism forced changes to allow women to continue working if they got married, the Aboriginal rights movement swept aside segregation. Matrons disappeared and were replaced by a nurse managerial hierarchy.

Training moved from the hospitals to technical colleges in the 1970s, and the bizarre ritualistic training began to give way to an actual education system. Two cons stand out in this transition: the disappearance of wages for student-nurses, and the disappearance of provided housing.

In the 1990s the Colleges of Advanced Education were absorbed by Universities. Flinders University absorbed the Sturt Campus, and began awarding the first Bachelor of Nursing in SA. 2012, when I started studying nursing at Flinders, marked three years since the Rudd Government had lifted the cap on University seats to soften unemployment post-GFC. Nursing enrollments around the country had sky-rocketed in Universities, TAFEs and private diploma level training providers. University and Government departmental research saying that we need a lot more nurses, but more nurses was only the beginning of the problem.

Flinders School of Nursing began looking for ways to accommodate the influx. Classes were packed. 30 students was the standard, and if it wasn’t for Fire Safety legislation I have no doubt it would have been more. This year tutorial times were slashed from

two hours to one and a half, and all live lectures were abolished, to be replaced with past lectures to be viewed online.

I transferred to Adelaide Uni, where we had a lab

SSUREHERE

ART: CHIH-YI HSIAO

class with the entire year level. The class, which features 160 students packed into a big lab in the Med school with two teachers, has become known as the

mandatory Monday waste-of-time.

In two hours, that doesn’t even give each teacher one minute of contact time per student. Plenty of people just sign their name off the roll and sneak out unnoticed early to do more useful things, like breathe fresh air.

Flinders also joined UniSA, La Trobe, Victoria University and others in ceasing to teach CPR and First Aid skills. Students at these universities are still required to get this training, just now from private providers with their own time and money. If you don’t get it done, you don’t get to do your Clinical Placements, and you fail.

Clinical Placements are in chronic shortage. ClinEdSA struggles to get us all placements, and some students do go without.

As students we are told not to take too many sick days from our placements, as we won’t be able to get make-up days, and we will be made to repeat. Clinical Placements run across mid-year holidays and mid-semester breaks, and in some instances, into the summer holidays.

Textbooks are a joke, too. At Adelaide the bill is over $10, 00 for the year, and there is only one copy of each in the library. Flinders does way better in terms of library books and having books available in-class.

These course issues raise a number of new barriers for students with disabilities, no spare time and no money. It lends enormous privilege in the course to students from welloff families who can afford to buy the books, given that exams and assignments are based off them. Youth Allowance is inaccessible to plenty of students, and unlivable if you do get it,

driving students toward longer hours in part-time or even fulltime jobs.

To top it off, State Governments nation-wide have been axing Graduate Nursing Positions, an extra year of paid on-thejob training, mentoring and professional development. In Queenland, the figures are down to 10 per cent of students getting a Graduate year. In SA it sits at about 40 per cent.

Graduate nurses are struggling to find work, as despite documented shortages of nurses, public health departments are cutting beds, short-staffing wards, axing graduate programs and just not creating any more jobs.

In March a group of nursing students from Flinders and Adelaide Universities joined together on the steps of parliament during the National Union of Students’ Day of Action for better education funding, and carried a banner asking for a doubling of graduate jobs and increased funding for public health.

The State Government, the nursing schools and bodies like ANMEC or the College of Nursing, are not going to push on our behalf for things to improve; in our own interest, and that of the community, it is our responsibility to do it ourselves.

Gabriel Evangelista is an anarchist; as such, he believes that humanity could live without war, exploitation and oppression.

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ME MYSELFIE AND I

WORDS: HEATHER MCNAB We have entered a digital age and avenues for selfpontification are nowhere more apparent than in the rise of the ‘selfie’.

The attention lavished on seemingly ordinary photographs begs the question: why are we so obsessed?

