Tag: Reflection

The Fifty-Two Books I Didn’t Read This Year
December 20, 2020 8:59 am Comments Off on The Fifty-Two Books I Didn’t Read This Year
There is a ubiquitous saying amongst writers: show don’t tell. Instead of telling you that Tony Abbott is a little bit odd, I should instead show you his lips, palpating and quivering over the skin of a fresh raw onion; I should describe the sound, as his teeth crack through the layers of nested cellulose, and I should describe the smell, warm and pungent, of his halitosis-encrusted breath drifting through the air.
When it comes to mental health, things are a bit different. I can tell you about depression, but I don’t know if I can show you depression. I can’t put you inside my head and give you the tour. I can’t transmit my feelings to you via radio waves. I can’t take your hand and make you pat the twelve-legged Lovecraftian insect that has hatched somewhere in the back of my skull, feeding me feelings of hopelessness instead of a stream of consciousness. My best hope lies in trying to describe my experience, and in hoping, somewhat morbidly, that I’m talking to someone who has been in the trenches before too.
But perhaps there is one way of showing-not-telling depression. Before I graduated, I used to make a point of reading fifty-two books a year. I didn’t always read that many, but I’d start the year with a list in mind. That way, even if I got distracted by, say, cat videos, I might get through twenty or thirty of them by the time Christmas came around. I could choose the books I was most excited about reading and finish them first. I could change the list or I could throw it away completely and just improvise. I could read miniscule books or I could read mammoth books. I could read textbooks and comic books and everything between.
The thing is, I don’t read much anymore. Imagine the things you love most in life, and then imagine that you suddenly didn’t love them anymore. That is one small part of what it was like for me to develop depression. For a lot of people you don’t need to imagine this at all – you’ve gone through this exact thing before. Maybe in your case it wasn’t reading but something else altogether, like underwater basket weaving or extreme whack-a-mole.
Perhaps it’s futile to try and pinpoint a cause, but I’d still like to try. For me, the trigger was graduation. Afters months of anticipation and grades and fancy robes, I suddenly found myself feeling more empty than I ever had in my entire life. It wasn’t just feeling down. It was waking up in the middle of the night, covered in a blistering sheet of existential dread. It was listening to the same deformed internal monologue five-hundred times a day, thirty days a month. It was seeing all my friends succeed, and feeling like meanwhile I wasn’t worth two cents.
I didn’t realise until months later that I’d been slowly developing depression. Looking back, it’s easy to make sense of what was going on. But at the time it was hard to step out of my own head. It was hard to defuse my thoughts and to say that just because I’m thinking this awful thing, doesn’t make it true.
I know a large handful of people who’ve gone through the same thing after graduation. It’s more common than you might think. I’m starting to think we should have a name for it – maybe gradupression, or depraduation. If leaving university was the best thing that ever happened to you, then I’m glad, and I hope the upwards spiral continues. But for a lot of people, leaving university just isn’t like this. For a lot of people, graduating means finding yourself stuck at the start of a long hard road, and needing a helping hand.
I’m a lot better than I was, now. A big first step was naming the Lovecraftian insect for what it was. Another step was reaching out, and another step was medication. But then again, I’m still unwell. I still don’t read much. Not every problem gets fixed, and if it does get fixed, it certainly doesn’t get fixed overnight. Sometimes it gets fixed a lot, and sometimes it gets fixed only a little.
I don’t mean to say that all this has been a waste of time. I’ve learned things about myself that I could never have learned while still at uni. I’ve learned to grow new interests, even if my old ones die out. I’ve learned how to ask for help. I’ve learned to stop believing, at least in my case, in the myth of the depressed creative – that depression is somehow a source of great inspiration and motivation, and that it should be relied upon in order to achieve great things. In my case, the exact opposite was true. I used to be productive, and then I became depressed, and I was no longer productive. The arrow did not go the other way around.
