Looking After Your Dancing Bodies in this COLD COLD Weather

In the winter your body has to work much harder to regulate its core temperature, so expect yourself to feel more tired than usual. You might need to eat and sleep more. Also, the days are short and dingy. Wear bright socks and stay social and happy.

Warming Up

Make sure you do plenty of cardio to get your muscles warm, and stretch well.

Cool Downs

Just as important as warm ups if you want to keep your joints released and maintain your strength and flexibility. It only takes a few extra minutes but it will be the difference between you being able to do the splits or not.

Self-massage

Spiky balls, foam rollers, golf ball under your foot. Pay close attention to keeping your calves and feet loose because lots of people find their shins start to get sore when it gets cold.

Moving Mountains

Even if you have flexible muscles you won’t be able to stretch all that far unless your joints are also released. The BEST thing I have found to help me maintain my flexibility is going to Moving Mountains with Jules, and practicing being mindful about my body and alignment, and the amount of effort/tension I put into tasks.

Eating Well

Make lunches, freeze meals, don’t skip breakfast. It’s common to need to eat more in the winter because your body has to work harder to regulate its temperature. So make sure that you are eating good food that is nutritious as well. Unfortunately, Mi Goreng doesn’t fall into this category. If you want food ideas, see the end of this article.

Sleep

It’s easy for sleep to be the thing that gets sacrificed as the work load intensifies; try to be mindful not to let this happen, or at least for it not to happen more than one night in a row. It sounds difficult if you have lots of lines to learn and scenes to prepare, but if you are working with a body that has had a full night’s sleep, you will actually be able to work more effectively than if you are dealing with a fatigued body, and therefore you decrease the amount of time you need to put into studying. Remember, study smart, not hard.

Thermals

Super great if you don’t like wearing lots of layers, and if you don’t want to have a higher gas bill by having your house heater running. Pretend you’re camping. If you don’t’ own any, keep an eye on Aldi special buys for some good deals, or have a look in Target and Best N Less.

Food ideas

Slow cooks are amazing because you can just chuck all the ingredients in which will take you about 10-15 minutes in the morning, let it cook all day then come home to a hearty, warm meal and a house that smells divine. Plus, you will have plenty of leftovers to freeze for the rest of the week. If you would like some recipes comment below.

Couscous is a good and cheap lunch for Uni. It’s pretty boring by itself though so you can try adding mixed herbs, lemon juice, mandarin pieces, slithered almonds, tuna, sultanas, corn kernels or beans (I buy the mini cans and keep them stocked in the cupboard) etc. Get creative. This meal also takes two seconds to throw together in the morning or pre-pack the night before and it’s filling, long-lasting energy.

Veggie Bowls are another one of my favourites. Roast some pumpkin, sweet potato, carrot, beetroot, parsnips, apple… any vegetable that’s on special really. You can use mashed potato as a base, or fry some cabbage, zucchini, capsicum. You could chuck some spinach, peas or mixed greens on top. Add sour cream, mayonnaise, thousand island dressing, chutney, relish, parmesan or mozzarella. You might also like to add some salami, ham or chorizo on top. Basically, just walk through Coles or Curtis Fresh or anywhere that sells fresh produce and pick a bunch of veggies and things that are cheap and make up a yummy bowl with them. You can also freeze pre-cooked veggies in containers (not potato though coz it goes gross) and make a week’s worth of meals this way.

Panic, procrastination and pot of gold

As I’m sure you’re well aware by now, we have reached week 10 already. How on earth did that happen?? If you’re anything like me that sentence just sent your brain into the upside down, inside out, Alice in Wonderland world of chaos and confusion.

Okay, so lets procrastinate for a moment or two and really give this some thought…. It’s week 10, you’re still working on that task from week 2 and your assessment to-do list that you wrote with all good intentions in week 1 has long been re-purposed into a coffee coaster, that is no longer legible for the coffee stains. It’s at this point you start thinking, what am I doing, I’m so far behind, I’ll never be able to catch up and get it all finished in time, I may as well QUIT!!

