Campus is a Place of Learning
It is late afternoon and you’re sitting in the library. Someone has brought in takeaway and is sitting at the computer across from you. The smell of soggy fries is overwhelming but you continue your study nonetheless. All of your friends have gone home for the day because ‘three hours on campus is a busy day’. I mean, who complains about going on campus for three hours a day and being too busy? People who complain too much, that’s who. While you’re absolutely tanking your lab report your flatmates are napping and getting ready to disrupt your sleep when they go out at 12:00pm. You, on the other hand, are determined. Academic validation matters and campus is the perfect place.
Nothing compares to our library, or those smelly engineering rooms in R Block. There is something so good about completing a tough assignment you thought you were incapable of doing. When you finish mid evening you start your track back to Knighton Road. The air outside is much fresher and the humming of your computer still rings in your ears. As you leave you know you’ll be on campus all of tomorrow, but you don’t mind. You like learning. Maybe because it makes you feel smarter than everyone else or maybe too many teachers labelled you as dumb and you want nothing more than to prove them wrong. Either way, you know where you are is where you’re meant to be.
It’s time to avoid Level 4. That level in the library has too much talking and while a social life is important, it can wait. Level 3 is far more superior, especially the study booths. If you go any later than 9:30am you can kiss the sweet soft light and those wooden chairs goodbye. It appears you know every corner of the library off by heart. Maybe even the bookshelves. The walls speak to you in a low whir. It’s been waiting for you for a while now.
When the next weekday comes along, you repeat your routine. But you don’t mind. Campus is a place to study after all.
Campus is a Place for Fun
It’s no easy feat making it to uni, but you’ve made it. You’ve put up with 13 years of school, some absolute shit teachers, mum and dad breathing down your neck and let’s be honest, some average friends that you realise are only fun once they’ve had a couple of Kristov and lemonades. To top it all off, you’re also about to enter a huge amount of debt (but you’ll pay it off eventually and it will be a delightful 30th birthday present).
The point is, you’ve had to go through a whole lot and this is your time to shine. But one cannot do so if the campus doesn’t allow you to have fun! To quote a picture I found on Google, “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”
I’m not saying this place is broken but when you put thousands of people in a close environment, you’re guaranteed to encounter a few weeds in the garden of uni. They may come in the form of a know-it-all-classmate, a mean RA or a stern shusher on Level 4. They’re here to make sure you don’t have the room to grow but (un)fortunately for you, they’re not the ones that have to pay your student loan; that’s all you, kid.
Most of you are only going to be here for 3-4 years tops so you need to make the most of it and all the opportunities on offer. “But Nathan, there aren’t any opportunities, I’m boring!” Take yourself out of the Library for a second and look around, there’s legit something for everyone: Gigs, feeds, quiz nights, sports, kapa haka, more feeds, and whatever they do over in law. And if there’s something you want to see, tell the board of students that you voted in – they literally have to listen!
They say ignorance is bliss and they’re right. Before you become a boring adult and have StudyLink trying to contact you relentlessly, put down the book for just a sec and go and smell the roses.