Perhaps, in the end, I am just stating the obvious. That the experience of graduating is not too dissimilar from finishing a book. Perhaps, for you, it has been a wonderful book, a terrifying book, or the most boring book you ever read. Perhaps the book often made you cry. Perhaps the book was a waste of money, and didn’t teach you anything. Perhaps you finished it quickly, or perhaps you finished it after resting it on the shelf for many years.
Now you face, inevitably, the feelings that come afterwards. For some it will be relief, knowing that you have permission to move on. For some it will be melancholy, knowing that you’ll never be a part of a story that good again. For some it will be devastation, knowing that you step now into a deep dark forest, of which you can only tell, but never show. Whichever it is, you should be proud that you read a book.

Anonymous
Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect
March 31, 2019 12:45 am Comments Off on Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect
What is perfection? The Oxford Dictionary says that being perfect is to be free from any flaw or defect in condition or quality; that it’s a state of being faultless. For me, the idea of perfection has aspirational value but is a little counter-productive.
Perfection is something which we struggle to put our finger on, but which is strangely familiar to us. It permeates through teachings of faith, themes of literature and the brushstrokes of art. Pop-culture though has really brought perfection to the forefront of our minds. Advertising selling us the ‘perfect’ lifestyle and simultaneously reinforcing our own sense of imperfection. But perfection is so often defined in the negative by expressing simply what it is not. Faith and religion, for example, articulate what is the divine by acknowledging and condemning our own imperfection.
When we were young and starting to learn a new musical instrument, because our parents thought that it would make us smarter, or we had just started a new team sport, we were constantly subjected to the phrase ‘practice makes perfect.’ But, since perfection is an innately unattainable standard, what are we actually being taught to aim for?
Towards the end of last year, I too was told to practice. A very seasoned editor said to me: ‘you need to just become comfortable with putting out articles that you’ve done your best on and are 80 percent happy with… and get over your perfectionism.’
My desire for my writing to always be perfect, to project my ideal self constantly, had been preventing me from actually writing. I’d have an idea but then would abandon it because of my uncertainty over whether I could make it mind-blowingly awesome. Uncertainty about whether I could make it perfect.
I was introduced to the idea that you should, as a general rule, become 80 percent happy with your work. The remaining 20 percent is significantly more challenging and is largely affected by factors outside of your control. These could be your physical health or your state of mind, or you might not ever get to 100 simply because of subjective standards.
When I wrote my last column piece, some people gave me constructive feedback, some agreed with the sentiment and others dismissed my thoughts as part of my personality style. None of this was unexpected, nor was it unwelcome. But I achieved my goal to push through my perfectionism, and as a bonus, I was able to inspire a couple of readers’ existential crises.
The thing is though, practice does actually make you better. Practice makes you engage in a process of trying things out and succeeding a little bit and also failing a little bit. In so doing you are actively learning what doesn’t work, what is useful and what is unnecessary, enabling you to allocate your time and energy appropriately.
If you are going to perform a music recital you have to work on the parts of the music you find most challenging because otherwise, the overall piece will sound terrible. You won’t know which parts of the music they are until you’ve completed at least one trial run or practice.
It is also important to bear in mind the need to be constantly pushing yourself to do better. It is not enough to reach the point in a task where you think you have reached your 80 percent and then automatically finish it with a thought of “it’s good enough”. It is not good enough – it is a cop-out. It is a cop-out because you are not actually improving, or even really completing the task, you are simply compromising within your comfort zone.
Perfection may be unattainable, but your best is a moving goal post. By not pushing the boundaries or the goals, you are settling for second-best. You can move it forward by one centimetre, one metre or one kilometre – it does not matter; what matters is that you have improved and that you have achieved your best. That is a truly admirable accomplishment.
So, there you have it! Me writing a column this year is really just a slightly polished form of practice and all of you readers are here for the ride.

Ben Lawrence discusses his unhealthy perfectionism. Especially unhealthy when you consider that perfection is innately unattainable.

