A New Semester

My first week at Uni was really great! I met so many friends whom I haven’t seen for ages! — since last semester (3 months ago!). It’s really great to see them and hear their stories about their summer break. Everytime I met somebody, they’d say “Hey! This year would be our graduation!” Haahaha. Oh I’m SOOOOO excited. 8 more months, guys!! This would be my last year studying at UQ, so I want to make this year as the best time of my entire 3 years living in Brisbane! Anyhow, I have a pretty OK timetable. I supposedly got 2 days off: Wednesday and Friday. But then the timetable for one of the courses I take was suddenly changed. Therefore, I only have Wednesday off. It was not bad! I didn’t even have a day off last semester, so it’s quite good to know that I only have to go to Uni 4 days a week. Very exciting! But yeah… I still have to go to work, though. Hehehe. So it’s not completely a resting day for me (gosh, I already took too much rest during holiday!! What more do I want???? LOL).

I take another German course (GRMN2010) this semester to use up my electives. It’s going to be exciting, as the course is a second-level course… which means it would be more difficult, advance, and challenging. But I’m always so excited about it! Some of my friends who took the first year German course are enrolled in this class too. I always love taking a language course at UQ. The students are very friendly, easy to be approached, and seem to be so enthusiastic about making new friends. In IT courses, hoah I’m telling you.. it’s so freakin hard to make friends. Probably because guys never care to make friends. They come to the lectures, sit alone, and go back home. Some of them don’t even try to socialise. Sometimes I’d say hi to them and ask how they’re doing, and they’d just answer, “Good, thanks.” No more words come from their mouth. Seems like they don’t want to be disturb, heh?? Anyway, let’s talk about German course again. My lecturer, Ryan, teaches German for the second time. He is one of my favourite lecturers. He is sooooo funny! He teaches us with joy, passion, and excitement — which makes me and the rest of the students more excited than ever!! He has an amazing facial expression; it seems like every single words he says has its own facial expression. It is funny and entertaining to watch! Ryan always brings candies, lollies, or chocolates so that he could give them to his students who are able to answer his tricky questions. He always tries to encourage everyone to speak. And he has so many great ways to make the progress of learning easier. Hey, he can speak (very formal) Indonesian too! Everytime I answer his questions, he always says “Bagus. Bagus.” He’s just a great lecturer!

I’m also taking INFS3222. Honestly, I’m not very enthusiastic about this course coz it focuses on the analysis and design part, not the implementation (coding!). I hate theories. My brain seems to process theories slowly than practicals. That’s one of the reason I love IT. I don’t have to memorise many stuffs in order to pass the course. The only thing I have to do is to practice, practice, and practice — just like Maths. But of course there’s an exception. INFS3222 is one of few courses which stresses on theoretical part rather than practical. I hope it will be okay. My friend Chris said that many people found this course to be quite easy. Hmm I don’t know if it’s true or not. Well, at least… the lecturer is very good. She is an energetic person who speaks loudly; prevents me from sleeping (thanks for that! ). I like the way she teaches. She gives many examples so that we can have a better understanding on how it works. Some of the lecturers that taught me didn’t give any examples which left me with null idea of how the system works in real life! Anyway… this course has a group assignment (which is good hehehe). I formed my group; I’ll work with 3 gentlemen: Chris, Pik, and Jay Jay — I’m always be the most beautiful one in the group LOL. The only person in the group that I didn’t know was Jay Jay. Chris and I always work in team together for the past 3 semesters. He’s very hardworking! Pik is a friend whom I met during my first year at UQ. It’s good to be with the people you know to work in a group assignment! Hopefully in this semester, I don’t have to “sleep” at Uni until 5 in the morning again… *sigh*

The only course that I’m EXTREMELY worried about is CSSE3004. It is a compulsory course (final year project) which runs for the whole 2 semesters. My friends who took the course last year (and already graduated) told me that it was a hard one! I saw their faces right after they finished mid-semester exam — all of them looked so disappointed. I’m not sure who taught this course for last year. But I know this year’s lecturers — Paul Strooper and Xue Li; both of them taught the course I took before. Paul was in fact my favourite lecturer when he taught a Java programming course. I know their ways of teaching quite well; they’re not the sort of “killer” lecturers for sure. I looked at the course profile (point 5 for Assessment), and surprisingly the final exam is only worth 25%!!! However, the bad news is, one phase in the project assessment tasks is worth 44.5%! Gosh, it’s scary! By the way, this is a group project. From what I heard last year, the lecturer would assign each of the students in groups (of 5 people) — according to their GPA scores. So, for example, if your GPA is 6, then you’ll be teamed up with other students whose GPA is 6. I don’t have problems with that, I just hope that I would be teamed with responsible groupmates. The lecture will start on Thursday, so I’ll see how it goes .

INFS3202 is perhaps the least worrying course I take. I think I’d enjoy it since the course is about Web Information System. Heng Tao is the lecturer for this course. I know him; he provided us quite easy assessments last semester! (YAY!) Hehehe. However, the lecture doesn’t start until next week. So I can’t write more about it for now .

I finally received the GRE book that I purchased from Ebay. By the way, I have to take a GRE test in order to enroll to German university (coz I’m going to take the English-speaking subjects, instead of the German one). GRE is an American-system test for students who want to enter Graduate schools. The good thing is that, most universities don’t set a minimum score for the GRE, because the application process does not usually based on only GRE score report, but also other stuffs like achievement, recommendation letter, etc. The bad thing is: GRE test is soooooo hard! Jenny’s sister studies at Grad school in the States, so obviously she took the test before. She is a native speaker (she went to American schools) and she thinks that the test was very very hard! She hadn’t even heard some of the words before! Well, hello… if she’s a native speaker… and she found how hard the test was… what am I going to do???? I’m gonna failed. Hiks. I have to take a GRE preparation course later on after I graduate!!!