For some unknown reason, I started watching cricket during the holidays. I don’t know what possessed me - an underlying masochistic streak perhaps. Test cricket is a beautiful sport for wasting away the hours. Overs disappear like sands in the hourglass, and before you know it, you’ve spent a whole day watching your team make few wickets, little progress, and learning that the Indian team can take more hits than McGregor before keeling over (Pujara’s performance in the last test is a gruelling lesson in willpower). In other words, test cricket is a perfect metaphor for a semester of uni: intense boredom, punctuated by moments of intense excitement, and not being sure if it will pay off at all. But we soldier on, and it seems that the early days of this semester have been much more exciting than usual with the appointment of the new Vice-Chancellor. Though our interview with him was too long to fit into these pages, you can find it on our Medium page online. “The Peter Hoj interview” is an essential read for students who want to know what the future of Adelaide Uni looks like. In these pages, you’ll find a taste of everything; one might say a brief respite from the boredom that is getting back into uni. Emelia Haskey brings us back to the misadventures of her dating life, while Habibah Jaghoori tells us what being at university is really all about (good timing, too, when you might need a refresher after that many years). Poet and visual artist Tiah Bullock gets a feature, while I reflect on my four years working in the purgatory that is the Australian suburban pub. There’s plenty more inside to get you thinking, to get you excited, and possibly even a little worked up. But as Habibah writes in her thoughtful article, “The student experience is unlike any other, and the growing, unlearning, relearning, shifting, expanding, and realising is done when you put yourself in spaces that force you to question, to respond, to act, and to feel.” Couldn’t have said it better myself. Without further ado, let’s get stuck into Issue 2.
- Ivan
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