Ten Things to Know About Moving Out of Home

The world is a big scary place, so here is a list of ten things to know about moving out of home.
(This list depends partially on the kindness and generosity of your parents, so bare that in mind!)

1. When you parents ask you if you are running low on anything, always say yes.
At first, it may seem 'cool' or 'AWESOME' to be able to walk/drive/take public transport by yourself to the store and buy shampoo and conditioner. Or toothpaste. But trust me, that stuff is expensive. And when you're on a limited student budget, the last thing you want to be doing is wasting your money on necessities. Why would you do that when there's partying to be done?! So if your parents are there, right in front of you, offering to buy you things. Don't hesitate. Don't feel bad. Just accept their generosity!

2. Never do laundry until there is no other option.
I don't mean turning your underwear inside out to wear it again (guys, we're looking at you!). No, I mean run yourself down to your last outfit, pair of underwear and socks and then do washing. If you're that stuck, I guess you could wear a dressing gown to the laundry and then get dressed in clean-yet-soaking-wet clothes. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

3. It is possible to survive on two-minute noodles and Mi Goreng.
Don't listen to your parents. Sometimes, they're wrong. Not often, but sometimes! See the thing is, if you're on a student budget and either 1) You can't cook or 2) The food provided by your college/Halls of Residence is terrible, then sometimes there is literally no other option. But you will get sick of noodles. If this results, switch to Oreos. It never fails.

4. You don't have to clean your room if you don't want to.
But bare in mind that if you want to have people over, this might be the best way to impress. Living away from home means that there are no parents to tell you when your room needs cleaned, so you're absolutely more than welcome to live in a pigsty. Welcome to university life!

5. You will never go to bed before 12am.
It's extremely unlikely. This is the situation that happens to me every, single night. At 9pm I look at the clock. 'It's still too early,' I say to myself. Five lives later in Candy Crush and after couple of episodes of the TV show of the week, it's suddenly 1am. Oh well, better go on Twitter.
The point of this is that apparently we need to be responsible adults and go to bed when we feel tired. YOLO!

6. It is possible to party every night of the week.
I just don't recommend it. Or condone it. It's just a fact. It is possible, just you need to limit yourself. Also, if you are going to do it...don't tell your parents!

7. You need to exercise.
Living away from home can cause you to put on weight for a number of reasons: your diet, alcohol and stress, just to name a few. And so, if you thought you were limitless and had an awesome metabolism in high school, don't rely on it when you start living off noodles and partying every week. Take up a sport or go running or swimming or be creative with your own ways to exercise!

8. Make lists of things you need to do.
Even better, invest in a calender or make your own. I guarantee that without your parents around to remind you, you'll forget about important events and happenings!

9. Your parents will always love you no matter what.
Well, mine will. I hope yours will too. Make sure to phone them, Facebook them or visit them. Because I can guarantee that they miss you a lot.

10. Remember to study.
Living away from home means that there is noone to nag you to study when you have exams coming up. It's up to you. And so, instead of studying right now (at 12:04am in the morning), I am blogging. It's obviously not the sensible thing to do. Mum...Dad...can you tell me to study please?!

No to Privatising HECS!

Dear Mr Abbott and Mr Pyne,

I am a current university student. I am in my first year of a 5.5 year degree, and I have no qualms in telling you that by the end of my degree, my HECS debt will be upwards of $45 000. Why am I telling you this?

Well, the thing is, I came to university under the premise that, when I graduated, I would have interest free loans to pay back later on in life. However recently I've read that you want to privatise HECS? What is this?

Do you want to prevent high school students from transiting on to university because they know that the fees for university would only grow if HECS debt was to be privatised? If you have a heart, then the answer is no.

At the current time, I am living away from home and studying at university. Already, just one year into my degree, I have the financial strain pressing down on me simply from living away from home. However, if you were to privatise HECS, then this strain would increase exorbitantly because I doubt that the loans would continue to be interest free. I highly doubt that there would be a high threshold set so that we don't have to pay back those loans until we start earning that amount.