Countless arguments and debates have arisen pertaining to the ‘real meaning’ of the photos. Are they the modern self-portrait?

Are they the by-product of rising restlessness? Are they simply fluff?

There seems to be two, quite polarizing, stances: selfies are either indicative of perfectly normal levels of self-expression, or they are symptomatic of a deeper and much more serious cultural shift.

But before we begin to consider these ideas, we best define exactly what a selfie is. Urban Dictionary, the holy book for all ironic

definitions, describes a selfie as ‘A picture taken of yourself that is planned to be uploaded to Facebook, Myspace or any other sort of social networking website.

You can usually see the person’s arm holding out the camera, in which case you can clearly tell that this person does not have any friends to take pictures of them.’

Tongue-in-cheek dubbing aside, it is impossible to deny the veritable plethora of this particular style of self-photography. The selfie phenomenon is so ubiquitous that it has everyone from feminists to the New York Times discussing the possible implications of the trend, from those already evident to those feared still to come.

The self-portrait has a long and (literally) coloured history which is littered with names like Andy Warhol, whose experimentation reinvented the medium, to Russian grand duchess Anastasia, who at the age of 13 was one of the first teenagers to take her own picture using a camera and a mirror. So whilst the photographic selfportrait has actually been around

since the mid 1800’s, it wasn’t until the invention of the compact digital camera that it surged in popularity. Freeing the rookie photographer from the clutches of difficult developing techniques, it foreshadowed the rise of our instant ‘shoot and capture’ culture.

In the present, it seems most of society offers itself up for consumption in one way or another – and this inclination towards the mass-production of autonomous close-ups is definitely no exception.

In our new world, which is far weirder than it is brave, pseudofame is achievable simply by taking photos of yourself: in underwear (#sexy), in gym gear (#fitbiddy), in bedrooms (#bored), even when out with friends (#WHY????).

We are choosing to take photographs of ourselves and not others. We are providing digital proof that we prefer our own company, deliberately isolating ourselves even when we are with people. Sure, it’s completely normal to prefer our own image of ourselves rather than the one others might have of us, and to

Selfie pioneer Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia

once impossible to convey is now astoundingly accessible.

But this fixation on sharing private moments, public events and everything in between seems to fuel us. So perhaps in an attempt to carve out a manageable piece of reality for ourselves, what we have actually done is become saturated by our efforts.

Selfies have reinforced the idea that what matters most in this life is how people, and things, look.

We are not controlling our lives, but editing them – looking in the mirror all day long, and letting people see us do so.

That is not freedom, or truthfulness. It’s not even harmless or just wasting time.

It’s embarrassing. And to be honest, it’s a bit concerning that we seem to be all right with it.

American statistics have shown that children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend more than seven hours a day plugged into an electronic device, and whilst I hope that I am wrong, I seriously doubt that Australian statistics differ.

that end, selfies arguably provide a modicum of control over the way we are presented. But a picture speaks a thousand words – and, just as in real life, if someone is constantly ‘talking’ about themselves, it becomes at best a little annoying, and at worst, symptomatic of self-obsession.

While vanity and narcissism are not new elements of our humanity, there is a hysteria surrounding the rise of selfies that claim they are causing us to be increasingly focused upon ourselves and our image.

This might ring true, but it’s definitely not the end of the story.

Selfies will almost certainly not be the last technological innovation that will cause this much furor – we may be just viewing a greater publication of inherent human tendencies.

And yet the relentless increase in photos with the description #me (133 million on Instagram alone at last count) would indicate that this is more than a frivolous liaison with ourselves. Selfies have normalised the notion of self-

presentation, rewarding us with ‘likes’ and heart-shaped emoticons for showing more of ourselves.

Sociologists have described selfies as ‘the male gaze gone viral’, and women (or increasingly, girls) have started doing to themselves what generations before have fought against having done to them – offering themselves up as reproductions of what they think they need to look like.