Ben Lawrence
After Auschwitz, There Can Be No Poetry: Guilt, Germany and Gunter Grass
October 3, 2018 4:41 pm Comments Off on After Auschwitz, There Can Be No Poetry: Guilt, Germany and Gunter Grass
After Auschwitz writes Adorno: “to write poetry would be barbaric”. For how can the language of burning books, extermination camps and final solutions be used to create beauty once more?
German author Gunter Grass, awarded the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature for his portrayal of the “forgotten face of history”, attempted to answer this question. In a 1979 speech he implored: “what shall we tell our children … what are we to say of the German guilt that has lived on from generation to generation?”
This German guilt, according to Grass, was a necessity for a country that had allowed Hitler to rise to power through its own democratic institutions. Whose ordinary men and women had supported his ideals. Indeed, in his 1963 novel Dog Years, he writes about magic spectacles that allowed German children to become privy to just what their parents had been up to in the years between 1939 and 1945.
He stripped the mythology away from the Nazis, rendering them as someone’s father, neighbour, brother, son. Creating a working German identity was predictably difficult – when Hitler ordered the destruction of the Third Reich moments before his suicide, nihilism essentially triumphed. What Grass wanted was to drag the dark years out from under the rug and openly speak about them. To try to create a working German identity, post-Auschwitz.
The atrocities committed during the Second World War in the name of the German people contaminated, according to Grass, the very German language itself. The only way to cleanse this was to drag it through ‘literary’ muck. Grass’ 1959 The Tin Drum embodied this muck, as well as its author’s mission, to awaken the German conscience to the horrors in which ordinary people had partaken.
The images that rest with the reader long after the final page has been turned are disturbing. An attempted sexual encounter between a dwarf and a nun, sex being allegorised through fizz powder, eels eating a horse’s head from the inside and a girl pissing in a pot of soup, all narrated by a precocious three-year-old dwarf born with the brain of an adult and the ability to shatter glass with his screams. The only appropriate response is violent recoil. And is there any response more apt?
Yet, much as the novel was blasted as an “exercise in blasphemy and pornography”, it does attempt to move beyond such literal readings. Grass’ magical realist text cannot avoid its place in history. Indeed, when the Nazi atrocities became public, people had little choice but to admit ‘collective guilt’, and Grass mocks this very notion. He essentially sought, with The Tin Drum, Dog Years and Cat and Mouse which together make up the Danzig trilogy, to blast a hole into the collective amnesia of a German generation which wanted instead to focus on economic growth and progress.
But what Grass seemed to fail to mention, whilst encouraging others’ responsibilities, was his own individual guilt. In 2006, almost 60 years after the fact, he admitted that he himself had been a voluntary member of the Waffen-SS. Before this, he had largely been assumed to be one of the generation too young to have been active in the war. And why had he joined?
He cannot put his finger on a response to this question. In a piece for The New Yorker he cites his animosity towards his stuffy, cramped and Catholic home. In the end, however, he seems to lead inevitably to the conclusion that what drew him to enlist were dreams of glory. The allure of black and white newsreels which advertised black and white truth to his seventeen-year-old self. Nobody ever lost wars in the news. Even up until the very end of the war, Grass has been quoted as saying he still believed they would win.
Of course, his confession was immensely critiqued. Many called for his works to be –, if not banned – at least ignored. He was seen as a moral hypocrite who had encouraged others to examine their individual responsibility in the war effort, whilst ignoring his own. One notable hypocrisy was his denunciation of Raegan and Kohl’s 1985 visit to a cemetery where Waffen-SS members were buried, even though he himself had been a member of the SS.
The man once described himself as “inexorably attuned to contradiction” and there is perhaps no better way to describe him than as inherently contradictory. Born 1929, Danzig, to a German father and a Kashubian mother, he came of age in a continent torn apart by hatred. Danzig, now the Polish city of Gdansk, was the first territory to be captured by the Nazis.
