School vs Varsity

I had been in one school for most of my life. From Gr 0 to Matric year. It is a small private school, and I loved it.
Needless to say, varsity was a bit of a shock. It is different in almost every way.

Firstly, the pace. Every four weeks we cover about as much work as a we would in a year of highschool... That means every Semester is about 2.5 years of highschool work. Keeping up is essential.

The scale. Varsity is huge. The campus is massive and has a silly amount of facilities. The amount of people is staggering. You realise you are a very tiny part of a huge organisation with a massive budget.

The lecture hall is not a class room. Nobody cares. The students don't think twice about not showing up or leaving mid-sentence and the lecturers think good riddance. There is no individual attention and much less room for questions. Because of the speed and organisation of modules, you will find that self-study and a different approach to learning is required.

The structure of it all is different, but I enjoy it. Every day of the week has a different feel and pace. Large gaps between lectures let you work or socialise or even sleep. Your whole day is taken up by your studies. I am not at home when the sun is up. I leave before it rises and get home after it sets. You and your friends are all in it together. Studying is a team sport and you keep each other going.

Ask any varsity student, and they will tell you, varsity is hard. It's time consuming, the content is advanced and the pace is blistering. But ask them if they are enjoying themselves, and the answer is always the same...

My little Angel

Last night I had an unusually vivid and memorable dream. In this dream I adopted a rejected toddler from abusive parents, a little girl with red-blonde hair who didn't want to keep her birth name.

I called her Angel...

She was the sweetest little girl. Feisty, stubborn and a mind of her own, yet caring and kind. In the flashy, montage style of a dream I lived a life with this little girl. I raised her and cared for her.

The dream jumped to many years later, where I was meeting her after a long period of absence in a little cafe. In skated (literally, on rollerblades) beautiful, fully grown Angel. We chatted for a while, laughed over something I have forgotten.

And then I woke up.

I was seriously depressed. It took me a good 20 minutes to come to terms with the fact that Angel didn't exist. I still feel sad about it and it's been a whole day. I felt this horrible sense of loss. I'd lost a child. In one night I had lived a lifetime with this girl. 

This one dream has taught me at least one facet of the joys of fatherhood, the plight of abused kids and orphans, challenges of being a single parent, and that my brain is capable of imagining hair that is both blonde and ginger. It's one of the best dreams I have had in a LONG time, truly a gift from God.

I decided Angel should make at least one mark on the real world, even if only in this quiet little corner of the internet. 

Goodbye, my little girl.

Teaching is itself a teacher

I give extra lessons, teaching maths and programming to high school students. It has given me some really strange moments, being both a student and a teacher at the same time. For instance, telling the kid he really needs to do the homework, that he won't improve without it, then realising I have my own homework to do...
It has given me a new appreciation for the teachers in my life. It's not easy. Breaking down something you stopped thinking about years ago into manageable ideas and methods is challenging to say the least. I find myself using illustrations that I remember from years ago, that have stuck with me all this time.
The pressure is insane. Knowing that saying the wrong thing could completely confuse the student and you might not even realise. You become invested in the student's success or failure.
I hope I'm good at it, for their sakes. I haven't been at this for long enough to see if I'm making a difference. I want them to do well. I see their potential to do well.
I understand why you sometimes looked so tired, my teachers. I understand why you would sometimes get frustrated. Now I hope that I will come to understand why you stuck with us, why you do what you do.

Onwards and Upwards

I started University this year. I am studying engineering. Now people were not joking about what a serious endeavor this is. It's hard work, more hard work than I've had to do in my life and as happens with any sudden rush of soul-crushing new challenge one is not used to, I began to let the thought of quitting come to mind.
I started to ask myself, "Why am I here? Why am I putting myself through this?". I've never really had a dream, a big goal that I've worked towards. I've always just sort of rolled with it. Now though, the reality of the permanent directions I'm setting my life in is hitting me.
I thought, "What do I really want to do? What career would be my dream career? I need something to work towards, to have a goal."
The answer, I've realised, is game design. My dream is to make games for a living. It's the perfect blend of my passions and talents. It offers a creative outlet, one where I can create a kind of art, telling stories and crafting experiences. Additionally it also engages my logical side and lets me break things up into components and numbers, forming a beautifully crafted system.
This is not just because I like gaming. I love to analyse games. I love the craft behind it. It's something I wouldn't mind doing every day.
Unfortunately, game development is a difficult field to succeed in. I hope to have a family some day and the financial burden of that could be an issue. Thankfully though, I am studying computer engineering. This means I will have to self-study large aspects of game design, but also gives me a solid degree in an area I can still picture myself enjoying if game design falls flat.
In the end though, I'm trusting God. He knows what's best for me and has his own, far greater plan. His plan is better than my own. I don't know what the future holds, but I know He who holds it.

We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we've established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile.  -Earl Nightingale

Quantity over quality

*Clears dust from blog* It has been a while...
I've been thinking recently about content overload. With the internet taking over everything, our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. We demand to be entertained, and we cast aside anything that bores us even for second. Why? Because there is a long, long, loooong line of other distractions just waiting a few hyperlinks away. We suffer from FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and feel a need to consume so much content so quickly, that we gulp it down instead of savoring it. Let's use gaming as an example. I bought the Humble Indie Bundle and found myself with many games all there for me to play at once. As a result, I now have a guilty conscience full of perfectly fun, yet unfinished games that I abandoned in my rush to play the rest. I used to replay games, hunt for secrets and try to experience everything they had to offer because I only got maybe 2 games a year. I'm babbling a bit, but you get my point: We need to slow down, avoid overexposure to new content all the time and enjoy each offering to it's fullest.

World Wide Culture

Webculture fascinates me, it is a phenomen that has risen from the soup of connectivity. People all over the world now have the ability to share their opinion and shared opinions will always influence others. The web community is just like any other community in that there exists peer pressure. Inside jokes exist in the form of internet memes. The sheer size of the web community means that things spread, nothing exists in isolation. People are realising that they have anything they want at their fingertips. There are pros, there are cons, but either way The Web is moulding the people of today like nothing in history ever has. You can insult the upbringing and genealogy of people on the other side of the planet and that sort of power changes people. I am right now composing something to toss onto a pile of other opinions the size of a small moon for reasons I can not name. I think there is more research to be done...then posted ooh I hope people in Brazil like it yippideedoo.

Girl Friends

When you're with your guy friend, you walk together, sit together, laugh together ect. You are seen as being friends. However do that consistently with girl (space) friend and people assume things. They will tease. This makes things awkward. I am irritated with this state of affairs. There, vent session over, carry on.