Tag: Student life

Imposter Syndrome
September 7, 2023 12:02 pm Comments Off on Imposter Syndrome
I grew up in the Western Suburbs of Sydney, a place not many ANU students are from. Looking back on high school there, even though it wasn’t the best period in my life, it made me feel like I somewhat belonged. There was always a new club for me to join and I had a great group of friends, who never made me feel isolated for the things I found interesting. Maybe it was because of all those American college movies I had watched growing up, and all those YouTube videos I had watched in anticipation, but I believed that university would be the place where I became more confident and grew into myself. I assumed university would make me feel like I completely belonged.
I had two weeks of the ‘University experience’ before COVID-19 hit, but it was nothing like I expected. That first week of uni, I remember printing out my resume and immediately applying for every job in sight. I assumed every student was doing the same. I was sorely mistaken.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, only 40% of people in tertiary education are working part-time. I was surprised when I found out that some students at ANU have never had to work, and will not have to work throughout their entire degree, to take care of themselves. This made me feel like an imposter at ANU, acutely out of place at such a prestigious university.
My first tutorial at ANU also made me feel like I was out of place. The way tutors speak is something that still perplexes me to this day. I felt like I was sitting in a Master’s program for International Relations, not my first ever uni class. I believe lots of ANU students have felt this, as I often see it plastered all over ANU Confessions. Some lecturers do not know how to teach and they can often make the course feel inaccessible. It became even more difficult over COVID-19 when everything was online; it was even harder to learn. For example, I took a French Introduction course, thinking it would be a pretty simple class. I had taken a little French in high school and thought I would have an advantage, – I was wrong. The lecturer attempted to teach a whole year of high school French in a few weeks!
There seems to be a pervasive expectation at ANU that University is our only priority, and ANU continually fails to take into account the complex and busy lives of its students. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in 2017 – 2018, 15% of people ages 18-24 had experienced high levels of psychological distress. With the impact of COVID-19, I know that this would have increased. As a student who works part-time and suffers from psychological distress, I can attest that the help provided by ANU is minuscule. Because of this, it is so easy to feel like you do not belong, or feel out of place. That first year of university impacted how I saw myself. The thing about imposter syndrome is, everything you feel about yourself is tipped on its head. The way you perceive yourself and the people around you is completely different. You internalise it and feel like you are the only one feeling this way – as if you are the only person who is in the wrong place.

Imposter syndrome also makes you feel like you are in a constant race to keep up, and ANU reinforces that toxic narrative.
Have you ever noticed that most tutorials seem to be during the middle of the day, making it difficult to work and study at the same time? Some lecturers, even after COVID-19, still expect students to go to their lectures in-person and you may even lose participation points if you do not attend. I do not have time to go to a three-hour lecture on a Monday morning, especially when it’s a day I work. ANU perpetuates the pressure to keep up with your peers, you need to graduate when everyone else graduates, you need to get HDs, and you need to be prefect, mentally and physically
When you break them down, though, none of these goals make sense. When it comes to graduating ‘on time’, people change their degrees, I know, shocking! When you do that, you often end up extending the time you need to study before graduating. Many people also do fewer courses to work or take care of their mental health, which also extends their degrees. It feels like to finish your degree perfectly in three or four years would mean that you didn’t work, and never had a mental breakdown, ever!
Moving on to pressure to get all D’s or HDs, not all courses are the same, also shocking! Unless you have done the course already, you do not know what to expect. Your tutor might be a harsh marker and maybe the last exam is really hard for no reason. When you take a look again at these societal expectations that make everyone feel like they are doing something wrong, you realise that they do not make any sense. Many students take time off here and there, many students are working multiple jobs to afford to stay in Canberra and many students are simply trying to pass their courses and survive.
The one thing imposter syndrome has taught me was that it is easy to idealise everyone around you and look down on yourself, what is more difficult is to treat yourself with kindness and remember that this path in life is your own and no one else’s. Tertiary systems also need to look at every student as an individual and provide more financial and mental resources. While I do not believe that uni will ever get easier, especially if ANU continues to forget about the welfare of their students, I do believe that the communities students have created, such as ANU Confessions and ANU Schmidtposting will continue to bring us comfort, so we never fully feel alone.

Perpetual Nkatiaa Boadu
Love Stories: In Conversation with Trent Dalton
September 11, 2022 8:43 pm Comments Off on Love Stories: In Conversation with Trent Dalton
Go hug someone you love, ASAP!

On Saturday the 13th of August, I sacrificed an hour of my busy afternoon to the gods of the Canberra Writers Festival. The event? Love Stories: In Conversation with Trent Dalton. The attendee? Me, alone – I had failed to convince any of my friends that this was an event for normal people (I.e., non-bookworms, people who hadn’t read his book and therefore didn’t immediately begin writing a series of letters to all the people they love). Love Stories is Dalton’s most recent book, inspired by his best friend’s mother leaving him her antique typewriter. In honour of her and her life, Dalton took to the busiest corner in Brisbane with a sign saying, “Sentimental writer collecting love stories. Do you have one to share?” The stories he collected and the conversations he had with people, safe to say, had quite an impact on me.