There’s no avenue for putting the proverbial genie back in society’s technologically-modified bottle (I don’t think the genie would be keen to go back in either, seeing as Vodafone probably doesn’t have coverage there).

There’s been a seismic shift in how we spend our time, the way we discover information, the way we do business, make friends, date, and are introduced to the world of sex.

While it can be refreshing to see someone smiling out at you amid the sea of cat photos and home cooked meals (A vegan salad?

Let me screenshot the recipe, I’m sure it’s groundbreaking!), there is a worrying dichotomy between technology-enabled selfexploration and actually finding your identity in such technology.

In this new world, it is increasingly both easier to share your voice and harder to be heard, and so maybe we need to be asking of selfies: why are we taking them? And what can they do for us?

One of the unique aspects of the self-propelled voyeurism of this movement is that it creates a somewhat confessional quality, readjusting industry standards of the beauty ideal and allowing for elusive moments of private peace to be shared. What was

So watch yourselfie. But more importantly, look up from your phone and watch others.

Whether as a symptom or a cause, there is a subtle new narcissism: a child, parent and contemporary of the digitization of our lives.

Heather McNab is a tea-loving final year media student who spends her spare time avoiding dairy products and colour coordinating her bookshelves.

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WHO ARE YOU?

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF DEMENTIA WORDS: KAROLINKA DAWIDZIAK-PACEK ART: SPARK SANDERS ‘Fucking hell! Why won’t this stupid bitch leave me alone?! All she does is ask inappropriate questions about your mother. I won’t have it!’ my mild-mannered Grandma says, her face red, clutching her keys tightly in her hands.

I try to smile, though it comes out more like a grimace. ‘Grandma, no one would ask about things like that… the lady just comes to talk with you from time to time –’ ‘And,’ she says, ploughing on as though I had not spoken, ‘this is making me so angry! The doctor said that I am not allowed to be angry, or I will become very sick!

You see, what your mother is doing to me? She pushes all these strange people into my house, and they are so annoying! They want to know everything!’

I say nothing, and turn up the traditional Polish music louder.

‘What is this crap?’ Grandma mutters. ‘Turn it down!’ I respectfully obey, though the ‘crap’ was her favourite song, the one she had loved to sing along to after the war. She knew all the words, and would sing along loudly, to the

delight of her daughter, my mum.

Now, the tune is meaningless to her.

This is the world of dementia.

If you saw her on the street, you wouldn’t think anything of it. Just another elderly lady, walking slowly with her handbag clutched close. Yet to those that know my Grandma well, we know that she is quickly falling under dementia’s spell.

She was always a mild-mannered woman, quiet and smiling, sneaking me a little biscuit when my mother wasn’t watching. She would cook us delicious traditional Polish food, scrumptious desserts, and walked me to and from primary school every day to make sure I was safe.

This all changed when she got dementia. She was diagnosed two years ago now, and is fast progressing downhill. Her mild manner is gone – she is often curt and abrupt, and sometimes forgets social niceties, like saying goodbye to someone on the phone before hanging up. When she went to hospital earlier this year we got a taste of what the future may hold – we got a call at 11 pm at night, asking me and Mum to come to the hospital because Grandma was agitated.

She sat on a chair, lips tightly compressed into a thin line, arms

crossed. She had absolutely no idea where she was, or who she was.

After we got her to sleep, a nurse told us this phenomenon was called ‘sundowing’ – dementia patients often become confused at night, and start to lash out. Before we had arrived, Grandma had been throwing bins at the nurses, yelling at them to get away from her.

Dementia is a disease where parts of the brain slowly stop functioning, which results in loss of memory, decreased movement and motor functions, and behavioural changes. The ability to perform basic tasks, such as shopping and showering, is diminished. At late-stage dementia, even these functions can be difficult to perform.

However, the disease progresses differently in each individual.

There are also many different types of dementia, though the most common is Alzheimer’s.