After you’re mini quitting meltdown, you think to yourself, “It’s going to be okay, I’ve got this! I’m going to write a new to-do list and I will get started on the first task straight away!” Full of optimism, you write that list, then look at it and think, “No problem, I can have that ticked off by week 12, maybe even a little earlier!!”

Now that you have your beautifully colour coded to-do list in your hand, it would be safe to assume that you sit down and get cracking on that first task, right?  Wrong! Instead you photograph that list and post it on all your social media pages, boasting to all your followers about how organised you are. You then take a break because you’ve worked so hard today making said list, plus you need to keep refreshing your feeds to make sure your fans are liking and commenting on your outstanding display of time management. We all know that this cycle continues with you cooking toast for dinner at 9:30pm because you flicked over to watch some funny cat videos online whilst waiting for people to comment on your post. It’s at this point you realise you didn’t tick a single item off your to-do list and you now have one less day to get everything completed. But this doesn’t phase you too much as you trundle off to bed at midnight (you had to just check in on your social media accounts one last time for the day) you think to yourself, “I WILL get started on it first thing tomorrow”.

As you drag yourself out of bed at 10am (“Oh no! I overslept, how on earth did that happen??”), you have a serious case of the dreaded ‘can’t be bothereds’, which let’s face it was pretty much inevitable after a dinner that lacked some serious nutrition, followed by a really late night, smashing down red bull, eyes hanging out of your head scrolling through mind numbing news feeds.

It’s right about now that I’m going to hit you with some tough love, prepare yourself, it’s time to get real! If you stay on this current trajectory, it will be week 11 before you can blink, you won’t have achieved anything you set out to do and the stress levels will be completely unmanageable. But if you want to see the light at the end of the tunnel and calmly walk (well maybe run) into it, you have got to do things differently.

I have two techniques that I have picked up over the years that may be of value to you. I did not design these and I stumbled across them far later in my degree than I would have liked but never the less they made my last year of university my least stressful.

Tip # 1: Just do something, anything!!

The idea here is that you have that beautifully colourful to-do list already complete, first job done, tick! Now let’s get cracking. Pick one thing on that to-do list that you can do really quickly. I mean the quickest easiest task on there, do it now and cross it off. We all know how satisfying it is to cross something off a list, so much so that I have even been known to write things on my to-do list that I already accomplished before writing said to-do list just so I could cross them off straight away, everybody does that right; right? Each day for the next three and a bit weeks make it your motto to ‘just do something, anything’ on the list, because something is better than nothing, and the more somethings you do the more motivation you gain to do the rest of your somethings.

Tip # 2:    5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Blast Off!

The first tip is great but there’s a a grey area to it’s success and that is the over-thinker. You and I are the people who pick a something on a our to-do list and then decide to make a cuppa and give it some thought before starting. We are also the people who put off making that call to the doctor/hairdresser/tax accountant to book an appointment, we sit and we think and we think and then we think so much that we eventually talk ourselves out of doing it, because we probably don’t have the time to do it now, and we put it back on the list to deal with tomorrow, which soon becomes next month. The 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, blast off theory is that once the rocket is launched there’s no way to stop it from taking off. So, pick your something to do and then in your head do the count down and when you hear the words blast off, just do it there and then. Job’s done, cross it off in big black marker, so very, very satisfying!!

Although there’s always a bit (sometimes a lot) of pressure, stress and tension at this time of the semester, everyone around you is usually feeling the same way, you are definitely not alone. All you can do is take a deep breath, eat well, get plenty of sleep and give these tips a go, you just might find your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Good Luck!!

Beck

ASK Desk, SMB.

 

Finding the right study/chill balance

Hey there everybody. I’m Alisha, a Berwick student as well as student futures crazy. I am a mentor, PASS leader and SAL this semester.