Having attended another Canberra Writers festival event that morning, I was dubious about this one. Although I love, admire and deeply respect Trent Dalton, the morning panelists had made me want to (in order):

become a leader of industry (maybe like a CEO in a male industry type vibe), using her position to pull other women and disadvantaged groups up with her;
pursue journalism (idk, one of the panelists was a journalist and she sounded like a baddie);
hug my parents (and thank them for never telling me women should be seen and not heard);
hug my (dearly departed) grandmother and tell her that while I understood why she was forced to be polite, accepting etc. etc., things had changed, and I wished she hadn’t been so strict on forcing my sister and I to become nice, quiet, polite young women.

The ability of this event to inspire these feelings within me came from the honest and inspiring connections between all the panelists and the discussions of their experiences. I was therefore unsure that the one white man on stage (being interviewed by the wonderful Lisa Miller) would be able to provoke in me the same thought-provoking, inspiring, empowered ideas that the morning event had. And yet, it kinda did??? Maybe even more so?? Weird. The fact that the first event managed to instill so many immediate and forceful feelings within me and yet not be the best event of the day is still disturbing to me.

When he (Mr Dalton, naturally) first came on stage and began speaking, I was a little shocked and offended at the number of times he used the word “like.” Although I study linguistics and am aware that no forms of language are inherently better than any others and I shouldn’t judge people for how they speak and so on and so on, I’ll be honest, it made me cringe. It made him sound (in my humble opinion, speaking with all the authority of an undergraduate university student) rather inarticulate. The opposite of the eloquent, moving speaker I expected him to be.

As the event went on, I began to see how wrong my first impression truly was. Not that Dalton didn’t use the word “like” a lot, he did. And not that he didn’t swear, because he did. Or have a bit of a bogan accent (he definitely did). I just came to see that there was far more to him and his message than his initial appearance led me to believe. And like, I knew this before, but he really made me believe it. Because he appealed not to my head, and my university education, which said, rationally, the first event had been better, but to my heart. And my heart said that any person who could make me, over the course of an hour, want to:

Go and hug every person in my life,
Fall in love (straight away, if possible – anyone interested?)
Cry
Send a message to all the people I’ve lost
Begin saying ‘I love you’ more (maybe even to my tutors? Life is too short)

was someone that I should really take notes from.

I could tell that everyone around me was affected in the same way. As Trent (calling authors by their last name is so outdated) spoke about his dead best friend’s mother, who bequeathed him the typewriter he used to write the book, the two women in front of me hugged, clearly having also lost someone recently. As he spoke about his mother’s experiences of horrific domestic violence, the audience all around me gasped. When he joked about his former teacher telling him he would one day be the head of an outlaw bikie gang, we laughed. That was the power of this event, and what the first event had, in some way, been missing. Trent speaking so openly and honestly about love, and its importance in all our lives, made us all feel a little closer to the person sitting beside us than we had been when we first sat down. He used love, his experiences of it, and others’ experiences of it to weave the common thread of humanity through every row of that theatre.

I was also deeply impacted when Lisa Miller, the interviewer (or conversation partner I suppose), asked Trent what the whole point of his book was. While most of his responses to questions were rather roundabout, he did directly answer this one in the end. And the simple answer was: love.

He described it as the kitchen scene within his Brisbane home. The environment that you look forward to returning to at the end of the day. The place you tell your loved ones about your stuff-up at work. The place you laugh and hug and cry and get relief from the world at the end of your 8-hour workday. The place you feel safe. And while not everyone has the luck and incredible privilege of having a place like this to return to, many of us do.

And I, on behalf of Trent (and I hope he would approve of this, as I am not sufficiently close to him to ask), would like you to appreciate that extra hard today, or tomorrow, or whenever you are next there. Appreciate the people who make you laugh when you’re on the verge of tears, and who make every problem seem smaller just by sharing it. Appreciate the fact that we, as humans, have the need, the desire, the drive, to create these connections which give our life meaning. And don’t forget that you, too, are part of this ongoing and resilient chain of humanity, and that you deserve a pat on the back for your role in it.

After all, if you go and hug someone, or tell someone you love them, or you, personally, get yourself through a tough period in your life, you are contributing to the loved and lived experiences of others, and of yourself. We are all a little patchwork of the love we have given and received over the course of our lives, something which Trent made me incredibly proud of and grateful for. Thanks, Trent (love you!).