At the moment it is estimated that approximately 321,600 Australians suffer from dementia. The number of people with dementia is expected to rise to approximately 900,000 by 2050. The statistics are horrifying – they present that a pandemic of dementia is approaching, fast.

Yet the prevalence of dementia is not isolated to Australia alone –

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worldwide there are approximately 36 million people suffering, with the numbers expected to soar to 115 million by 2050. And although it mostly affects people over 65, people as young as 30 have been diagnosed with early-onset dementia. It seems as though everyone has the potential to be savaged by the disease.

In early-stage dementia, many people are able to live comfortably in their own homes. As the person progresses through the disease, they will eventually need a 24/7 carer, or to move into a nursing home. At the moment, my Grandma still lives at home on her own – though how long that will last is anyone’s guess.

Every time we visit her, we make sure to check her fridge for old food – she often doesn’t notice, and gets angry and resentful at you if you try to throw it away, so you have to be sneaky about it. But if

and even hallucinated slightly throughout the night. I can’t imagine what a nursing home would do to her.

There is currently no cure for dementia. Research money is being poured into dementia at an increasing rate (in the 2012-13 period, approximately $22 million was spent by the government on dementia research and funding), yet more needs to be done to search for a cure.

In the meantime, many communities are starting to think seriously about dealing with dementia. In NSW, transport workers are getting training in how to recognise a lost person with dementia and help them get home.

Similarly in the UK, more police are being trained on specifically helping people with dementia, and there are plans to make London friendlier for dementia sufferers.

‘DO YOU THINK I’M CRAZY? I KNOW THAT MY MEMORY IS GOING BUT I’M NOT INSANE!!!’ she notices, all hell breaks loose.

‘Do you think I’m crazy? I know that my memory is going but I’m not insane!!!’ she yells, and it then takes ages to calm her down again.

For the moment, Grandma seems to be okay at home, but I know that in the future she will have to move into a nursing home. The very mention of a nursing home often repulses many people – images of old people sitting around in front of a TV, drugged up to their eyeballs, often come to mind (though I am not suggesting that this is the case every time – such poor care is often the exception, yet is sometimes perpetuated as being the norm).

Many dementia sufferers deal poorly with change, and when moved into a nursing home remain very confused. Grandma was confused enough at the hospital,

But one of the most significant inroads has been made in the Netherlands. In the village of Hogewey, most people suffer from serious dementia. Yet they are still free to walk around the village and interact with people. There is a theatre, hairdressing salon and other features, all staffed by people trained in dementia. A place here doesn’t cost millions – it is cheaper than hiring a live-in nurse.

Furthermore, the village makes each patient’s room unique, by incorporating items from their childhood, and catering to different lifestyles – religious people will have crosses in their room, while art lovers will have several different paintings. Even minute things, such as food, are catered for to each individual. The aim of the village is to make sufferers feel normal and connected with other people instead of feeling isolated and confused.

Currently, Australia has no such system in place, but I believe that it would be very beneficial for sufferers to have a place where they can still interact with the community, and maintain a semblance of normality.

Alzheimer’s Australia also educates carers about the disease. Mum and I attended these sessions not knowing what to expect, but found the lectures informative and interesting. They explained that although dementia patients will decline over time, they cannot be treated as though they are stupid, as this can lead to anger and depression. Instead, deflecting moments of forgetfulness with a fun activity is a good way to smooth over the tension. *

*

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My Grandma didn’t really know what dementia was when she was diagnosed I gave her pamphlets to read in Polish, yet found them on top of her fridge weeks later, covered in dust. Most of the time she was angry and aggressive when spoken to about dementia, once again yelling at me ‘not to make an idiot out of her’.

But I vividly recall one afternoon when I went to visit her and found her crying. ‘I’m terrified,’ she sobbed, ‘my head is not my own, and I don’t know what’s going on.

I’m just so scared, so scared, so scared…’ She repeated the phrases over and over, and I tried to comfort her.

