I hae how I always make a ton of mistakes first before I get anywhere (WHAT IS UP WITH THAT). This is the part where you learn from my mistakes, skipping that first step~
- Don’t skip lectures/tutorials. You’ll spend more time studying later on them, and won’t have the same confidence about the content you missed.
- Prepare for tutorials. I’ve never bothered preparing for tutorials, I just wing it. I’d survive the day, but at the end of the year I had a ton of regret. You’ll get more out of them, and it’s good practice for the end of the year (I didn’t have time at the end of the year to practice exam questions).
- Do the readings as they’re assigned – it’s easy to fall behind. Things will pile up quickly. (Relax, judgments get easier to read. Promise.)
- DO NOT DO ASSIGNMENTS THE NIGHT BEFORE THEY ARE DUE.
- If something doesn’t make sense, take the time to figure it out now. And yes, that’ll mean staring down nasty judgments for hours – it’s better now than when exams are just days away.
- Figure out if you’re a person who studies best referring to both your readings and exam notes, or whether you’re better having just one source to look at, and make your notes accordingly.
- Bring your course materials to class, or be a real pro at summarising (not word for word!!) what your lecturer’s saying.
- BUY A TRUCKLOAD OF HIGHLIGHTERS. As time went on, I found judgments are easier to break up if you use a whole lot of different colours (one for titles, a couple for mentioned cases, another for the bulk of the text..).
- Shower/brush your teeth before coming to lectures. You’ll be sitting right next to people you don’t know. Come onnnn.
And if I ever said, if you use someone else’s notes, you are admitting you don’t deserve to get into Law, I still agree with that. If you can’t get into Law without depending on someone else’s notes, I can’t imagine how you’d survive second year. It steps up (the scare-mongering at the preliminary lecture’s no joke), and LAWS101 looks like a gimmicky happy advertisment for an LLB in comparison.
Having said that, I borrowed other people’s notes last year to make sure I’m on the right track. You see, sometimes readings don’t make sense. And they’re followed by lectures that don’t make sense. Which result in notes that don’t make sense. Forget Wikipedia – you’re no med student (LOL BURN)! Nay! When all else fails, you’re back to deciphering readings again. Groan.
How did second year differ from laws101?
I found I spent a lot more time doing these things:
- Reading.
- Complaining.
- Sleepily trying to find a reason to skip 9am lectures (and alas, my conscience is a tricky thing).
- Learning how to write legal opinions again. Something different’s expected compared to what worked in LAWS101.
- Disagreeing with judges, and then thinking I’ve misunderstood something.
- Thinking about how awesome law is. I’d often catch myself daydreaming about how various unsettled issues in law should be resolved. I get so excited over how much there is to learn. Maybe that’s just me.
- Respecting lawyers everywhere – for studying Law and getting out alive.
- Getting confused, wailing, more complaining, losing the ability to sleep and my mind in general.
Enjoy! 
I’ve registered this domain with Namecheap, who lets me block my my whois info, unlike the guys I registered panda-duh.org with, which let people google stalk me quite successfully. Yay, anonymity!
Contrary to what I said in my post about Chyrp, I’m not planning on bringing over any Tumblr entries to here after all. I’m just gonna keep that strictly an internet-finds blog. In fact, I’m not even using Chyrp here. It worked fine, but as I had the chance to try something else, I did. I’m so fickle.
And after a couple of years using FanUpdate, followed by a few rebounds with other CMS’s, I think I’ve settled down quite nicely with WordPress.
This is now a review on WordPress. Like no one’s ever used it before.
This wordpress thing.
As prior to this I’ve been playing around with more obscure blogging scripts, what immediately appealed to me – before even installing the thing – was how its popularity would be so helpful. There’d be a ton of support and a multitude of plugins to play with. Oh, and pretty permalinks! None of this index.php?id=1093 stuff, but clean, SEO-friendly URLs. Mmmmmm..