Holly McDonell
I’m Not A Real Person, Yet
April 12, 2021 5:42 pm Comments Off on I’m Not A Real Person, Yet
The Thursday of O-Week I went out by myself, with the intention of running into some friends and joining them. Living off campus as I do, it is not possible to wander into a common area and find people, and my housemates had their own evening plans. I caught an Uber into Civic and stood in line outside One22, a party of one.
This would have been unimaginable two years ago, in my first year. I was apprehensive, felt foreign to myself and everything around me. Now, I felt good. Sure, I was getting looks from other groups, specifically ones made up of young men, but it was all mostly harmless, and it had little effect on my mood.
I walked up the all-familiar stairs of old Wolf, bid the bloke I was casually chatting to a good night and lined up for water. It was going to be a sober night.
And so, for the next 40 minutes I drank my water, asked random groups of girls to dance with them and kept my eyes peeled for any friends I could join to appear. I was sober, technically alone, and having a fantastic time. I felt whole, grounded, and confident enough in being a proper, full, and settled person to be able to do this, unlike first-year Karolina.
Growing older means you settle into yourself. You connect with who you are internally and carve out a little space for yourself among the nearly eight billion people who walk this earth. Your existence becomes your own. You learn to claim it and revel in it, wholly and absolutely.
Whenever I tell people I regularly go out sober, they usually respond positively saying “I wish I could do that”. I meet strangers and explain that my friends haven’t come yet, or that they left already, and they are almost always welcoming and friendly. Through my independent adventures I’ve realised that everyone is searching for connection. Everyone wants to feel comfortable within themselves.
The formative moment occurred after Laneway in February 2020. After a beautiful 10 hours of live music at the Old Mill in Port Adelaide, a friend and I headed into town for the afterparty. Tiah and I giddily ran up the stairs to Rocket, which anyone from Adelaide will know as a more indie version of One22 and danced the rest of our energy out. She went home at 2 AM and I decided to stay – the DJ was sick, I felt electrically alive and dancing was an expression of truth.
Hence, I stayed, by myself, in a crowd that was already thinning. At first, I just stood by the bar, sipping water, trying to find an inconspicuous corner I could claim. I wandered over, and immediately looped back to the bar. Too scary. I noticed a small group of people dancing like they meant it, I approached, explained that my friend went home, and asked if I could join them. Yes! Welcomed with enthusiasm, I danced with them until 4 AM, until my body gave way, and my energy was spent. I thanked my companions and got home safe.
The moment that I returned to Rocket after seeing Tiah off, I was strengthening my connection to self. When I walked over to those kind strangers, I was affirming my place in the world, and quietly saying “I exist”. When I felt the bass pulsating through my veins and my body moving in time, I was grounding myself in my own existence, taking ownership of who I was and what I stood for. I was becoming a real, full, and settled person.
Nothing really prepares you for the debilitating existential angst of realising ‘holy shit I am an actual person who is meant to have values and thoughts and a proper life’. You enter the world as an 18-year-old– fresh faced, and unable to internally answer if you even like yourself. Everything comes at you all at once, and you walk down Uni Ave feeling like a meaningless speck that is at the same time bursting with a desire to have a space in the world, to be meaningful.
The changes I’ve experienced in my sense of self over the last two years have been beyond what anyone could have explained to me. It’s like the dust has settled, and instead of frantically looking around and being uprooted from the everyday, each foot on the ground is filled with intention and with conviction.
This space you create for yourself is one you must fill, occupy, and take full ownership of. Doing so requires an understanding of yourself and enough tenacity to claim said space. It’s your little meter-squared surrounded by everyone else’s and a way to affirm your existence amongst them. Your personhood fills your body, transcends it, and grows its roots through the space. I think growing up is the process of making and cultivating that space for yourself. While maybe it always exists, you need to become whole, complete, and full enough so that you can step into it and make it habitable.
I want to get to a point in my life where I only say and do things I mean and believe in. There is a quote in the film Frances Ha, where the titular character Frances says, embarrassed, “I’m not a real person, yet”. I guess my way of living with intention is going out sober and being assured enough to dance with sweaty strangers in the dark. My space is my own, stable enough in its foundations to allow me to stand alone in the line to One22, the perimeter strengthened by my values, goals and confidence that has been through more rejections than approvals.
Becoming a person is scary. It’s a process that you have to completely commit yourself to. My way of navigating that process was giving up drinking in first year and carrying myself through social situations without the blanket of alcohol. It was journaling, failing two subjects, taking a year off uni and moving back home and doing lots of things alone and then with people. It was learning to smile and say “hi” to the person I kind of knew but whose gaze I always avoided. Your life is your process, and your space is waiting to be yours.