So, it’s almost time for our mid-semester break. Also known as, two weeks of watching Netflix whilst eating too much junk food. Then having that guilty feeling in your stomach that you should be doing something a bit more productive. In my first semester at FedUni, I did just that. I maybe read one or two chapters of a textbook but that’s it. Then after the break I was swamped with assignment after assignment which caused me to come to uni at 9am then leave at 7pm each day.

I learnt from that mistake. Second semester I adjusted my time pretty well doing around half study and half chill. My after break shock wasn’t that bad this time. This semester break I want to do that again. I am a morning bird so I plan to study in the morning then chill later in the afternoon. I am also week 2 into a 12-week body transformation with exercise and meal plans. I hope I can keep it up this break and don’t slack off the hard work I’ve done so far.

Overall, I think it’s best for you to figure out what works for you. Do what you want this break but remember Uni assignments might come up and haunt you.

Have fun and do what you love this break!

Your Berwick Butterfly, Alisha

VOTES ARE IN AND EVERYONE’S FAV DISNEY MOVIE IS…

Ever wondered how your fav pure Disney film stacked up against other peoples personal favs? Well, hold onto your magic carpet kid, because you’re about to find out!


So, which is the greatest animated pure Disney film of all time? I asked a bunch of my friends, family, and coworkers and these were the overwhelming results:
Coming in last place are movies that were picked as absolute favorites sparingly, such as:

Beauty and the Beast
Meet the Robinsons
Emperor’s New Groove (Pull the lever Kronk!)
Robin Hood
The Jungle Book
Tangled
Tarzan, and
The Little Mermaid

In the middle with quite a few votes each are:

Aladdin (a movie that is a diamond in the rough?)
Mulan (still my absolute favorite),
and the latest of the Disney releases; Moana

Coming in first place with an overwhelming amount of support is, the one, the only, the everything the light touches is our kingdom, The Lion King. Woohoo!

This film was made in 1994, making it an oldy but a goody! To celebrate its victory on being the top of the leader board, here are some fun facts about the voted fav Disney film.

  1. The Lion King is the highest-grossing hand-drawn animated feature of all time with a total box office of over $987 million; it is also the third highest-grossing animated feature in general, the 19th highest-grossing film of all time, and the best-selling videotape of all time.
  2. An earthquake in 1994 forced the Disney Studios to close down temporarily and much of the film was finished in the artists’ homes.
  3. One small yellow beetle that Timon finds under a log has Mickey Mouse ears on its back.
  4. Reportedly, the “Be Prepared” scene was inspired by footage of Nazis marching by Adolf Hitler on a podium.
  5. Pumbaa is the first Disney character to ever fart.
  6. It took approximately three years to animate the two-and-a-half-minute wildebeest stampede scene.

Thanks Disney, for making our childhoods magical! ….. Anyone else feel a movie marathon coming on??

GIFS + IMAGE (in order)
-https://giphy.com/gifs/black-and-white-quotes-not-my-qkEuYpCxrPnzO
-https://tenor.com/view/manly-tangled-kissing-disney-gif-5669699
-https://tenor.com/view/mulan-disney-spit-spitting-gif-3560501
-https://giphy.com/search/king-lion
-https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51KTQZFM8YL.jpg
FACTS
https://www.buzzfeed.com/briangalindo/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-lion-king?utm_term=.yxD0x8lEK#.uvnnv0Kxw
http://mentalfloss.com/article/57386/30-facts-about-lion-king

Is Honesty Really the Best Policy?

So your best friend comes out of the change-room in a hideous outfit and asks “do I look good in this”? OR you get pulled over by a police officer after a quick drink and they ask “have you been drinking tonight”?

WHAT. DO. YOU. SAY? Is honesty really the best policy? Continue reading Is Honesty Really the Best Policy?

Weim – a – what?

‘Weim – a – what’ is the response I get every time I tell someone I’m getting a Weimaraner. The first thing my mum said to me was “umm have you been to the doctor for that?”. Ahh, what? Awkwarddd. No mum, a Weimeraner is a dog! One of the cutest dogs in the whole entire world. *insert high pitched voice* Just look at how cute they are… Continue reading Weim – a – what?