Half an hour later, she forgot the incident and was happily helping Mum prepare dinner, yet her scared face still floated through my mind.

Amidst the cloying mud flashed a ray of sunlight, yet it was soon drowned by more mud, clouding out the sun. One day, there will be no more sun, and the world will become one of shifting shadows, echoing voices and confusion. Yet until then, the rays of sunlight and happiness must be soaked up, for all too soon I know they will irrevocably vanish.

Karolinka Dawidziak-Pacek is the queen of procrastination amongst all law students, and will do almost anything to avoid the dreaded textbook readings.

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LIFE AFTER DEATH WORDS: MAX COOPER ART: ADRIANA STURMAN I’ve been thinking a lot about death, and about what we do when it happens.

For this to make sense, I’ll have to tell you about my grandfather. We were close – we even had the same name. He was the only grandfather I can ever remember being alive, but he made enough memories for a family tree.

Part of why I moved to Adelaide when I did, spending the Summer of 2008 here instead of saying goodbye to my mum/sister/stepdad/ friends/cat in Canberra before moving most of the way across the country for school was so I could spend another Christmas with him.

He was in hospital by the time I got there, and spent the next few years going in and out of the place.

Anyone who has lost a loved one to illness can probably tell you the same things I can. There were ups and downs, it was hard, and even writing this now it still hurts.

Two years later, towards the beginning of summer, he died.

This wasn’t a surprise: like I said, it had been coming for years. But that didn’t make it any easier.

Everyone still had to go on living, but it was hard. Our family had a small get-together a while after, to share stories and remember his life.

I’ll always remember looking over and seeing my grandmother with his twin sister, and feeling like I could see the void where he’d been.

That void hasn’t gone away. I don’t know if it will for me, but I doubt it. Despite this, I feel like my grandfather has been there for important things.

He was with me at my high school graduation, and there with my grandmother when she wished me happy birthday for my eighteenth. Even little things, like how my phone still has ‘Muttie & Grandpa’ saved make me feel like he’s still here.

And that’s not unique to me. I know friends who still talk about their grandparents’ money, or their grandparents’ houses, years after they’ve died. The entire concept of heirlooms is based on it: we imbue objects with their owners’ presence in order to cope with our sense of loss.

And it’s important that we do.

Being able to grieve, and express loss, is an incredibly important part of life. And while everyone grieves in their own way, we have some big no-nos in our culture.

People who throw themselves into work, or drinking, or anything with a vengeance aren’t really dealing, according to us. They need to be

able to let go.

But going too far in the other direction isn’t okay either. You can’t just try and forget someone, or pretend their loss doesn’t hurt.

Clichéd though it may be, if you’re repressing something to avoid feeling it it’s just going to get so bad you can’t repress it.

This kind of mourning and remembrance of the dead is not new. The Iliad, one of the earliest works of literature that survives, is all about the choice between a glorious death that will be commemorated down the ages, or a pleasant and long life that will be treasured by your family. In both of these cases, death is not the end: people still go on living, and they carry you with them.

Mourning rituals and honouring the dead may change across time

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and different cultures, and even people, but it’s important to remember that if it works, it works.

I’m not particularly spiritual.

But I found it hard sometimes, thinking about my grandfather and remaining as… unspiritual as I had been. I don’t really have any opinion on the afterlife, but earlier this year I caught myself thinking that he is proud of me.

Not that he was, or would be if he were still with us, but that right now he is proud of me.

I was pretty confused, to be honest. I didn’t end up going on some kind of Eat, Pray Love spiritual journey of great importance, but I did spend a lot of time thinking about myself and my grandfather.

The ways that we remember people are always a little funny

like that. It might be an object that someone gave you – or even just that you think of in relation to them. It might be something you did together, or that they taught you to do. It might be even more abstract, like a smell.

For a few years, I couldn’t smell melting butter without thinking of a family friend’s death. The first time that happened, I was in class at high school and almost had to go to the bathroom to cry it out.

