/karen/

In the meanwhile

Tuesday, 04 February, 2003

Sorry I haven't been around much and thanks heaps to everyone who's been stopping by and saying hi! Life has been very busy and I've had no time to blog. Here's what I've been up to:

Commencing student enrolments

This has been taking place all around campus over the past week or so. We've all been very nervous about it because UNSW has changed the procedure this year and everything's different. Originally they wanted to have the faculties holding enrolment advisory lectures (which should have been made compulsory but weren't) and then the students would go off to enrol themselves online. The online interface they were developing didn't work so they decided instead to have the lectures and then get the students to enrol on paper with an advisor signing off on their proposed courses.

We were very nervous about the whole thing. We didn't know what to expect and whether the students would even come to a lecture that wasn't compulsory for them to be at. But in the end it went quite well; the students were able to make more informed choices about what to enrol in (after we told them that wrong choices would result them in not graduating) and they were quite happy to sit and timetable in their subjects to make sure there were no clashes before getting signed off and heading over to the main enrolment centre. There were hardly any queues and it was all over by lunchtime so we all breathed a sigh of relief.

Don't take it personally

The down point came in the afternoon when some angry mother rang me up and yelled at me for five minutes because her poor daughter found the enrolment information confusing, she had to stay back until 7 o'clock at night because she wanted to do Psychology and all the advice she had been given conflicted. At first I decided to defend the University but then I realised she just wanted to rant so I just shut up and listened. She eventually hung up on me after declaring, “You people have got to get your act together!” and it made me quite upset—not at the time but afterwards.

Ben says I tend to take things at work too personally; I have trouble separating my emotions from my job. “She was angry at the University, not at you,” he said. So I'm having chats with God that he might help me improve that sort of thing ... maybe then I'd be less depressed at work.

First parking ticket

After doing my bit to defend the University, I felt horribly betrayed to find a parking ticket on my windscreen. I felt like such an idiot then because I had forgotten to put the day parking scratchie on my dashboard to show I had a right to park there. I cried all the way home (one and a half hour drive).

The following day I calmed down and talked to my manager about it. She said I should appeal and she was willing to write me a supporting letter. So I've sent all that off (including the scratchie I should have put on my dashboard) and we'll see what happens.

Anniversary

Needless to say, I was extremely “over” work and was glad to get home on Wednesday night to celebrate our anniversary with Ben. We had gone to Berry on the Monday public holiday and also to Gerringong but there is something about celebrating things on the actual day that is special. We went out for dinner to this Indian restaurant and ate lots of yummy food and talked for a long time. I gave him By the Way (Red Hot Chilli Peppers) and August and Everything After (Counting Crows). He gave me Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on DVD. We ended up watching it on Thursday night (mental note: never ever watch it with the English audio track turned ON).

I'm very thankful to God for the three years we've been married. It keeps getting better and better but also more challenging. I'm looking forward to what's ahead.

Waterfall train crash

I am also very thankful that I was nowhere near the Waterfall train crash which happened last Friday. Although I travel in the opposite direction, that's normally about the time I'm on the train and I heard it took hours for people to get to work. No one I know was killed though Ben told me that one of the girls who was coming down to help Evangelical Christian Union with enrolments was on that train and got concussion. Ben kept getting SMS messages all day asking if I was all right and at first he had no idea what they were talking about. I didn't know either until he came home in the afternoon.

Leader's weekend in Kangaroo Valley

We've been going to St. Michael's Anglican church now for three weeks and we've been asked to lead a night church Bible Study group. So we went on the leader's weekend in Kangaroo Valley. It's the first time I've been there. We stayed in a place called The Rectory and there weren't enough rooms for couples so all the married people had to split up. It was a really good weekend, doing studies on Revelation, walking around the village (I bought lots of lollies, Turkish delight and a vanilla lip balm!) and meeting new people. After that weekend, I felt much more settled at the church because I didn't feel like I was among strangers anymore. They're all mad about Risk and now they've got Ben addicted. He got absolutely slaughtered by Pak-man on Saturday night. I went to bed before the game was over.

High 5's

The other thing we're doing at church (apart from being put on every single conceivable roster there is), is helping lead High 5's (Kindergarten to Year 5)which is the Sunday School for the 5 pm service. We had our first session with the kids last Sunday and it went well though I was quite nervous and wasn't really sure what I was doing. It helps watching the other leaders and how they treat the kids. Deb said to me that it's good to be firm with them and that they really like individual attention. Must work on remembering names ...

In the Gallery

Took me two and a half hours to get to work and two and a half hours to get home yesterday but it was time well spent. I took my laptop on the train and now I've finally finished In the Gallery. I wrote this in my second year of Uni and it seems a little juvenile now but I still like the ideas behind it.

Timetable clashes

Frustration at work continues and is making me act in a terribly ungodly fashion at times. German are still giving me timetable changes and it's February! I had to finally say a flat-out no today; Petri from Web Support had already printed me a hard copy timetable and there was no way I was going to ask him to do it again. They weren't very happy but I'm past caring. I've got to get another 250 copies printed of our Level 1 and Languages timetable to give to new enrolling students. I've also got to somehow get the amendments done to the other 200 existing printed timetables. Yuck! Fortunately, Helen (my manager) has been very gracious and is letting me work from home on Thursday and Friday. I'm taking my summer potential graduands with me and I am aiming to get them done by the end of the week. Sometimes I think I'll go mad in this place but then I think I fear unemployment more.

The cessation of Ben's blog

If you've read this then you'll know that Ben's stopped blogging. I always feel like I'm two steps behind him; it's funny that he's stopped blogging when I'm just getting into it. And I really used to enjoy reading his blog too. But spending more time with him is definitely better—especially as MTS becomes more and more stressful.

Grace and peace to all of you.

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