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Karolina Kocimska
Ambition on Fleek: How Pinterest took me from GirlFlop to GirlBoss
April 9, 2021 2:02 pm Comments Off on Ambition on Fleek: How Pinterest took me from GirlFlop to GirlBoss
At the start of my final year of high school, things were about as far from perfect as they could have been.
COVID-19 was starting to rear its ugly head in places that actually mattered to the media of the Western world. Bushfire smoke meant my summer days at the beach were limited. My grandmother had been dying in hospital for months, and I had just been prescribed antidepressants for my depression and anxiety.
To make matters worse, what I had always struggled with in high school wasn’t the workload itself, or writing essays. Between my undiagnosed attention deficit disorder (ADD) and the subjects my father had ‘encouraged’ me to do, the key factor I was missing was motivation. What good would it do the world if I wrote an essay on the significance of the policy of containment in the Cold War? Who was actually going to care about my thoughts on TS Eliot’s textual integrity and canonical status?
These questions lingered each time I sat down to gather notes for Modern History, or sketch out a Legal Studies essay. Most nights ended with me crying at my desk – mostly because of my general emotional instability, but partly because of schoolwork.
Being a student in these end times is, in a word, utterly Sisyphean. What could the relevance of the structure of the communist Russian government in 1918 possibly have in this warming world, with WW3 on the horizon, where every choice I make as a consumer will eventually trace back to the mistreatment of a four-year-old sweatshop employee? I repeated this rhetoric to my psychiatrist, to my parents, to my school counsellor, even to my cat Jackson as we laid outside together. Jackson had motivation, drive, a reason to get up and face the day in the morning. He had trees to climb, birds to abuse, other neighbourhood cats to terrorise. I only wished some of his sense of purpose could rub off on me.
I couldn’t escape this mentality throughout the bulk of the year. What good was it to pay attention in my online classes when I could simply mute them with a click of a button? When we returned to school, I was so behind that it seemed impossible to make up lost time, however purposefully it had been lost. Modern History classes were ripe to explore the internet in; I memorised the fifty states of America, played online trivia, watched the West Wing muted with subtitles on, even started and finished a podcast with over seventy hour-long episodes just through the transcripts.
The most valuable past-time, I found, was not any of these, but the website that would be my saviour – Pinterest. Oh, Pinterest.
I had known of the site for years, of course. It was an oasis of aesthetically pleasing images, Keto recipes, and easy workouts that had served to further my middle-school disordered eating. Due to the latter, I hadn’t frequented it much in recent years, but faced with the unending torture of double Legal Studies, I found myself on it more and more. I made a new account so as to better suit my current hyperfixations. Little did I know, that decision would come to serve me more than I could have ever anticipated.
Logging onto my Pinterest feed, freshly wiped with no knowledge of my niche interests in 90s adult animation and Donna Tartt novels, I was faced with the selection the site showed to an average new user. Again — Keto recipes, OOTDs on emaciated Instagram models, and motivational quotes.
I could have never imagined the impact these quotes would have on me. I saved one, and then another, and then another. They saturated my feed, and would echo in my head relentlessly. One day, or Day One? You decide. The disembodied voice of a GirlBoss was right – today was the first day of the rest of my life, a life in which I understood to what extent the USSR rejected capitalist ideology.
If I was to be so bold, perhaps this knowledge I had deemed ‘irrelevant’ could become relevant, if only to be a stepping stone to the future empire I knew I could build. I could manifest success. Pinterest told me to be savage, not average. I wouldn’t be average any longer. Today was tomorrow’s yesterday.
Of course, I will disclose that after a particular depressive episode that concluded with a 49 percent markin my Modern History trial and a pesky 4/25 in my Cold War essay, my therapist prescribed me dexamphetamines for my now-diagnosed ADD. But it wasn’t the small white pills that made me focused, of course – it was Pinterest. It had always been Pinterest. I was, as the website had instructed, addicted to the feeling of having my shit together. I was going to create the life I couldn’t wait to wake up to.
As a writer, I do value honesty. And so, reader, I will be honest with you – the life I ‘couldn’t wait to wake up to’ didn’t involve Modern History. I know that the good guys won in the Cold War, that Nelson Mandela ended racism; what else was there to know? And so, I took the leap I knew I had to as a GirlBoss. I stopped going to most of my Modern classes, because I’m a powerful woman, and I’m not going to let little things like two out of my ten HSC units bring me down.
I visualised my highest self, and I showed up as her.
When my friends filled me in on practice essays I missed, I’ll admit, these things concerned me. But you don’t grow when you’re comfortable, my desktop wallpaper reminded me, and so I embraced the discomfort. Pinterest allowed me to actualise my true self. It told me to ‘wake up Beauty, it’s time to Beast’, so I lied to my parents. They didn’t need to know about Mr Kwok’s panicked emails to me, not when I was on my own path to greatness.
You may seem doubtful, but this story has a happy ending. I graduated at the top of my English Extension 2 class, and the top of my Studies of Religion 2 class, because I’m a fucking GirlBoss. I put in the work, and I exclusively focused on the things that came naturally to me with little extraneous effort. With the help of dexamphetamines, I cleared the useless knowledge of ‘democratic principles’ and ‘significant figures in Nazi Germany’ out of my head.
Why would I consider the political tensions in the Weimar Republic when there are real political issues happening right now? I’m a passionate socialist, and I don’t have time for Mr. Massey to bring me down talking about whatever happened to the system in Germany in the 1920s. Gustav Stresemann certainly wasn’t a GirlBoss, and he’s irrelevant now.
I just barely snuck into the top 50 percent of my Modern History cohort, which was good enough for me. If anything, my placing third in Extension English and first in Extension 2 is a testament to the power of language.
Now I’ve graduated and harnessed the power of motivation, who knows what hardships I’ll conquer next? I’m seventeen, out and experiencing the real world, and I see no reason to change my ideology. Now I know the value of a simple Pinterest board, there’s nothing I can’t face – whether it be toxic friendships, normalised substance abuse at university, WW3, or the impending destruction of our environment.
My mantra is simply to keep GirlBossing, Gaslighting, Gatekeeping, and Getting refills on ADD medication.