His political views are interesting, to say the least. Politically left-leaning, he denounced revolutions, whilst defending Castro’s Cuba, and encouraged a slow move towards progress. He called Catholic and Lutheran ideologies moral accomplices of Nazism. Intensely anti-nationalist, he argued against German unification on the grounds that people responsible for the Holocaust had forfeited the very right to self-determination. That Germany was better weakened so that it did not attempt to become belligerent once more. He denounced repression in the Soviet-bloc and fundamentalist religious governments. Then simultaneously criticised Western capitalism and was especially angered by Germany arming Hussein. Furthermore, he got himself declared persona non-grata by Israel after publishing a poem in which he declared that Germany must not continue to aid arming the country.,
Grass ends up tainted by the brush which tainted all of the twentieth century. Depending on the way you look at it, this either make his works and words completely senseless and false, or, even more so the conscience of the nation and humanity itself. Or, does his denial of his own truth speak to a deeper level about the very ambiguity of truth and memory itself? He analogised memory to being like an onion. How many layers must we peel back before we arrive at any semblance of meaning?

Lottie Twyford
The Puzzle of Legacy
4:34 pm Comments Off on The Puzzle of Legacy
When do our habits become our legacy?
My grandma used to have the daily paper thrown onto her front lawn every morning. She would sit on the couch by the window and read, circling the occasional spelling mistake in black pen, then do the crosswords. I remember sitting next to her, trying to help with the word jumbles, and brainstorm answers to tricky clues. Sometimes a topic I knew well would come up, animals, gemstones, classical mythology, and in excitement I would blurt out a list of possible words. She would humour me, though normally the gemstone would end up being RUBY, and the snake an ASP.
This pattern was often the case, and I remember being in awe of how Nan seemed to know what many of the words would be purely through practice. ‘To make lace’ was always TAT, ‘Cult’ was always SECT. You see the thing with crosswords is that they are harder to make than they are to solve. The people who create them have their own little toolbox of useful words. Short words with common vowels that can fill a gap, or pieces of obscure vocabulary that they find fun to include. If you solve the crosswords written by the same person enough, you start to notice their style, and get a peculiar insight into how they see language and the world.
One thing that always intrigued me as a child were the cryptic crosswords. They seemed so bizarre, this list of nonsense sentences among all the straightforward synonyms. Often Nan and I would start reading the clues out to each other and laughing. One day when I was around 11, I read about how cryptic crossword clues were made, and to my delight discovered there was a method hidden in the cacophony of words. Rather than try to use this knowledge to solve the cryptic crossword that day, I decided instead to write my own. I drew up a grid, and wrote some rather obvious clues, plus a couple that were so tangential they didn’t even make sense. Then I took the crossword to my grandma’s house.
I was halfway through writing this when I found out nan had passed away. It isn’t sudden, and indeed my reason for writing this was originally to reflect on how even though dementia and old age have taken a lot of her sharpness, so many of my memories will be of her teaching me things, solving puzzles, and lots of laughter. Now I find myself having to regard those memories as even more precious, because there will no longer be any more.
The day I took her the cryptic crossword I had written she was delighted, and sat and patiently solved all my clues. This was how I always remember her being, constantly encouraging me to learn and embrace my love of words and knowledge. Long since retired before I was born, she had been a primary school teacher. All through my childhood her passion for education and learning shepherded me. I remember her taking me to the library to borrow picture books. Or creating games to teach me to read and do basic arithmetic. Every year on my birthday she and my granddad would buy me a ‘true book’, encyclopedias, almanacs, books of fun facts, a beautiful dictionary and thesaurus. I still have the globe of the world they gifted me, the stacks of national geographic magazines they subscribed me to, and the postcards from all over the world nan would lovingly write when they travelled.
When you lose someone, you remember the times you had with them. I think the hardest thing about seeing nan deteriorate was that there was a sense of guilt and loss in reminiscing of times spent with her before she got ill. As if I was mourning her while she was still alive, and doing her a disservice by focussing on the past when I should have been treasuring the present. Now she is at peace, and I can remember, with tears, or with wistful smiles.
