Underwhelming - To fail to interest; usually used in response to something that was presented as exciting

My blog does not represent the views of Murdoch or any of its affiliates. All posts are NOT to be taken seriously and are written only for entertainment purposes.

Yes, I wanted to put "Ask me about: A GOOD TIME" too.

Ho hum. 6 Hours of unpaid work. actually, did get a shirt, it's not too bad, it's got long sleeves, don't mind promoting Murdoch. Would of been like $25 at the Alumni building... Actually, quite worth it.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure that a lot of people got stuff out of open day, I'm sure parents were relieved to think that their son or daughter was looking at university (especially as one as cool as Murdoch.) And this post will not be ridiculing Murdoch, it's more about being pissed at I.T. and the way it's presented. I'm not really sure where to start, but a second disclaimer is probably a good idea.

A HELL OF A LOT OF ORGANISATION GOES INTO ORGANISING OPEN DAY. Lots of cleaning up, tables, advertising, volunteering, lecturers, signage, stickers and pamphlets have to co-oridnated to produce a good show of the stuff that is available at Murdoch. But in my confine of ECL, it unfortunately wasn't very evident. I did see the bunch of marquees in Bush Court with people talking about every course, directing new comers. I saw the live music, and the horrendous waste of custard.

But, it wasn't right.

At one point in year 11, I had my heart set on Marketing. I loved the idea of going into advertising, the way of creating a memorable lol or slogan for people to get stuck in their heads. But, instead I chose to go down the IT route when I realised how much of a sham it was. Companies mindlessly twisting facts and screaming slander to make their product better then the competition. It simply came down to the bottom line, rather then creating a short story adding the product as an after thought. I chose IT cause I didn't just want to be there to make some company money. I wanted to provide a service to make a company better compared to itself. IT can be actually perceived like that, improving software, security or a network, to make it simply... Better then it was.

Open Day, was well, trying to show that Murdoch was better then the other uni's. And although I love being a Murdoch blogger (although probably not for my longer. :) ) and promoting Murdoch's awesome IT Majors, the day itself was all a sham. I really don't want to post this, and I may be asked to take it down.

(I will, if emailed at 30788034@student.murdoch.edu.au you don't even have to supply a reason!)

Games tech, for example was promoted with a bunch of consoles showing Halo 3 and Guitar Hero (No, none of the games tech units do directly code for consoles, proprietary reasons, but you do pick up some of the language that works on them.), rather then students own work, a selection of PREVIOUS year's was on posters and one projector. Robotics was shown with a PhD students work from about 10 years ago and a few toys (although it did show two current very interesting research projects, one involving object identification and handling as well as movement systems in bipedal and climbing robots.) There was also a nice walk through of Game Maker, which is used in first year games tech. Then there were personality quizzes (a open day staple for the IT department.) and then four computers which had the two disk images from last semester's Cyber Forensic unit (Yay!!! Even though I only got a credit for it, it was still a lot of fun going through Miss Hill's HDD.) But I mean, there were a few of us explaining the sort of stuff that was made up of the Cyber Forensic unit, and the sort of things that were on the hard drive images. It just didn't feel.. Right. I'm sure that most people who left there were sure that the Cyber Forensic major simply had that course in (I know I did when I attended open day a couple of years ago.).

The day doesn't teach about the real student experience. I was too scared to even promote this blog, any of the other blogs, or even the blogging competition, because it didn't seem the type of student life that the open day organisers wanted to promote. They wanted rose-tinted, so I gave rose-tinted.

"Yes, I find the Cyber Forensic course easy and I quickly adjusted to the more difficult assignments given by university units."

They didn't want to about how sloth I've become, how I've enjoyed the MITS LANs as one of the best things at uni, that people should stay away from the cauliflower cheese at Carve-A-Roast (you don't want to know.). They didn't want to know that I gave up my time on Sunday which I should of used for an assignment due tomorrow (at the time of posting this) at 12pm, wish me luck for tonight!

I chose Murdoch because I loved the fact that they had a networking major there, that, when I asked at the open day I attended, they didn't mind admitting they had, and even one of the volunteers there showed me my first console window to a Cisco router. Another uni ( I won't say which.) were pushing for me to do computer science rather then their own networking unit. Another one didn't even really want to say they had an IT school. Sigh, I choose Murdoch, cause Murdoch seemed to want me. Mr Boddington (Cyber Forensics guy.) said last Sunday that more people need to get into IT, and he wouldn't mind if it became a more gender balanced field.

One uni is currently pushing that their Computer Scientists end up coding for the WA police force to stop cyber crime.

1. They don't actually have a cyber forensics course, so they don't really know what they are dealing with
2. WA isn't going to well with stopping cyber crime
3. Cyber crime won't be stopped by code alone, it needs actual police work
4. You can't just jump straight to coding for that, they aren't actually saying how good the coders they are churning out are, they are just making me more scared about how poor the fight against cyber crime is
5. Sorry, this ad REALLY needs to be taken off TV, it just pisses me off

I, personally, couldn't see the promotion needed at this open day.

I know in other fields its different, it may actually be a challenge to chose between universities (pick Murdoch anyway, it's got the biggest Campus in WA! Okay, so a lot of it is currently covered in sheep and their excrement.) but in my area, Murdoch was the best choice.

Some people may just see a uni and stick with it, meaning attending a open day just is pointless, they have their heart set on a particular uni, okay they may not like it in the end, but... This event just seems annoying. And redundant. I'm not saying stop it, there are people out there who don't know what they want to do, want to see what uni's are offering doing.

I'm just saying I wish they'd do it differently...

But what do know, I'm just a second year, average student with a blog and too much to say.

Yes, this was unfortunately a serious post, but if it got me annoyed, I'd hate to see what it did to someone who was actually wanting "a student experience"

My advice, for people wanting a student experience

1. Stay awake all night
2. Drink a red bull
3. Make your way to campus
4. Skip the lecture anyway

The truth hurts.

Grafitti of the week!

While we're on the topic of poor advertising a post it note, left on the back door of an ECL toilet:

"Lacto bacillus can improve the digestive system and reduce diarrhea ask you chemist for Blackmoore's Lacto bacillus."

It's one hell of a weird collection of students. I do hope you join us next year.