And you know what... Why us? Why us when you politicians get paid holidays left, right and centre which come from OUR tax dollars. Why the university students of today? Why should it be us to suffer? We aren't the ones who have 'broken' the budget. For that, you have only yourselves to blame.

Therefore, the privatisation of HECS is not a good thing for the future of education in Australia. You expect every kid out there to have parents who are wealthy enough to pay their way through university or pay back their loans when they're done, however, this isn't the case! Privatising HECS would widen the gap between rich and poor, because you're basically saying that only the rich deserve to go to university.

As a past public school student, I take offence. The only difference between kids who go to private schools and kids who go to public schools is the amount of money their parents can afford to pay. You have astounding, bright and incredible kids who come out of public schools and go on to top their university course because they've worked just that little bit harder to be there. Especially in Queensland at the moment, where getting a good OP depends on how your cohort does at QCS. But let's not talk about that.

Let's talk about the fact that you want bright and educated individuals entering the job market in Australia. Now tell me how this is going to happen if these bright and educated individuals end up living on the street because you privatised HECS? Even worse, what if these bright and educated individuals decide not to go to university in the first place because of the loans which will only grow each year during and after their degree finishes?

What then? Are you really doing what's best for Australia? Or are you doing what's best for you? Selling off HECS won't fix the budget problems. Instead of receiving payments each year from individuals earning over the threshold and paying their HECS back, you'll receive a lump sum payment for HECS which I guarantee will be spent as soon as you get it and won't fix any problems.

So please, for the sake of past, present and future university students, don't privatise HECS. It's not worth it.

Kind regards,

Georgina

I want to be a Disney Princess!

Tonight, in the midst of my procrasti-Facebooking, my sister messaged me.
'You have Disney Princess eyes,' she said. She went on to link me to a picture of myself and said 'You're a Disney Princess.'

Now, isn't is every little girls' dream to be a Disney Princess? I was quite happy to accept the compliment, but it got me thinking...would life as a Disney princess really be that amazing?

When I asked my sister who she would be, she replied forlornly 'I kinda wanted to be Pocahontas, but that didn't work out.'
Why?
'Because she's tanned and Pocahontas-y,' said my sister, the palest person in Australia.

But me? As a self-proclaimed (though admittedly fake) blonde, I think the Disney princess I would most like to be would be Rapunzel. Not the whole 'locked up in a tower' bit, but the strong, independent women bit.

Think about it. This girl lives by herself and fends for herself. Then one day, she decides to venture into the unknown, very scared but still willing. Isn't that what life is all about? To try new things and to venture outside your comfort zone?

However that isn't the only reason that I'd like to be a Disney princess! No way.

Who doesn't want to be rich and famous? To be in control of a kingdom and talk to animals? To be looked after by fairy godmothers and know that you're always going to meet Prince Charming?

All of these things sound too good to be true, and it's unfortunately also true that they are too good to be true. It's unlikely that you're going to marry a prince. Talking to animals in real life will only get you landed in a mental asylum. And don't even get me started on fairy godmothers! But I guess your grandma's baking is just about the next best thing to help you recover from a broken heart when you're trying to get over that guy who wasn't actually Prince Charming.

As much as real life can suck though, it does have its virtues. It's highly unlikely that you have a wicked stepmother and evil stepsisters who will destroy your dress before a ball. And wicked witches with poisoned apples only exist in fairytales, right?

Plus, there's the satisfaction of knowing that women in real life have the opportunity to go to university and be successful career women. This is unlike a Disney princess, whose only role, it seems, is to be a caring and gentle wife, mother and Queen. This is, of course, with the exception of Mulan.

I don't agree completely with the Disney stereotype of the women only having one role. Most of the Disney princesses could be soooo much more if they were just given the chance!

So yes, I'd like to be a Disney Princess, but probably not forever. I'd love to try it out though. Pick me Disney!