The lunches we would have, at various cafes around Milton and Ulladulla, and rank various aspects of the food, ambience, and service, in a little notebook. Playing at being restaurant critics, for something to giggle about. Or the lunches where we would sit in nan’s house and have a feast of party pies, and fish and chips, and watch murder mysteries on tv.
I guess habits become our legacy when they capture a part of our personality that is treasured by those who loved us. It is the nature of memory that the things oft repeated are the ones that will stick in our minds. Our habits, our quirks, the little traditions we create with each other, they make up the tapestry of memories that remain of us with the people we leave behind.
Don’t worry nan, I’ll keep doing crosswords for you.

Abigail Manning
Childish Things
August 23, 2018 12:33 pm Comments Off on Childish Things
Of this decade’s many leadership crises, this one is by far the most infantile. We should not stand for it.
One of the saddest condemnations of the state of Australian politics is that the last Prime Minister to serve out a full parliamentary term was John Howard. In the five prime minister-ships we’ve had since, only one was brought to office by the ballot box rather than by party room coup (Tony Abbott in 2013).
That the Prime Ministership is an uncomfortable and precarious chair to sit in is one of best elements of the Westminster system. Our democracy is stronger because prime ministers are never fully secure, always needing to be cautious and responsive to the pressures of Parliament and the people. No one is irreplaceable on Parliament Hill, and any prime minister who forgets this finds themselves out of power.
However, the act of disposing a government should be a decision made only in circumstances of actual need, where a change of leadership is necessary for the functioning of government, the good of the party, or for a closer reflection of the will of the people. The threat of a leadership coup is more useful than the reality, to bring prime ministers to heel and reign in the executive government from any excesses.
An argument could be made that the coups of 2015, 2013 and 2010 met these criteria to varying degrees. Abbott in particular – with a slew of broken election promises, a deeply unpopular policy agenda, tendency to make captain’s calls and low levels of public support probably serves as the best example of a coup in the public interest. Rudd, for all of his popular support, had a deeply problematic cabinet leadership and executive management style.
In each case, an argument could have been made that the successor had a better chance of leading the party to an electoral victory.
And then there is… this.
Let us be very clear. No one is arguing that Peter Dutton has anything even close to popular support – what little polling numbers exist indicate that his numbers are abysmal, verging on non-existant. No one is arguing that Dutton would have a higher chance of winning an election. No one is making an argument that Dutton could better manage cabinet or run the government. No one is saying that Dutton has better policies, more popular policies, or is indeed talking about his policies at all.
The only reason why this appears to be happening is that a single poor Newspoll presented an opportunity for the right to seize power. And that was the only consideration, along with the opportunity for personal ministerial advancement among MPs.
In fact, there is nothing about Australia in this leadership debacle. The Commonwealth has been disregarded, the public interest thrown to the wayside as the Liberal Party engages in one of the most spectacular exercises of collective self-absorption that has ever blighted Parliament.
It is puerile, selfish, destructive and an insult to the people and Constitution of Australia. It is a disservice to the hundreds of thousands in the APS who serve to make the Government work.
It is time for us to put away childish things. This transcends partisan allegiances or factional squabbling. Should the government fall, as citizens of the Commonwealth our singular demand should be an immediate dissolution of Parliament and an immediate election.

Howard Maclean
Another Side, Another Story: Technical University of Munich
July 30, 2018 2:22 pm Comments Off on Another Side, Another Story: Technical University of Munich
Upon receiving the delightful news of my acceptance to the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Germany to study abroad in their Winter Semester (October 2017 – March 2018), my focus immediately shifted to preparing and researching my destination. My initial knowledge and awareness of German Universities was sound at best, but the challenge of immersing myself in an educational environment of excellence (and thriving) was a personal goal I wanted to achieve. The primary similarity between ANU and TUM is the research-intensive focus, however the main focus of this article is outlining the stark differences between the two.