Installing was simple, but immediately followed by viewing the dashboard for the first time, which was anything but.* It was much like that confused overwhelming feeling from when you first join Facebook – a lot of stuff, all at once. Not quite knowing where to start..
And so I slow down, exploring everything there is, finding out that they were being kind to me, because in actuality there is so much WordPress can do, beyond what other blogging scripts provide. I’m glad that I did start with the more basic (and sometimes, more complicated) scripts before turning to WordPress, and seeing all that I’ve ever wished for right there. I was swooning from happiness.
Themes weren’t difficult, and as much as I could figure out Chyrp I still couldn’t get its comments module working (I suspect there was some sort of line of PHP I needed to insert, though I didn’t bother poking around much).
TL;DR? I love WordPress in a way that exceeds how I felt about Chyrp and FanUpdate, in an almost passionate, flag-waving fangirl sort of way. It’s incredibly well thought out.
And yes, you can comment now
…In case anyone’s into that. What a glorious new era!
These are the Top 10 songs on my iTunes (play count in brackets):
- Astronaut – Amanda Palmer (279)
- Rising Sun – DBSK (216) « I am the ultimate in cool
- Runs in the Family – Amanda Palmer (148)
- Ampersand – Amanda Palmer (147)
- Leeds United – Amanda Palmer (136)
- Have To Drive – Amanda Palmer (132)
- Dear Jenny – Dresden Dolls (130)
- Lonesome Organist Rapes Page-Turner – Dresden Dolls (123)
- The Mouse and the Model – Dresden Dolls (119)
- The Kill – Dresden Dolls (117)
Note that the Dresden Dolls is a two-person band she was in, and look at the list again. …Yeah.
I always thought it was obsessive – not anymore. Today I’ve decided it’s further proof that I need to go to her concert. Via Amanda Palmer’s blog, I noticed that she’s coming to New Zealand again! The same places as last year, but I don’t care how much it’ll cost, or how many lectures I’ll miss – I want to go~
And I’m bitterly sad that I’m not friends with any other fans. Even if I conned anyone into listening to her, it’s unlikely they’d like her as strongly as I do. So I’ll be going by myself. This isn’t a problem, but sharing it with others would make it more fun. The only scary thing is that I can’t go to her concert… and not meet her. She’d probably do signings. She does that. What do you say to your idol?
Reminds me of when I met John Marsden. I remember seeing THE WEIRD EXPRESSION ON HIS FACE at the book I’d brought along for him to sign, “Everything I know about writing”. This is what happened next, plucked from an old journal entry in 2004:
JOHN MARSDEN: *signing book* Do you like writing?
BECKA: Pardon?
JOHN MARSDEN: Do you like writing?
BECKA: I used to. But it kind of fizzled out.
JOHN MARSDEN: Oh. Schools don’t really encourage writing when you’re older, do they?
BECKA: Uh… um. Yeah.
A dirty lie, but I was too nervous to explain. The next day he was on TV complaining about how inarticulate and boring New Zealand teenagers are. Unfair.
Flashback over, I adore and idolise Amanda Palmer like no one else. If I met her, I’d probably be one of those hysterical fans. It’s more than her music – her whole outlook on things, her style, and how she’s so upfront and honest about anything. I love this woman so much I don’t even care that she blogs without capital letters.
Creepy yes, but it just means I really do have to go to this concert. Somehow. ;_;
Since hosting for my old domain expires at the end of this month, I thought a little nostalgia might be a nice way to go.
I once had a couple of anime fansites (I am the ultimate in cool), my favourite eventually becoming the best one around for a certain character. Initially I was hosted on someone else’s domain, and when it inexplicably died I decided to get my own domain. That was panda-duh.org! The name came from Death Note’s L, and those dark circles underneath his eyes. It was like a hub, linking to all the sites hosted on there. I never came close to regaining all my visitors, but it didn’t matter. All the same, up until I deleted them in 2009, people still googled my fansites by name, even though by 2006 they were inactive.