After my grandfather died, when I was explaining what had happened to a teacher to ask for an extension, part of our conversation reminded me so clearly of him the same thing almost happened.

The take-away, I guess, other than that I cry a lot (I do. I find it cathartic) is that death is huge.

It’s one of those things that will always be there, it’s one of the few

things people have reached pretty much 100 per cent consensus on (not going near the whole afterlife thing), and it’s something we’ll all have to deal with.

It’s important that we can, however we do. Whether that’s through the mourning of the dead in ancient ritual lamentation, through elaborate funerals, postmortem photographs, memento mori, or just finding someone to have a good cry to.

And sometimes it’s hard.

Sometimes it is almost impossible.

But one of the most important things we can do is to try. Because we have to.

Max Cooper thinks we should all call our grandparents more. He might even go do that now.

DIVERSIONS

THE BIG FAT ON DIT QUIZ This is it. The moment you’ve been training all year for. Time to

fire up those brain juices with the big 2013 On Dit quiz! All of the answers can be found in On Dit Volume 81 or in the The Big Fat On Dit Word Find. Complete the quiz and progress to the word find on the opposite page. Or vice versa, of course.

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1. Nerimon is an example of what class of people that Sophie Byrne is obsessed with?

2. Who is the treasurer of SA impro group On The Fly? 3. What did members of the opposing ticket in the LSS elections last year dub Bridget Atkinson’s ticket?

4. How much money did Sam Young earn after taking part in a clinical trial?

5. Who should you contact if you’re interested in getting involved with Jamalaide?

6. How many typos are there in Edition 81.5?

7. Does Melissa, a third year science student, think that watching porn changes young people’s perceptions of sex?

8. What country did Tim’s mother take him to on a spontaneous holiday?

9. What percentage of all human genes that have ever been sequenced have at least one 15-base sequence in common with BRCA1?

10. Of the 44 referenda held in Australia since Federation, how many have passed?

11. If you’re cooking Eleanor Ludington’s famous vegetarian lentil bolognese, how many

minutes should you fry the onions for?

12. What flavour was Britney Spears’ tea in ‘Women’s Equali-Tea (Now)’

by Rebecca Sheedy?

13. How many posters of himself does Sam Davis have?

14. How much does a pair of BASSIKE lo-slung jeans cost (in $AUD)?

15. What is Caitlyn Georgeson’s favourite flavour of ice-cream?

16. How many members of The Asparaguys are there?

17. If offered a receipt at Foodland, will Jodie Guidolin accept it?

18. What did the London Metropolitan University move to ban the sale of on campus last year?

19. What is On Dit’s twitter handle?

20. How much did it cost to enter the National Campus Band Competition in 2013?

21. What is Michelle Bagster’s favourite women-only space?

22. How much money does the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction win?

23. How many countries in the world force citizens to vote in elections?

24. What is the most common first name of all of the On Dit contributors in 2013?

THE BIG FAT ON DIT WORD FIND This is it. The moment you’ve been training all year for. Time to fire up those brain

juices with the big 2013 On Dit word find! All of the words can be found in the My Big Fat On Dit Quiz. Send your completed Wordfind and Quiz to ondit@adelaide. edu.au and if you’re the first to get them all right, you’ll win yourself a limited edition complete set of the 81st volume of On Dit. B

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HOROSCOPES

BY CLARE VOYANT

VIRGO You will die a horrible death.

CAPRICORN You will die a horrible death.

TAURUS You will die a horrible death.

LIBRA You will die a horrible death.

AQUARIUS You will die a horrible death.

GEMINI You will die a horrible death.

SUB You will die a horrible death.

CRUCE You will die a horrible death.

LUMEN You will die a horrible death.

SCORPIO You will die a horrible death.

PISCES You will die a horrible death.

CANCER You will die a horrible death.

SAGITTARIUS You will die a horrible death.

ARIES You will die a horrible death.

LEO You will die a horrible death.