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Sophie Rosen
Everyone’s Job is Difficult
12:56 pm Comments Off on Everyone’s Job is Difficult
I recently came across a TikTok by a primary school teacher. She responds to the weeks of summer vacation that teachers get and how some complain that this makes the profession easier. “I didn’t choose your career for you. Sub for my class one day – just one day! See what I do for 180 days.” One user commented, “I can do your job for a day. You talk to first graders on a computer… I’m a psych nurse dealing with serial killers. Do my job for a day.” Others responded similarly. The comment section was a battle of professions – people sitting at home, behind their screens, competing to prove how difficult their work was. The video creator, Miss Franklin, later responded with the following: “What everyone should learn from this trend – EVERYONE’s job is difficult and has their own advantages/disadvantages. Respect one another’s profession.” The whole argument seemed so silly to me. Why was this teacher associating “respect” for a profession with how much others acknowledged its difficulty?
In our introductory lecture this semester, my Psychology lecturer mentioned that the subject could arguably be considered more difficult than some natural or life sciences. This is because it studies human beings who change their behaviour following new research they read, speculations, and predictions. I learned from my Economics lecturer that famous physicist Max Planck supposedly told John Maynard Keynes that Economics was too difficult for him for similar reasons.
Why are we so fascinated with proving the difficulty of our work? Is it because we need to show that we can do work that is harder than what the ‘average’ person can do, if such a measure even exists? Is this how we channel our yearning to reach our full potential, leave a mark that transcends us, and ‘be special’? After noticing this trend, I began to suspect that the need to prove the difficulty of our work is rooted in toxic hustle culture.
“I am so burned out. I barely slept this week.”
“I’m such a typical stressed college student. I had to drink a bunch of coffee to cram for my finals.”
“Who says an Arts degree is easy. I’ve been studying all day.”
Let’s stop looking at stress and burn-out as badges of honour. Let’s stop the “I’m so overworked, it’s terrible” while secretly feeling hints of satisfaction at the thought that we have “done enough” or done things that are “hard enough” to feel worthy. Let’s stop trying to validate the amount of time or money we have spent on honing our craft by convincing others of its difficulty.
I feel very privileged to have been brought up knowing that my parents will support me regardless of the subject or career I choose. I know not everyone can afford that freedom. We often hear from relatives and family friends who think differently. Some question or look down on my decision to pursue the social sciences instead of a STEM subject. Others assume it is because I didn’t have the skills to do anything ‘better’. In the past, we have gotten caught up in defending our choices and agreeing that difficulty is subjective. All professions and subjects are difficult, and difficulty depends on each person’s skill set.
Recently, I’ve started realising that by feeding into this discussion, I may subconsciously be contributing to the idea that difficulty matters. Even if there were one objective measure of the difficulty of subjects and professions, would it indicate value? If being a first-grade teacher was ’easy’, would it be any less important? By protesting against the idea that STEM subjects are more difficult, more valid, or more respectable career choices, I may end up feeding into a culture that assumes that difficulty is equivalent to value or worth. That acknowledging difficulty is somehow equivalent to respect. It is not hard to understand why. Many of us have been conditioned to work harder, put in more hours, and push ourselves to reach our full potential. We sometimes fall into the trap of assuming that competing in fields that are traditionally considered difficult is the best way to achieve, fulfil, and realise our potential.
The value of a profession and the worth of the human who pursues it does not depend on how little vacation they get or how many hours they have worked overtime. By associating pride with difficulty, we blind ourselves to the fact that our lives are being swallowed by a culture that rewards placing work above all else. Instead of trying to one-up others and glorifying exhaustion, we should start shifting the conversation.
We should redirect our focus to the satisfaction we get after our work has made its desired impact or the fulfilment we feel at the end of the day. We should stop comparing how ‘difficult’ our jobs are and appreciate that teachers are just as crucial as electricians. We should understand the joy that actors bring to our movie nights and thank humanities students for studying the storytellers who have enriched our past. We should thank psychologists and doctors for their contribution to health and still recognize the importance of journalists, homemakers, and museum curators. Hustle culture, toxic productivity – whatever you want to call it – has dug its roots deep into our conversations, language, and behaviour. By recognising why we say and do things, we could start freeing ourselves from it.

Nayantara Ranganatha
Seen 11:45 PM
April 1, 2021 12:29 pm Comments Off on Seen 11:45 PM
February 14th, Valentine’s Day. It’s almost midnight. I come home after an evening out with friends. Our own little ‘Galentine’s, so that we do Valentine’s the right way by celebrating our friendship. So we ate, then got ice cream, then did some karaoke. A good time, all in all.
I check my phone as I sit down in my room. I have several unread messages from my friend from back home. She seems kinda annoyed that I haven’t responded.
“Hey sorry, I was out haha. What’s up?”
“Ohhh with friends? Busy celebrating Valentine’s Day?”
“With friends lol”
“Does Valentine’s Day not ring a bell?”
I frown at my screen, confused. Was I supposed to wish her a happy Valentine’s? Had we scheduled a video call for the 14th that I completely forgot about?
It suddenly clicks, and I smack my forehead. Then, I smack it again, and a couple more times for good measure. In the panic of my epiphany, I had dropped my phone. I pick it back up and start typing frantically.
“Oh my god.
I’m an idiot.
IM SO SORRY
I LOVE U A LOT OKAY
MY BRAIN IS JUST DUMB
HAPPY BIRTHDAY”
I feel like the biggest, most heartless, most unforgivably callous fool in the world. She, thankfully, is graceful about it and responds with an “IKR 😂”. I promise to get her cake from Australia. She says it’ll do as an apology.
We talk on the phone for a while. She sends me pictures of her chill, at home, (kind of) quarantine-friendly celebration with a handful of friends. As I browse through them, I feel a small sadness creeping in. It isn’t big, nothing too overwhelming. Just a breeze’s worth of melancholy. One that lingers instead of just blowing over. Cold enough to make me long for a sweater. It is a familiar feeling.
As we keep talking, other friends come up. She tells me some of the things she knows about how their lives are going. I make mental notes of my negligence: several other birthdays forgotten, a wedding I couldn’t attend but should have sent my best wishes for, college acceptances and job placements that I definitely should have known more about. A long list that I must attach to an older, even longer one. At this point, it is probably long enough to stretch between India and Australia. Perhaps, I could lay it down and walk across the ocean on it. But I do not know if that would solve everything. It is easy to blame things on the kilometres between us but maybe the real distance is the one between thought and action.
When our call ends, I pull out my post-it’s and mark some important dates on my calendar. I set reminders on my phone and send out a few messages. Tiny steps. Nowhere near enough to cross an ocean. But, if I take a few more, I will be a little further out, a little more under the sun. Perhaps it will be warmer there.

