OK folks here it is, the revelation of a lifetime... I do not, I repeat, DO NOT have a television! For the first time EVER, I am not living in a place with a TV! A travesty I know, however there's not much I can do at the moment. Overall not having a television is a minor inconvenience; still, I am of the opinion that being up to date on current public events and news, especially in the economic, political and legal spheres is, in fact, essential to my understanding of and ability to contextualize the academic material we are covering in class. Thus I decided to take advantage of a very inexpensive offer on hand at The University of Sydney "O-Week" event. This three-day event is basically for first year and new students to learn about the different clubs, societies and athletic teams on campus. In addition to concerts and club/ society information booths the event includes a few select companies that cater to student needs and interests. The Sydney Morning Herald was one such company and they had masses of "lollies" (candy) on offer to tempt us over to their booth. Usually I'm pretty good at getting the candy while eschewing the sales pitch but this deal was too good to pass up. In light of my lack of a TV, or radio reception for that matter, I decided that this was the best chance I was going to get to have easy access to the latest news on a daily basis. (I know, there's always the Internet but it's not quite the same...)
On a side note, as I was showing off my first issue to my table of friends (and one guy from another class) at this Friday's Afternoon Happy Hour with the Profs event, the new guy indicated that he was actually IN the paper. Sure enough, there was an article in the arts section reviewing a recent poetry event in which he was a performer. As it turned out, I was quite surprised that he would direct us to this particular article as the content of which included his being described as " without a doubt the strangest person [the author] had ever met" and "...he's either the real article or Charles Manson..." This I thought, was an unusual approach to introducing oneself to a new group of people.
In any case I think he was pleased that someone other than himself had brought up the topic of the Sydney Morning Herald. What are the odds that on the first and only day that I even make mention of a newspaper, let alone have one on my person, I would be sitting next to someone actually written about in the paper?! Uncanny!
My last thought on this matter is, while I really enjoy reading newspaper articles, I often find that I gravitate more towards the "lighter" sections such as arts, travel or life; not especially useful to my (hopefully) expanding legal intellect. Ergo, I am inspired to make an especially concerted effort to read and at least try to understand the Financial and Legal sections of the paper so that I might not only be more aware of local and international news in these areas, but also to further develop my enjoyment of, interest in, and ability to comprehend the until now, intimidating and thus unexplored regions of the newspaper. Go me!
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