Currently studying a Bachelor of Engineering (with a backbone focus in Systems Engineering), I was cognisant of the contrasting curriculums between the ANU and TUM. Whilst it was my intention to study as many ‘course credited equivalent’ subjects as possible (all equating to 24 ANU Units or approximately 30 ECTS credits), part of my preparation focused on the ‘course structure’ of each subject (namely assessment deliverables). Furthermore, I wanted to use this opportunity to explore related subject areas which were beyond the scope of my major/degree.
Courses can be taken up across multiple colleges however a firm rule was that at least 50% of all ECTS credits must be registered within your primary college/department. More specifically, two courses I took up and thoroughly enjoyed were “Radar Signals and “Systems and Satellite Navigation”. The broader scope of subjects and research conducted in Communications Engineering (in this instance) has encouraged me to research a possible career path in this sector. It will amaze you just how diverse TUM’s subject lists are. These are just two subjects of dozens on offer (within the Electrical and Computer Engineering department alone).
In terms of course assessment, I was quite surprised to find that across all TUM departments, exams were the primary assessment item (weighted from 75-100% of a course grade) with little emphasis placed on assignments. In all ANU Engineering subjects assessment weightings are evenly distributed for each deliverable.
Regarding classroom management, I was surprised to learn that TUM did not utilise a Lecture Recording System (a la Echo360). Common across the majority of Europe, (excepting a service and amenities semester fee, half of which pays for your student train ticket), there are no tuition fees whatsoever. Understandably, a lecture recording system would be deemed too expensive to maintain in this case.
ANU is (for the most part) a decentralised tertiary institution (namely in terms of College Administration and Management – I belong to the College of Engineering and Computer Science: CECS so the majority of my queries would be addressed here). This is the case at TUM, but unlike ANU, TUM’s entire university is divided into three main campuses (all of which are spread throughout the city of Munich). Whilst all my classes were fortunately on the same campus, I wanted to bring to your attention that the possibility of commuting (on Munich’s excellent subway/U-Bahn network) is highly likely if you have courses spanning multiple campuses. The advantage of the campuses being integrated into the city is the close proximity you are to everything (namely shops and public transport services).
Despite all my exchange courses being delivered from a primarily theoretical standpoint, I had acquired some new technical skills (both Engineering and Business Management related) which I aim to leverage on and apply throughout the rest of my degree. Excursions to companies (with strong ties to TUM) such as BMW, Bosch and smaller-sized start-ups all echoed the importance of the Entrepreneurship mindset. Taking note, guest lecture seminars from representatives of industry (some from these prestigious companies) also sparked a greater self-interest on the importance of cross-disciplinary study (acquiring skills from Field A to complement work in Field B) and being able to effectively collaborate with others to achieve common goals. What the ANU Systems Engineering program excels in is a strong focus on utilising the above principles, so from a learning perspective, I felt like I could relate a bit.
Munich has an eclectic mix of historical and modern architecture which is beautifully integrated all across the city. Whilst numerous travel guides can inform you (better than I) of detailed and interesting descriptions on ‘life outside the University sphere’, I will make a quick remark regarding Munich’s social life from a specific perspective.
Länderabend is a social event held on an occasion co basis aimed to unite both German and International students. More specifically, it provides a platform for International students (studying at TUM although other Munich-based Universities run similar events) to showcase their home culture, give students the opportunity to eat traditional food, socialise and acquire information of prospective exchange abroad opportunities as well.
The exchange journey has impacted me in more ways that I summarise into words. I will conclude by acknowledging that TUM is not only a world-class institution of learning and pioneer but also has allowed me to establish contacts and starting building my networks today.
Auf Wiedersehen TUM, Munich and Germany.

Woroni Comment
Disappearing Space on Campus
May 20, 2018 9:37 pm Comments Off on Disappearing Space on Campus
Over the last year, countless spaces at ANU have disappeared behind fences, into piles of rubble and under scaffolding. Navigating campus has become akin to the constantly moving maze I have a recurring dream about – every time I spot a gap in the cyclone fencing, I see it move out of the corner of my eye and turn around to find myself enclosed.