Aditi Dubey
Three Steps for Success
March 17, 2021 6:34 pm Comments Off on Three Steps for Success
I get everything I want.
I understand how that might sound, but it’s true. If I want that scholarship, I’ll get it. If I want that internship, I’ll get it. I’m not a straight HD student, or a straight Distinction student for that matter — I simply write well. I can talk my way through any selection criteria, any interview panel, any phone call. This seems great, and I bet you want to know my secret, but if I’m being honest, there isn’t one. Though I have gathered a few tips and tricks along the way which I would like to share with you.

One
Find a new best friend.
Who should this best friend be you may ask? ANU CareerHub, obviously. I check this godsend of a website every week, without fail. Next, research the employment avenues your academic college offers. For example, the CBE Global Talent Portal and the COL Legal Vitae are incredible avenues to explore current job opportunities. Create a LinkedIn profile, trawl through Seek and Indeed — do it all. You’ll be surprised what you can find when you’re actually looking.

Two
Document your life story and lock it away for safekeeping.
Jot down every opportunity, experience, or job— however minuscule— that you’ve ever had and attach them to the classic selection criteria. The compulsory ‘youth leadership’ program you attended in Year 10? That was extremely challenging and required a high-level of independence and maturity. The 10-day school trip you took to New Caledonia for French class? That explored your comfort zone and taught you how to adapt to new and unfamiliar environments.
Your life experiences don’t need to be special, they just need to sound special.

Three
Think outside the box.
As soon as I was accepted into the ANU in 2019 I began job hunting. I knew Kambri was about to open and I was determined to work somewhere in this ‘bold new campus experience’. I found one relatively ambiguous and uninformed news article highlighting the first few vendors to open up in Kambri and within days I had found a Kambri vendor’s Facebook page, set up an interview and soon after the job was mine. This all happened in January of 2019, so it’s a little too late for you now. That’s okay, think further outside the box. Handing in your resume to the cafes on Lonsdale Street isn’t going to get you to where you want to be. Before you say it, no, Kambri was not my forever-plan, but I was able to draw upon my ‘unique understanding of the ANU student experience’ to receive another job offer for a marketing role on campus, which was exactly what I wanted.

Four
Forget everything I just said.
All of the above is genuinely helpful and it has made all the difference in my career, but it hasn’t actually helped me. After a confusing and wholeheartedly what-the-hell 2020, to put the cherry on top of the cake little old me decided that she had no idea what she wanted to do in life.
I was suddenly questioning everything.
Should I quit my internship?
Should I defer uni?
Should I spend all my savings?
I spent my summer days crying down at the Cotter (very coming-of-age film of me) and feverishly writing in my journal, but nothing seemed to help me find an answer. I guess questioning your future is a rite of passage for all 20-somethings, but this was never where I was meant to be. It’s taken me a long time to accept that I need to make a change in my world, but I think I’m at a point now where I’m excited to leave everything behind.

So here are my steps for success. These may not (should almost certainly not) apply to you, but this is what I hope will work for me.

Quit all jobs*
Defer my university program
Travel Australia

I guess the most important take away from this is that you can beef up your CV as much as humanly possible, you can receive every accolade and opportunity under the sun, but you can’t satisfy the suffocated feeling inside you that wants to truly live.
I was the girl who knew exactly where she was going, exactly where she wanted to be. Right now, this girl has no idea about anything, but she’s pretty excited by that.

*A note to any of my current employers: this will be occurring in Semester 2, 2021. I promise to give you ample warning and I hope that I can work with you again in the future.

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Anonymous
How the ANU Spent $603,093 of Your SSAF Money This Year
December 14, 2020 8:39 pm Comments Off on How the ANU Spent $603,093 of Your SSAF Money This Year
If you’ve ever gone to a club’s event to snack on some pizza, snagged a goody bag (or two) during O-Week, or used any services by ANUSA and PARSA, chances are you’ve already paid for it. Every year, full-time and part-time students pay around $300 and $150 as a Student Services and Amenities Fee (SSAF). Pooled together, this fee amounts to roughly 5.5 million dollars that ANUSA, PARSA, ANU Sport, Woroni, ANU Observer, and the University then spend on student services.
University regulations require each student organisation to report how they spend this money. But three recipients, all university organisations, do not have such reporting requirements. The only public information on how the ANU spends over 10% of the SSAF pool are fourteen dot points on the SSAF webpage. Following a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, we now know where the money goes.
The Finances
The three university organisations that receive SSAF income are: Student Engagement and Success, Student Learning and Development, and Research Skills and Training. I derived the figures below from each organisations’ 2020 SSAF bid estimates, mid-year financial updates, and their published allocations. They do not reflect exact spending, as the 2020 finances are only finalised at the start of next year, but they show how the university has allocated SSAF money to these organisations.

Three-fourths of the University’s SSAF funding goes to Student Engagement and Success (SES), totalling $440,225. SES spends around 70% ($305,325) of its SSAF on salaries for ANU staff, with two-thirds of this going to casual student positions, and 30% ($134,675) on program costs. These program costs include SET4ANU ($41,973), Griffin Hall ($28,000), Learning Communities $22,000), Student Research Conference ($15,000), ANU+ ($12,000), ANU Wellbeing Projects ($10,000), and the First Year Experience project ($5,927).

