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My last blog post seems so long ago as I am concentrating so hard on not tihnking about thinking about my exam results (quite the paradox as Katie@UniAccess says!).  But it's still only Friday evening.  Good job I'm off out tonight - hopefully that'll take my mind off it.  Although someone said that the results might come out earlier than the official date (Monday).  Does that really happen...?

This has to be seen!  The Study Smarter team now host a small army of online animated characters that you can *click and play* to hear the real stories of UWA students.  No special software needed and each story is no more than 90 seconds longTake yourself off to Digital Resources page on the Study Smarter website to have a look.  Go on.  You know you want to.

Does that sound like a lot?  102 hours?  apparently that's when the exam results are *out*.  So my efforts to not think about it are completely not working despite my (small) logical brain telling me that there is nothing to be done about it now, the results were decided weeks ago blah blah (maybe i AM turning into my mother...).  Either way it sounds like an example of my logical brain being at war with my emotional one (and guess who's winning!?). 

Where have my last two posted blogs gone? Anyone?

Last week in chilly Hobart, uni staff from around Australia, NZ and UK met to discuss what the big issues are for first year students. The annual First Year in Higher Education conference saw a range of issues covered but for me, the big one was that we have a good body of literature now on the FYE, but too many great initiatives and programs are dependent on individuals. We need to see stronger commitment from universities to put emphasis on the importance of FY and make sure that there is support at policy level.

Holidays are a funny thing.  Every now and then I panic that I should be doing an assignment or doing some reading but then I remember I'm on holidays.  I have a feeling that the minute I get used to relaxing it'll be time to get back into uni work.  People are talking about picking up unit outlines for next Semester already!  I didn't even know that was possible - I suppose it might be worth a go although then I might feel the need to start getting books out of the library again!  eek!

Second Semester is often met with a flurry of students asking how they can improve their skills.  Some students want to get higher marks than they did in Semester 1 (and there are lots of ways of doing that!) but many many students want to find ways of becoming more time efficient and managing stress levels. 

In 2006 I got to go to Australia's only Disability Film Festival "The Other Film Festival". The festival features films made by, about and for people with disabilities and is held every 18 months, the next one is coming up in September. Its also the most accessible film festival in the country with audio descriptions for vision impaired and captions for hearing impaired. An amazing event if you can get there but if not, last time they streamed some films & workshops over the internet.

The BBC is launching Britain's Missing Top Model (a show like America's Next Top Model but with disabled contestants) in the hopes of changing attitudes towards disability. You can watch their promo on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGVpKZ400qs 

I've just re-read my post below and there are so many questions in it that reading it out loud will give you a high-pitched squeaky voice (just like mine!).  Mucho apologies readers!