I can make do with this inconvenience, though – and I’m privileged to experience it as a mere inconvenience, rather than a genuine impediment to me accessing many spaces on campus. Not everyone is this lucky. The campus is undeniably less accessible than it was a year ago, physically closing out disabled students for whom having to walk further, use stairs or navigate busy crowds might just not be an option. It is not good enough.
Over time, other detrimental effects on the community are emerging, that weren’t quite so apparent at the outset. Slowly, alongside the physical changes, something less tangible is changing. As communal spaces disappear and morph, so too, it seems, does the community that inhabits them.
Without a central space for events, events become smaller and more isolated. They’re forced to the peripheries of the campus, or cease to be held at all. With such limited parking, accessibility becomes a minefield, and even moving equipment and supplies becomes a logistical nightmare. Events play an important social role; more than that, they’re a way of expressing values. With less visible spaces to protest or to celebrate, there’s less opportunity for groups to express their collective identity.
Day-to-day, different parts of the university feel more distant. We carve out our own paths, sometimes physically (see: Chifley Meadow), travelling between the specific buildings we need. But crossing campus is just that much harder, and that much less worthwhile just for a better study spot or a sunnier lunch location. Our routines on campus have become more localised. The divisions between faculties seem to grow in more ways than one. Lacking a central space, the feeling of social interconnectedness that seeing familiar faces all over campus brings gets weaker.
It feels hyperbolic, to link construction to such substantial shifts in the way we experience campus. But it is no new concept – there is a rich academic tradition of exploring the effects of physical space on the ways in which we inhabit, experience and participate in the world. Sociology and anthropology examine the ways in which spaces include and exclude, and the forms of socialising and community building they facilitate. Human geographer Allan Pred puts it beautifully, arguing that the organisation of physical space is “inseparable from the reproduction and transformation of society in time and space.”
This period of change is not limited to the ANU, either. Globally, public space is eroding, as parks, town squares and malls become privatised and commercialised. Public space has important and beneficial impacts on health, happiness and community, and so scholars and advocates and politicians worldwide are beginning to ask what this means. They worry that social inclusion is being irreparably diminished by increasing land pressure that eats away at public and green spaces in cities.
Perhaps online spaces are filling the metaphorical space left behind. Facebook groups become meeting places and forums for discussion, reminding us that we’re part of a collective whole. They bring with them their own parameters which facilitate and limit interaction much like the material confines of a physical space. Specific post formats, community standards defining “appropriate” content and algorithms controlling the dissemination of information bound our experience online, much like the fences on campus do in “real” life.
ANU is a different place than it was a year ago, when the grass on Chifley Meadows was still lush and green. In a year, or two, when Kambri opens and the construction eases up, the new spaces will make it different again. It is hard to say what has changed, and even harder to imagine what might – but we have to ask. The materiality of campus is too intertwined with our experience as students to let it go unnoticed and unquestioned.

Mia Jessurun
A House is Not a Home
May 10, 2018 10:25 am Comments Off on A House is Not a Home
The concept of ‘home’ is a strange one when you think about it. It has no discernible definition, and can only really be described as the feeling you get when you are ‘at home’. The classic cliché tells us that “home is where the heart is” – but what about the physical spaces that many of us are lucky enough to call home? I know when I first moved into my single room in my first semester at ANU, it certainly didn’t feel like home. But soon, my small space became my sanctuary. It wasn’t my home because it was where my heart was (I spent most of my time there alone). It was my home because it was familiar and safe. Later when I developed a close group of friends, I grew attached to the room because of the memories I made there – and this attachment grew stronger every day.
Why is it that the structures we spend so much of our time in become so essential to our concept of home? I’ve only had to say goodbye to two homes – once when I moved house at a very young age, and again when I moved rooms within UniLodge. I’m incredibly sentimental, and I really struggled with leaving my first room in Canberra. So much had happened there, and I had changed so much over my 18 months in that room. When I arrived at my new room, I felt numb. Nothing felt the same. However, thanks to the fact that all UniLodge Rooms are identical, as soon as my bed sheets were put out and my posters put up, this new room was home again. So maybe home isn’t where the heart is, maybe it’s just where the familiar is.