While the FOI documents do not show how SES distributed salaries this year, its 2020 SSAF bid notes an estimated breakdown in salary costs for 2019. Staff allocations include a professional full-time Student Wellbeing Co-ordinator ($122,000) and student casuals for learning communities ($58,000), the Student Research Conference ($42,000), orientation and transition ($17,500), Set4ANU mentoring ($45,000) and ANU+ ($27,498). Additionally, $8,000 was allocated to a Wilson Security bus driver for O-Week airport pick up. The 2019 salary estimates total $322,000, resulting in a $16,675 discrepancy to the 2020 SSAF allocation. In response to an email enquiry, the University did not confirm why there is a discrepancy but noted that there are differences between estimated and actual costs.**
Student Learning and Development (SLD) receives over two-thirds of the remaining amount, totalling at $112,868. SLD uses SSAF money to fund the Writing Centre ($81,868), English Conversation Groups ($15,500), ANU Undergraduate Research Journal ($8,500), and International in Focus ($7000). SLD spends 90% of their funding on student salaries, with the Writing Centre hiring six postgraduate students and the English Conversation Groups hiring three undergraduates. The ANU Undergraduate Research Journal costs pay for an Assistant Editor ($5,200) and cover other copyediting costs. The International in Focus program highlights international career opportunities for students, with SSAF funding covering conference costs.
Research Skills and Training (RST) receives $50,000 for the Thesis Bootcamp Program. In their 2020 SSAF Bid, RST notes the success of the program in helping doctoral students, especially in targeting vulnerable students at substantial risk of dropping out. RST ran this program with PARSA until 2019, when the association cut funding to the bootcamp programs. Due to COVID-19, RST delayed the camps until November and December, but estimates they will spend all $50,000. RST spends 88% of the camp’s costs, totalling $44,000, on catering and other minor items, with ANU Staff volunteering time and taking no salary. RST spends the remaining $6000 on running online journal and thesis writing bootcamps.
The Implications
We should not have to FOI the university to know how it spends our SSAF money. Yet, it is unsurprising that we must. ANU centrally manages the entire SSAF allocation process, with negotiation, bidding and distribution occurring in closed meetings between the University and the bidders. The University’s decision this year to do away with the SSAF bidding and allocate SSAF funding on its own projections is disappointing but not surprising given the overall lack of transparency.
Does the ANU have something to hide? Not really. Prior to 2020, SSAF bidders could scrutinise each other’s bids. The FOI documents do not show any fraud or mismanagement by university bodies. Some of the proposals even address student needs that other organisations have not prioritised. In comparison to most other universities, an 89% SSAF allocation to student-run organisations is exceptional. Yet, a potential reason for the University’s wariness is that transparency brings unwanted scrutiny.
A trip through the Woroni archives will unearth a decade of articles and debates on SSAF expenditure. Every ANUSA election, candidates clash over four-digit SSAF spending. Students regularly scrutinise student organisation budgets, whether through unfair calls to defund them to serious questions over corporate sponsorship. The financial transparency that these organisations provide even allow for in-depth critiques of their financial positions. While a few organisations receive more scrutiny than others, there is at least some scrutiny by students. That is not the case with the University’s spending.
In 2019 ANU Council minutes, the ANU maintains that its current method of consultation is adequate. If a student is not happy with SSAF allocations, they can email dissatisfaction to the relevant university executive. Yet, in a document publishing student feedback to SSAF allocations, the University barely engages with much feedback, with most comments ‘noting’ a response. In contrast, student organisations respond with detailed and empathetic comments. Notably, published responses for 2019 and 2020 are missing. Similarly, in an email inquiry, the ANU confirmed the survey helps guide priorities for SSAF expenditure. But they did not respond to ANUSA’s claims that the survey was irrelevant as SSAF expenditure for 2021 was already pre-set.
The Higher Education Support Act 2003 stipulates guidelines on how the University must formally consult student organisations on SSAF expenditure. In response to ANUSA’s claim of being ‘kicked out of the room’, the ANU stated it underwent several stages of informal and formal consultation with all SSAF stakeholders. The 2020 ANUSA President, Lachlan Day, noted that the ANU changed this year’s SSAF process to address delays in transferring funds and to acknowledge the difficulties of COVID-19. He maintains ANUSA’s position that bidding must take place since that, while the ANU sought feedback, it did not partake in ‘genuine’ consultation.
For 2021, ANU Council is deciding on a new SSAF process to distribute funds. This agenda item, however, was marked confidential. In comparison, the Council publicised the 2019 SSAF process. The 2020 Undergraduate Representative on ANU Council, Lachlan Day, confirmed that Council discussed a new SSAF process for 2021 but does not know why it was marked confidential. He notes that the ANU notified all SSAF receiving organisations and they gave feedback for this proposed process.
Advice from the Department of Education indicates that the SSAF allocation must be ‘transparent in process; visible; and consultative.’ Yet, this year we have seen no bidding, a pre-set allocation, and accusations of improper process by our student association. Even prior to 2020, the University showed signs of greater opaqueness over the SSAF process. The secrecy surrounding the new 2021 process and the lack of public information only further strains trust in what should be a fair process. In response to COVID-19, The ANU has shown it can be open and transparent with its finances. This should extend to the SSAF allocation.
The University needs to open its books to the same standard that it asks student organisations to. The SSAF ‘consultation’ cannot be pre-determined and should go beyond a student survey, publishing the proposed bids and inviting public submissions from the student body. Students deserve the right to question university organisations over SSAF expenditure and receive a fair and considered response. Without full transparency and democratic oversight over our student contributions, the University’s SSAF budgets risk inflating to levels found at other universities. It is up to us to make sure that does not happen at the ANU.

