RTOTD: Motivation

Do you know what gets me to the top of a steep hill when I'm riding my bike?  


Pride.


Because I don't want anyone knowing I had to get off and push.

The Waiting Game...and Random Dreams!

It's amazing what happens to the brain when we are facing a suspenseful moment.  Today the long-awaited (4 months of waiting to be exact...4 months!!) first round offers from VTAC (Victoria Tertiary Admissions Centre) were available online from 7am my time.  Sure, I was dying to know if I got an offer and to which university so I could start planning the next phase of my life, but so far I had been surprisingly calm.  No point getting worked up as it wouldn't make me know any faster!

Calm, that is, until about 6:30am this morning.  Or perhaps a little before.  Because long after 6:30am, I woke up and checked my clock to see how much time had passed.  It was 6:30am.  D'oh!  I'd only dreamt I'd checked the clock before.  Okay, 30 mins to go... I close my eyes....

Next thing I know, I've got a letter in my hands.  I eagerly open it.  It looks like a uni offer!!  I begin reading... "We are pleased to offer a place to study at our university to..."  Wait...that's not my name!  That's someone else's name!  They've put someone else's offer letter in my envelope!  Oh man... does that mean I got an offer then or not?!

At this point I find myself at the house of some friends.  Well, actually, I've never met these people...but they are a couple whose blog I have been reading recently, so I guess I feel like I kind of know them.  And they were hilarious!  They knew I was stressing in trying to find out, so they came up with so many random funny things to keep the mood light and make me laugh.   For example, they were doing the tango around their living room, with very "serious" faces, whilst continuing to converse with me on the subject.  They let me use their computer to try to log onto the website to see if there's any offers there (which is the actual way of checking offers today), but there were more hold-ups - website down...wrong password...logged in, but can't find anything etc.  I remember their teenage daughter comes in and they're like "Not now, Mari-Anna's trying to find out if she got accepted at uni - quick, say something encouraging!"

Throughout this I wake up several times - each time surprised that the above-mentioned events hadn't actually happened, and that it still wasn't even almost 7!  Man, this 30 minutes is taking forEVER!

Enter Matt Damon.  You know, an old friend of mine.  (I think my brain was running out of ideas to stall me.)  "Mari-Anna!  We're working on this new movie!  You've totally gotta be in it."  Um, I dunno Matt, I mean I kinda got some other plans for this year... "Oh come on!  It's gonna be great, how can you turn it down?  Look at this script!"  Well...um...

With all these distractions compounded, things were getting pretty crazy.  I think my brother even came along, and I'm like "Hey...you know Matt...we were just discussing a new movie."  Grin :D

Well, I don't remember much detail after that, but FINALLY it was past 7am - for real - and...I was too nervous to check after all that drama!  What if there's not an offer for me?  What if something went wrong with the application?  What if I get accepted, but not by the university I wanted?  Do I accept their offer, or wait for round 2 (or 3 or 4)?  What if I was offered a different course?

Finally I mustered up the courage to have a look.  I enter my VTAC ID and PIN.  "Your user ID is incorrect."  D'oh!  Try again, this time without the accidental space in the front, which had eliminated the last number.  Success!  I'm in.  Now what?  Um....oh, messages!  Right.  One new message!  Hold breath.  Click.

"Congratulations! The University of Melbourne is pleased to offer you a place in 2014. An email will be sent to you with information about how to enrol." 

I can't believe it!  I got into my preferred university for the exact course I wanted!

Return to calm, feeling as though a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

Life is good :)

Keep Calm and Create A Meme

Now applying my skills to the "Keep Calm and..." posters.  This is one of the first that came to mind :)  Featuring Socially Awkward Penguin

Snake Dreams

Okay, here's something really weird...

Last night I dreamt about snakes.  Lots and lots of snakes.  They were kind of ever-present no matter what was happening in the dream - or in other words, no matter where I went, or what other themes took over for a while, it would always end up back at the grassy beach with the snakes.

Upon waking, I thought it would be fun to look up what dream analysts have to say about snakes, even though I'm not usually very convinced by their theories.

It was after this that two weird things happened.

First, I opened up Google and started typing "dreaming..." I hadn't even finished when the autocomplete suggestions popped up, and the very first one said "dreaming of snakes".  Um...yes! Do people not dream about anything else?  Freaky!  

So I click on that and open the first page that grabs my eye.  And then one of the first things I read says: "Snakes or serpents indicate you’re in a period of transition."

Um...yes!  If you consider "transition" to include preparing to move countries, then immediately move to a new, big city to study at University again 9 years after graduating and 7 years in the workforce, that is.

Freeeeaky.  

There are many more interpretations available, but that was one of the first that I read.  Two strange coincidences.

Not that I'm particularly adverse to snakes (as my brother can attest, with a rather amusing story from our school days).  In the dream I wasn't seized with fear, or screaming or running away.  I was cautious, but still went about my business.  Actually near the start, when I first saw all the snakes, someone was helping me try to get rid of them and showed me that when she put a box down a snake crawled up into it and then coiled up and bound itself into a neat little bundle.  So I tried it, and sure enough, another snake did the same thing.  Perhaps that means some things in my transition will just "fall into place"?  I think it was after seeing the snakes cooperate that I stopped worrying so much about there being snakes everywhere, and just decided to leave them as is.   

Anyway, there you have it.  That should fill your weirdness quota for today!

Me and my olive python friend in Darwin