Moving into a new space, even when surrounded by loved ones, always feels unfamiliar. It’s not until we settle into a space by bringing out our belongings and, most importantly, making memories there that it truly becomes home. It’s strange to think that in the life span of one house, various families or people will call it home. We do not attach to the physical structure of the house, nor the bricks and cement that create its foundation, but rather the sense of a familiarity and fond memories we get from time spent in one place. The same can be said for the cities and towns that we live in. They can also begin to feel like home once we have explored the surrounds and discovered our favourite spots. I never thought I would truly feel at home in Canberra. Now my mum gets mad at me when I’m visiting my family and I refer to returning to Canberra as “going home”.
If we look to music for explanation, Dionne Warwick tells us “a house is not a home”. This definition rings truer for me – while physical structures are meaningful because of the experiences we have in them, a house itself does not make a home. A house can be part of a home, but home really takes many other forms: A city, a space, a room, a restaurant. Creating memories in new places will inevitably mean we carry our homes with us, no matter how far we travel in life.

Josie Ganko
Why We Can’t Get Away From Facebook
April 21, 2018 11:09 am Comments Off on Why We Can’t Get Away From Facebook
Without Facebook, I probably wouldn’t have been invited to friends’ birthdays or be contributing this article.
Although Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin initially created the social media platform for Harvard students, it eventually grew to accommodate anyone above thirteen years old. What started out as a simple “Hot or not” game that violated individual privacy and copyright has become a means to connect people, and inadvertently became Zuckerberg’s lifelong career.
That said, I think Facebook is pretty much a required tool when navigating through university. Even though it isn’t explicitly listed as a prerequisite, such as a textbook, the cost of not using Facebook for university far exceeds the usual arguments of the social media platform being a work distraction.
Messenger has grown into a regular communication tool. Innovations such as file transmission or event reminders enable us to respond faster to new notifications rather than new text messages or emails. Google’s previous attempt at creating their social network, Google+ never seemed to have caught on, so we’re pretty much left with Facebook by default.
Compared to most universities, ANU has a bustling online space. After all, news that ANU campus was flooded from heavy rain first broke out among university forums as a form of user-generated content. From its 12,000+ member strong forum ANU Schmidposting, to the existence of pages such as ANUGothic or ANU Crushes, this builds a community that inarguably unites ANU students. Autonomous Facebook groups provide on-campus support and a safe discussion space to marginalised groups or people from the same background. First years venturing into a brave new world post questions on topics ranging from parking to handling their degrees, and are often instantly answered by students who have experienced the same thing.
Furthermore, Facebook tends to be used as an alternative to digital marketing. The “news feed” format allows you to search for on-campus opportunities, whether it be society executive nominations or casual jobs available in Canberra. However, many groups have forgotten to utilise email newsletters as a form of communication to connect with their followers, which should not be expensed at all in favour of a Facebook mention.
Facebook’s only competitor is Wechat, primarily utilised by Chinese students who may not be on the former social media platform. As such, a Western-centric social media platform is emphasised, whether it be for social purposes or connecting with opportunities.
That said, simply having a Facebook account can be hazardous. Numerous employers allegedly use Facebook to gain a better understanding of their future job applicants through a casual glimpse at their behaviour.
The platform itself tricks users into keeping their data through different options. By deactivating your account, you’re “taking a break” and hiding your profile from searches and friends, but still liable to receiving emails as well as being tagged in photos. Permanently deleting your account is likely the option you’re looking for, but could take up to 90 days to process.
For better or worse, Facebook is here to stay. It certainly can’t be “beat” – only resisted for the time being. The social network has certainly helped with our communication needs and support for a brave new world, and I can’t wait to see what Facebook accomplishes next.

Brandon Tan