But to see a hilarious song about life after Disney for some of the Princesses, check out this song by youtuber Paint (aka Jon Cozart):

'Royals' by Lorde is not racist

Um what?

For those of you who are a little bit behind (like me), you may not yet have heard about a blog post which is causing a stir around the world. Entitled 'Wow, that Lorde song Royals is racist' and published by Veronica Bayetti Flores on her blog 'Feministing', it's not hard to understand the main concept of this post.

For those of you who haven't heard the lyrics to Royals, it's basically about consumerism. Over-exaggerated, overblown consumerism.

However Ms Flores does not take it that way. No, she believes that it's extremely racist.

I Hate Ticket Scalpers

Thank you Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. Thank you for proving, once again, that you do care. You care about recycling old clothes, you care about gay marriage...and now, you're taking a stand on ticket scalping.

Because this annoys me.

How is it fair for companies to go onto the websites and nabs scores of tickets, with the sole purpose of selling them at an exorbitantly higher face value than what they were originally worth? The short answer: It's not.

Ticket Scalping is ILLEGAL. In Australia, the states and territories have laws to prevent illegal acquisition and resale of tickets for the sole purposes of making money. This is definitely fair.

If you've sat on the Ticketek website hitting refresh for the twenty minutes leading up to a ticket release, you know how it feels. You know how much is at stake; how much depends upon how fast you can click buttons and enter your credit card details. However there are those that don't pay by the rules. Instead of buying tickets for their own enjoyment, they buy them to make a profit.

In Australia, these tickets often end up on sites like ViaGoGo or EBay or Gumtree. For example, Imagine Dragons are playing in a few states in October. Sold out Australia wide, tickets are available for up to $160 per ticket. And do you know how much they were originally? $66 (correct price from OzTix for the Brisbane Show).

$66. That's basically $100 profit.

So for all of those kids who are relying on their parents' credit cards, or waiting patiently for their parents to get home from work so that they can buy tickets, they often can't because of ticket scalpers and their greed for profit.

In 2011, One Direction played a limited number of shows in Australia. From my memory, because they were just gathering momentum, tickets were about $60. One was being sold on EBay for $4000.

Four. Thousand. Dollars. For one ticket. It's crazy.

So whatever you do, don't let the ticket scalpers win. Just wait for the band to come back to Australia, try to win tickets or buy them from a reputable source.

And to all those ticket scalpers:

Find a real profession. You'll only get caught.

Social Media is Ruining My Life!

We're stuck in that era. Where technology is the only way to keep up with the new trends that only seem to originate on social media. Do we like it? Do we not?

So here's what happened today.

So I finally did it. I took the leap today and spent my time signing up for both Pinterest AND Tumblr. It's sad, right?

I know I swore that I'd never get Tumblr, but please don't judge me. We must work through this together. It will require effort on both out parts to help me out of this 'social media crisis'.

But maybe I don't want help?

In my opinion, in the few hours I've spent on both of them so far...they're actually fun. I stand corrected. However, signing up for Tumblr did make me somewhat embarrassed. I now feel like a tween. I don't want to be one of those twelve year old girls who posts about One Direction and Justin Bieber. No, I refuse to do that. Instead, and I believe somewhat better, I will post inspiring pictures and cute quotes.

I think that's better?

On the other hand, Pinterest is actually really engaging! I plan to use it to find good recipes, places to travel to and other amazing fashion things. In a way, it feels like the Tumblr for adults.

So we will see how these social media sites go. I figured that since I want to be a journalist, I should maybe try out all of them just for a while so that I can at least say I know how to use them. However, I said that same thing about Twitter and over 600 tweets later I'm still using it.

Social media is the present and it's here to stay. Whether we like it or not, it's only going to get more prominent in our lives. We can either embrace it or shun it, but whatever we choose to do, we at least need to keep track of it. It's the conversation topic of the twenty-first century.

What do you think?