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CLASS OF 2013!

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WITH THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO MADE VOLUME 81: A dele Lausberg A driana Sturman Aimée Thomson A lex Croker A lex Lightbody A lex Weiland A lexander Stanley A lice Bitmead A licia Strous A listair Sage A lyona Haines A my M anyard A ngus Dickson A nthony Nocera A riane Jaccarini Ashton Papazahariakis Athena Taylor Bec Taylor Belinda Quick Ben Drogemuller Ben Nielsen Bridget Atkinson Carla Bruinsma Cassie Egan Catherine Story Chih-Yi Hsiao Chloe Castle Chloe McGregor Christopher A rblaster Clary Terrell Daisy Freeburn Daniel Spencer Deanna Taylor Dennis Grauel Edward Satchell Eleanor Ludington Eleanor Parnell Elise A dams Elizabeth Galanis Emily Palmer Emma Doherty Emma Gray-Starcevic Emma Jones Eunice Vun Gabriel Evangelista

Galen Cuthbertson Gavin Lane Gemma Killen Gina Chadderton Genevieve Novak Harriet Sale Heather McNab Henrietta Byrne Jack Lowe James Dunsmore Jessica M artin Jessica Scott Jessica Zimmerman Jodie Guidolin Joseph McMillan Justin McA rthur K arolinka Dawidziak-Pacek K atie Hamilton K eiren M ac K elly A rthur-Smith K endra Pratt Lachlann McA rthur Lauren Tropeano Lauren Williams Laurence Lacoon Williamson Lawrence Ben Leah Beilhart Lewis Laurence Louise Schulz Lucy Small-Pearce Luke Cotter M adeleine K arutz M atthew Morrison M ax Cooper Michael Lawless Michelle Bagster Molly Ayers-Lawler Natalie Redmond Nicholas Henrys Nicola Dowland Noby Leong Oliver Morris Olivia Di Fabio Olivia ‘Spark’ Sanders Paige K earin

Paul Yiallouros R achel Mundy Rebecca Hamdorf Rebecca McEwen Rebecca Sheedy Renjie Du Rhys Nixon Rick Smith Ross Jobson Rowan Roff Rowan Sanders Ruby-Rose Niemann Rupert Hogan-Turner Russell Sankey Samantha Prendergast Sam Davis Sam Young Sarah Hunter Saskia Scott Seb Tonkin Shadi A luthwala Sharmonie Cockayne Sia Duff Sophia Hyland Sophie Byrne Sophie Strickland Stephen Grace Stephen Lang Stirling Crompton Thomas Gissing Thomas Hawkins Thomas M ackay Thomas Wooden Toby Barnfield Tom Graham Tom Sheldrick Tom Woolford Torvill Bolero Vicki Griffin Vivian K enny Walter M arsh William Crawford Yasmin M artin Zane Dean Zara Hannaford

THAT’S ALL FROM US. WE’LL MISS YOU HEAPS! XOXOXO

the owl’s 1st birthday & the rhino’s 16th s at u r d ay

d e c e m b e r 7 t h • 7 p m - l at e

Coffee Bar & Gin Den Locally roasted coffee Food available all day...All local produce

live ComeDy tommy little - Nov 22 & 23 (from Network 10 - THIS WEEK LIVE)

… or fly into the night with our Wide selection of SA beer & wine

mikey roBins - Nov 29 & 30

25 Gins from arounD the worlD

GreG fleet - Dec 6 & 7

Or choose from our signature cocktails menu G&T not your thing? come in and we will cater to your needs!!

FREE WIFI

(from Network 10 - THIS WEEK LIVE)

tom Gleeson - Dec 13

(from Network 10 - THIS WEEK LIVE)

Dave Callan - Dec 20nd & 21 (from TRIPLE J)

u snet.com.a room@optu email rhino for details

13 Frome street, adelaide • rhinoroom.com.au • urbancow.com.au • thehowlingowl.com.au