Communication with Lecturers and Academic Staff

To start off, I am not saying that I am a communications champion or anything like that. In fact, being a mature age student my mind is boggled by the way that people these days communicate with each other on social media.  When I was growing up we rode our bikes to our friend’s house and knocked on the door to see if they were home, or if allowed we would make a phone call to see if they were home. To communicate with someone long distance we would write a letter because the cost of a phone call could cripple the economy. Continue reading Communication with Lecturers and Academic Staff

The Low Down on The B-wick (or Berwick Campus)

So I’m sure everyone knows by now that FedUni’s got a new campus at Berwick, or as everyone calls it: The B-wick. (Ok, so maybe no-one calls it that…yet. It’s pretty catchy, it’s got a nice ring to it, it’s gonna catch on, trust me). FedUni picked up the campus last year as part of Monash’s fire sale of campuses.

As far as I’m concerned, they got a pretty good deal.  This place is pretty nice, even if it is just for first-years at this point. Want to know more? Well, let me lay it out so you can play it out. Continue reading The Low Down on The B-wick (or Berwick Campus)

Harry Potter Plotholes Debunked! And 18 Things You May Not Know About Harry Potter.

 

Wondering why things happened the way they did when clearly there is another option? Here are 5 common Harry Potter ‘plotholes’ debunked.

1. Why was the time turner not used to save countless lives instead of just Buckbeaks? Well supposedly going more than a few hours in the past is irreparably catastrophic, thus Harry can’t save his parents. But what about more recent deaths? Well the time turner is susceptible to paradoxes. This means that if Harry went back to ‘move’ Sirius out of the way of the killing curse in HP5, Sirius would live and thus there be no reason for Harry to come back in the first place to save him. Yet for Hermione to go to another class (the time turners original purpose for her), is not changing the events that unfold to such a massive degree. “Mysterious thing, Time. Powerful, and when meddled with, dangerous.” Continue reading Harry Potter Plotholes Debunked! And 18 Things You May Not Know About Harry Potter.

Spring

Eric.2In this post I’m going to talk about Spring, because it started last week.

Or did it?

In Australia, as I’m sure you’re all aware, the Bureau of Meteorology has decided that the seasons will start on the 1st of the month (Spring in September, Summer in December, etc.).

But what if I told you that the 1st of the month is just a random day they picked just to make record-keeping easier? Who can live in that sort of random anarchistic society? I know I’m struggling.

Spring this year actually starts on the 23rd of September, at 12:21am.

How can I get it down to the minute, you ask?

Well, that’s because Spring starts after the Vernal Equinox. The Vernal Equinox is the point at which the Southern Hemisphere gets more sunlight than the Northern Hemisphere. It’s all very scientific, which is how these things should be determined. It depends on the tilt of the Earth, which is what causes the seasons in the first place.

Now here’s the bit that seems to cause all sorts of confusion for the people at the Bureau: it changes every year. That’s because the orbit of the Earth around the Sun doesn’t happen in exactly 365 days (the same reason we have leap years) and there’s a couple of other things that don’t happen in nice round numbers. It’s always going to be around the 21st of the month, but it’ll vary by a day or two either side.

And it’s not just Spring. There’s also an Autumnal Equinox. And a Summer and Winter Solstice. The Summer Solstice is the point at which the Sun is highest in the sky, and the Winter Solstice, the lowest. And they’re all around the 21st of the month.

But here’s what I don’t get: Easter varies every year. It depends on the cycle of the moon. People seem to handle that fine. And it varies by weeks from year to year. Why can’t they handle the start of the seasons that change by only a day or two?

I’m thinking about starting a movement. Maybe even get a petition going. Let’s stop the madness! Who’s with me?

Ok, that’s the end of my rant. Thanks to all of you who stuck it out this long. And Happy First Day of Spring! On the 23rd, not last week.

– Eric