Oops, I haven’t written anything in a while. It’s a bit like that though with University students and summer holidays – we all go AWOL. But now I’ve made the bend and the start of the new semester is in my sights, which means I have to switch off my holiday head (sigh) and prepare for a return to uni.

At Curtin there are a few things that students can do before semester commences so they are ready. One of the things this involves for me is organising my parking permit. Living out of home and having a self-confessed weakness for socialising and shopping leaves my budget pretty strained, so I have to plan my savings before uni starts in order to afford a parking permit, otherwise I risk playing mission impossible and trying to avoid the parking fines throughout the semester.

Once I fork out the cash for a year-round student parking permit (the brilliant green sticker) I’ll look at what’s left for my text books. These knowledgeable books are a pretty dear expense for university students but from my experience there are ways to get the information – without scraping the remnants of the piggy bank. The Student Guild offers a second hand bookstore on campus where students can exchange and find cheap, used copies of their text books. As well, a lot of the content for courses is available on E-Reserve, an electronic database courtesy of the Curtin Library. So new students, I suggest you look at these avenues before spending your dough.

The other thing I’ll be doing this week is setting up my timetable. Some courses aren’t so flexible when it comes to your contact hours at campus, but mine is one of the joyous few that has a lot of room for manipulation. What I’ll have to do is get online and work out the days I can make tutorials, lectures and workshops, schedule them in and then plan the social life around it (though if I’m being honest it’s actually the other way round). Some of my friends decide to do these things during Start Up week, which is a great time to get information and get prepared. Some of my other friends will leave it til much later – but each to their own I guess.

I’m a big fan of getting ready early, so that way my head has a smoother – less stressful – transition from holiday slackness, to university hype, and so that I know how much money I have left to spend on the last music festivals of the season.