That’s the closest to e-fame I’ll ever get, ahaha.
This blog thingy
By late 2007, all the miscellaneous things I’d occasionally post to this domain (for kicks!) was starting to built up. I decided a blog format was the best way to go. Just for the sake of organising it all, instead of linking to everyone off a page labelled “Reviews” or something. I never thought of it as a blog at first, and I think it’s only because of FanUpdate that the things I wrote became increasingly… bloglike… until it eventually morphed into one.
I never advertised pd.org, and I got virtually no hits lolololol (most came from a few DevArt communities for a lulzy a RyukxLight manifesto from a few years back). A few people nonetheless found it anyway, later googling their way back. I have no idea who they are, but it’s fairly nifty!
This year, people I’m friends with have visited it for the first time. It’s sort of amusing. I thought I would mind a lot more.
The end
I couldn’t imagine coming to delete panda-duh.org when I first bought it, but then again, I once thought the same way of all those ~super cool~ anime fansites! Gradually the name’s become about as embarrassing as an email address made in high school, and vague references to Death Note just aren’t relevant anymore. I still had that domain for four years, so it’s a little spooky changing, but I’m still excited to get a name that I like a lot more. Hopefully it’ll stick around a lot longer!
I’ll talk about what’s in store for this domain next time. Here endeth the eulogy!
I prefer to keep the gripping events I live through out of this blog, but for its historic value I decided to post this here instead of my LiveJournal. Just like when I babbled about my LAWS101 exams, although I promise these two things aren’t the only significant things I’ve endured. No, really!
I’ve moved into my studio. ‘Tis pretty cool.
A few days ago I emailed my real estate agent asking after cutlery, and my reply was essentially, “YES, THERE WILL BE CUTLERY!“. There are chopsticks. I have the feeling this is gonna be an interesting year.
Shortly after arriving someone popped out from a room on the bottom floor and introduced herself. Later, when she’d helped us with our luggage and all sorts of friendly things, I realised I didn’t catch her name. Oops. Mysterious flatmates aside, there’s also my room. Initially it’s quite nice, but there’s virtually no storage and adding furniture will be difficult, despite it being a decent size. I don’t think anyone was properly thinking when they designed this place.
The bed, advertised as being queen-sized, was only a double (the horror!), but that doesn’t matter – it’s big enough to feel extravagant, but not so big that I feel pathetically lonely! Also two chairs: a small office chair, the other’s weak and plastic and feels like high school. The wardrobe’s small and doesn’t have a door, which also doesn’t matter (I’m so easy to please), since it means I get to look at all my clothes all the time. I have this odd thing for fabric. Some clothes and shoes I doubt I’ll wear much this year, but I’ve brought them anyway just because I like to touch them.
…It’s not as strange as it sounds.
It’s very similar to my room in St Margaret’s in 2008: mushroomy walls and almost cobalt blue curtains. Much better though, is the view! I could never ever tire of it, and it’s even more fantastic and twinkly at night, with the old buildings all lit up.
After unpacking everything, I went shopping for various necessities. I bought a pillow, the most gutless one I could find. There’s another Becka!fact for you~ One pillow please, flat and thin. Followed up by a trip to the supermarket, where I realised I’ll have to go grocery shopping all the time. Right then I understood why people’d want to put this off and hide at St Margaret’s another year. It’s a sort of independence I don’t really want, aha. Proper grocery shopping, beyond Mi Goreng and chocolate. Man, the future has freakin arrived at last.
But not only that, I have to shop as a “poor student”. It really hit me when looking at toilet paper – specifically, the budget brands, and trying to convince myself that the cheapest ones weren’t terrible quality. Using a non-classy brand for something I consider quite important’s like an affront to my dignity somehow ahaha. ;_; I selected the kind with colourful pictures of puppies on it instead. Let’s see St Margaret’s match that!
And there we are. This year I have to battle my laziness to not only get decent marks, but to stay alive. We’ll see how this goes.