The Last Essay Hump

I now have one month until exams start.

The end of last week was spent dealing with what I like to call, ‘The Last Essay Hump’. The point at which you’ve completed the coursework for every other subject and you’ve got one final essay to do. By this stage, you really don’t care, you just want it done. Yet no matter how much effort you try to put in, you just can’t bring yourself to really care.

After the madness of last week, I was thinking, “Yeah, one final 1,500 word assignment. Piece of cake. Done without even looking at it.” But no. Sometimes you need to just go, y’know what? I really can’t be bothered with this.

To delve more into the madness. Last Monday I had a presentation on performance-based pay. My co-workers will no doubt have some interesting points to raise about this. I guess I was at an advantage with this topic because I’ve seen firsthand what the benefits and pitfalls are of performance-based pay can be.

Either way, this went well because I have no problem riffing for the better part of 10 minutes with no cards or reference points in front of me. Being a group assignment, though, you’re only as good as the sum of your parts. I kid. My group was fine.

Monday night I took my Dad and my bro’s current beau to see Pink Floyd’s The Wall at The Astor. I’ve watched that film god knows how many times. Maybe it strikes such a chord with me because I can relate it back to my younger days – late teens and early 20’s.

If you want to find out what’s behind these cold eyes, you’ll just have to claw your way through this disguise…

Such an awesome lyric. Such an awesome film. The 70mm reel, however, was quite worn out and at times the picture quality had some real red tints and at other points it looked somewhat pee-stained. The six-track sound was fine, though, which is really what the whole film is about. Had a nice conversation on the way home with Dad about the implications of that film at the time it was released and how it still manages to be relevant today. My Dad had never been to The Astor before and was blown away by it.

My siblings and I have always heard stories about my Dad wagging school back in Italy when he was no more than 5 or 6. It turns out he’d go down to his local cinema and watch movies all day. The name of the cinema? Cinema Astor. (See how I used italics there? Because I’m implying you should be saying cinema with an Italian accent for the full effect, ey?)

So that was Monday. Tuesday came along as it usually does, carefree and glad it isn’t Monday. What’s that? A stupid hard quiz and another presentation? Well, slapnuts, you’d be right on both accounts. I managed to do ridiculously bad on the quiz. Actually, I just checked as I was writing this to see what ‘ridiculously bad’ equals. Turns out it’s 70%! So much for that ridiculously bad mark, guessing FTW!

I had lunch with a classmate of mine, who has taken it upon herself to teach me Mandarin. I managed to screw up the phrase “Wo bu zhi dao”, which translates to “I don’t know” – only to say “I don’t wash myself.”

And it was all in the pronunciation of the word ‘zhi’. So rather than looking cool, I just said I stink. A+ for effort, Paulie Chops.

Presentation, yet again, not a problem. However, trying to get students involved in your presentation is freakin’ hard. The presentation topic was Age Discrimination. You can practically get drunk off the excitement levels already, right? *cough*

But! I had this idea where I set up a hypothetical situation. The three guys in my group all introduce ourselves and say how old we are and then present a job we’re all going for. I had written it to weigh the class towards choosing the youngest member of our group, who is (I still can’t believe this) 18. EIGHT. TEEN. What the hell? Kids are allowed to get to that age now?

Anyhow, the moment I said, “Hi. I’m Paul and I’m 28 years old.” I could’ve sworn half the class Tweeted – #LOL@theolddude in my class. 28 OMG have a baby already! – at that very moment. Anyhow, presentation happens and we go back to the hypothetical to get their answer on who they would choose for the job…

Nothing.

Like, if a pin had sex with a tumbleweed and their babies were habitually being dropped and rolling around the room, the only sound you would have heard in that room was the pin lighting up a mini post-coital cigarette.

Shite. And we’re only at Tuesday.

On Wednesday, otherwise known as the middle-child syndrome day of the working week, I had a 2,500 word essay on the challenges of effectively linking Strategic Management and Human Resources Development due. And I’m going to guess that 85% of you reading this just fell to sleep.

I got it done. Somehow. Not really sure what happened. I had prepared it earlier and typed up a fair whack of it as well. I did see something about it not being marked if it wasn’t handed in by 5pm, so in a fit on madness I rushed into the uni at 6pm looking my most dishevelled and dropped it into the box. Mind you, I had emailed my tutor and I found out when I returned home that she said it was fine to hand it in the following morning. Curses.

Not a hell of a lot happened for the rest of the week until I attended the VRDL (roller derby, for those of you not in the know) match at the Melbourne Showgrounds on Saturday night. The first match, Dolls Au-Go-Go vs The Regional All-Stars was a complete slaughter – 201 to 20-odd. The second match was freakin’ entertaining as all hell. The last 5 minutes were out of control. Toxic Avengers vs Dead Ringer Rosies – Rosies came out on top in the end by 20 points. If you haven’t been to check out the VRDL, I highly recommend going along. Once you wrap your head around the rules of the sport, it’s very entertaining and easy to watch. More often than not, you’ll be watching the game within the game – who’s hitting who and how hard, who’s scoring a lot and who’s having a flat game.

You want a link? Here ’tis! Victorian Roller Derby League

Odds are I’ll be attending the next bout, which I believe is in June, but don’t quote me on that. Also, I will guarantee that you will encounter the most culturally diverse sports crowd in Melbourne. GUA-RAN-TEED.

Another thing that’s happening in June? Why, it’s National Young Writers’ Month, organised by Express Media, where a good ‘ol student media buddy is running the show. Basically, you set yourself a goal for the month and try your best to achieve it.

So, my goal? Well, I decided I want to write a short story every day, somewhere between 500 and 1,000 words. While that goal seems pretty simple and achievable, I decided to mix it up a bit. Genre mash-ups. Every story I write has to be two genres that wouldn’t usually go together. Your task? Tell me some genres you wouldn’t expect to see together and I’ll write a story about it!