Little Fish, Big Pond

A long time ago, just over thirteen years ago in fact, I began something new... I was a little fish in a big pond...

As time went by I got bigger and eventually I was the big fish in this little pond, and of course saw lots of tiny little fish join my pond over time, remembering a long time ago that was me...

One day, I was scooped up, and placed in a new, bigger pond, more of a pool in fact, as I had outgrown my old one... Once again, I was a little fish in a big pond... I started to get big for this pond too, and I played with the edge of the waterfall. In 2004, I slipped over the edge of the waterfall, as did the rest of the fishes my size, and landed in a bigger pond still, a lake...

Feeling even smaller, I worked hard to grow over the next few years...

I made friends with similar fish and swam in the same, similar part of the lake. Occasionally we'd visit other lakes, and make new fishy friends. Once again, last year in fact, I grew too big for the pond, a pond which I now knew as a part of me...

Today I was scooped up once again by the mysterious hand of time, and thrown, not into a lake-sized pond, but into the ocean. I'm once again the smallest fish in the pond (ocean, yeah whatever, I like the word pond ok?). My fishy friends from the assorted ponds, pools and lakes have been spread far and wide; some swimming under the same pier as me, some in the same patch of seaweed; some have been thrown deeper, and have to deal with slightly bigger fishys, sharks even; one has even been thrown over to New South Wales (technically ACT, but again, I'm too tired after today's first ocean swimming lesson to care).

On a completely unrelated note, I'll tell you about my first day of university now. That sound like a good story?

Right, well getting there was shockingly easy, even with Connex, only four minutes late really... And now that I'm aware that RMIT has elevators, I don't have to climb thirteen floors like Spiderman... First up was MATH2160, which is taught by one of my favourite kinds of teachers: the fast, no-bullshit, ain't slowing down for nobody ones... Well, like a said, he's fast, and can be a little difficult to decipher with that accent sometimes, but I went to Haileybury, so I'm trained in the art of multi-lingual English... Overall, I can see how he'll be great, but he and I have slightly different views on Mathematics. While I call it the absolute value of x (absolute x), he calls it the modulus function of x (mod x). Yeah, both correct, both just as easy to write, but I can tell he and I will get into marking issues over it... And another one: turns out VCAA doesn't teach Methods right. VCAA: log = log base 10. The rest of the world: log = ln. So what the hell VCAA? Teach us correctly! Take me a while to figure this new one out... On the plus side, this course looks like it will be Methods 1/2/3/4, Spesh 1/2/3/4, all wrapped up in a nice little 6 month bundle, which is what I always wanted to do with it...

Hour break, far too long, followed by: EEET2246 (some sort of Computer Science Engineering). Now this lecture is taken by one of those funny teachers: "Hey, been teaching this subject for 15 years now, shit then, shit now, do your best." Have to agree with the "shit now" part. Figured it out when he put 1 * 0 = 1 on the board. C'mon... Seriously... Anyway, two components that we'll start with: Matrices (I found these easy in year 10, I find them easy now, can I skip class?), and Excel Spreadsheets (you can tell that this'll be another subject that you want to skip when he hardly knows how to use it in his examples...). Sigh... Maybe the next class will be more productive...

So I walk into EEET2247 (Enterprise Engineering, don't worry, I had just as much as no idea as you do now) and find the room is filled with people on computers... It was a Lab, so I was sorta more expecting so be sitting at a workbench with scratches and burns from assorted tools, but instead the room is filled with people that looked a lot older than me... So I just stood up the back (I walked in through the front) and waited for something exciting to happen. A slightly overweight (delicate James, delicate... You never know who might read this one day...) woman walked in and barked (sounded like a loud whisper actually): "This is a lab, everybody out now..." Considering I was expecting a lab to be, well, more laboratory like, I kinda just thought she was crazy... She ended up getting the class started and told us to log onto Blackboard and open our assignment. Mixed bag of results. Some people could log on, some people could open Blackboard, and some (very few) could find this mystical assignment... Then she barked (whispered): "Form a team of four." As always, I just kept it simple and looked at the people next to me and provided that nod of "you'll do..." After the room had assigned groups our instructions were given (if you could hear them). I didn't hear them, so we just sat there and assessed the possible data, before providing an abstract solution to the problem at hand (see? I learnt something today! How to solve stuff engineering style!). Then several more people rocked up, and we got a blast about being late to class... Now I know it wasn't me who was late, and I know that I despise people who are late, but seriously woman, that's the WHOLE point of uni: to turn up (or fail to turn up) to classes at whichever time you choose... Yes, if people turn up late and disrupt the class, you have a right to tell them to piss off, but they were only ten minutes late, and you have no clue where they might have some from. Class settles; lady speaks up (now an hour into class): "You should be using Microsoft Office Project."

Ok, never heard of it me, but I find it quickly and stare blankly at my screen... You want me to make a timeline? The hell? So as a team, we plot how we will manage our time on Project over the next two weeks (which reminds me, feel free to change the due date anytime you wish... Anytime! Honestly! Doesn't piss me off at all! Just why the hell would you change the date at the last minute?). SO we plotted our timeline of time management, and she speaks up (she was close, so we could hear her). Turns out we were supposed to be plotting our timeline for this mystical engineering project with some sort of crazy invisible engineering team and some fruity unlimited quantity of cash over some spastic timescale, a year... So we (the entire class) spent an hour and a half doing the wrong thing, without any indication from silent to telling us we were doing something wrong... So in twenty minutes we manage to begin to pull some crazy contraption out of our asses (mosquito repelling alarm clock, powered by batteries, and made cheap, for third world countries) and begin a timeline. Time! So I log off and my team heads out the door while I put pens away. Silent comes up to me, asking to see the work we'd done today. So I was forced to log back in... Sigh just doesn't cut it...

And then when I got to my platform Connex decided it had been too nice to me this morning and decided to punish me by diverting ALL Eastern suburb traffic through my platform, my line. Squashed on the train. Got abused and attacked my some old lady who wanted to get past me, towards the seats that were clearly packed and already full of elderly...

Some days I just feel like a fish... Swimming in an ocean...