* I derived the number of casual student employees from the 2020 SSAF bid and the 2019 estimated salary expenditure. The University did not specify if this was correct in response to my email enquiry.
^ I used 2019 salary proportions as, while not exact, they are unlikely to massively differ to 2020 salary proportions. The University did not specify the 2020 salary proportions in my email enquiry.
**Editor’s note (24/12/2020): An earlier version of this article listed incorrect salary figures of ANU staff. This article has since been amended to correct this. We apologise for this error.
Kai Clark contested the position of Undergraduate Member on ANU Council (UMAC) in 2020.

Kai Clark
Life After Graduation
November 3, 2020 11:59 am Comments Off on Life After Graduation
As the silver poplars spread fluff all over campus, it’s time again to study for exams and begin reflecting on the year. For me, this time is different, as next year is not just another repeat of the various undergraduate courses one can take to form a degree. A recipient of this week’s invitation to graduate, I have joined the ranks of undergrads only weeks away from finishing what my parents described to me as ‘the most enjoyable period of my life’.
While I wonder about the many significant periods of life that I would expect my parents to rank as the most enjoyable (their relationship, my birth, possibly my brother’s birth), I understand the point they were trying to convey. Unless you have come out of ANU with a Chancellor’s Medal, your undergrad is probably the most momentous yet least serious period of your life. It is an amalgamation of novel life experiences in a short period of time, rivalled by few other stages in your life. Living away from home for the first time, beginning adult friendships, starting (and ending) long-term relationships, finding lifelong passions, and finally getting a full-time job (for those so lucky) are all compacted into a 3 to 5 year period.
And whilst these experiences come thick and fast, it doesn’t seem as if there is a corresponding weight to them. They are continuously interspersed with the ridiculous aspects of student life. Why save going out for the weekend when you can have it two days earlier on a Thursday? Why wake up at 6 am when you can rise late and sleep even later? Why live in an abode suiting of your upbringing when you can live as three men, one Corroborree?
The relative inconsequentiality of my student life has left me in an awkward position. Graduation has been the final stop to the degree that I never thought would end. They say that numerous Olympic gold medallists find themselves on the podium only to settle into a depression as they realise the finality of their position. I am neither an Olympian nor about to settle into a depression, but graduating feels as if I am attempting to square the circle of a seemingly never-ending university experience.
There are some things about graduating now that I appreciate. Never one for theatrics, I’m glad that the American-style mass graduations have been halted for the time being. I’ll take my degree in the mail and celebrate how I deem fit. Further, ANU feels like a sinking ship with multiple programs being scrapped and valuable long-term employees being made redundant. As one of the lucky current students who has only had to spend one year learning in his bedroom, I can look back at the golden era of in-person tutorials and workshops.
Adieu, ANU.

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Eammon Gumley
Platitudes, Pessimism, and the Future of Millennials
September 11, 2020 8:00 am Comments Off on Platitudes, Pessimism, and the Future of Millennials
Often labelled the most ungrateful and aggrieved generation, 2020 has given the current crop of university students more than enough to complain about. I am often a critic of student pessimism, but this year has made me believe that our generation is actually onto something. With the price of degrees set to increase, online courses, and a graduate job market turned sour, it is worth taking a look at the current and future changes that face this generation of university students.
Relatively shielded from the turmoil of the world, Australian students like me are facing unique issues. As the price of a future humanities degree skyrockets nation-wide, at least we at the ANU can take consolation that our degrees will still be the best degree in the country for all that’s worth ($50,000+). For the rest of us lucky enough to enjoy the current rate of course payment, ANU has shifted to what appears to be a semi-permanent online learning approach. Out are the days of CASS and CBE courses with multiple tutors, large lecture theatres, and the prospect of meeting new people. In are online courses with reduced or no tutors and guaranteed technical issues.
Call me conspiratorial, but part of me believes that the online approach is a ploy to decrease the value of our courses to the point where future students will be begging to pay double for the full in-person experience. While I’m not on my knees yet, I’m also not one of the many future students faced with an ANU experience that begins and ends in the confines of my own house.
However, once our degree turns up in the mail, the future as a graduate looks just as bright as the bedroom lamp that lit up most of my fourth-year studies. As firms shutter their internship and graduate programs, graduates in Canberra are being herded into a virtual hunger games for APS jobs. With thousands of applicants with similar ANU double degree credentials, it’s a harsh introduction into the post-university world.
Not to worry, as there are always the non-Commonwealth supported ANU master’s programs that allow us to buy another year at the meagre cost of thousands of dollars up-front.
And for those of us who hoped to expand their horizons with a grad job overseas, Australia’s status as the only country that isn’t allowing its citizens to leave has finished off that prospect. I guess we can sleep tight knowing that COVID-19 is under control, with the notable exceptions of Victoria, NSW, and Queensland.
A constant platitude from the generations before us is that we should remain positive, given that they ‘managed’. If the last few paragraphs are any guide, the social and economic outlook remains pessimistic. With my focus set on the future, I can only remark that if current and future students manage to navigate the uncertain future set out ahead of us, it will be us that can really claim that we ‘managed’.

Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

Eammon Gumley