Coffee Culture 101
Let’s start with the essentials: caffeine. If you’re willing to brave the trek down City Road towards Broadway, Toby’s Estate awaits with actually decent coffee. If you are too lazy to walk or are simply running late, Laneway in Wentworth is your best bet. Pro tip: learn to function on instant coffee or prepare to watch those multiple $8 transactions drain your bank account. Courtyard might be convenient, but it’s where dreams and bank accounts go to die. Although making coffee at home is significantly cheaper, let’s face it — you don’t have time for that. Whatever you do, avoid the vending machine coffee unless you’re truly desperate during a late-night study session.
The Ultimate USyd Building Field Guide (Or: Where to Thrive and Survive)
- Institute Building: Where airflow is just a theory, much like the GOVT lectures that happen there, and the winter heaters give you a preview on what cremation feels like.
- Getting from any building within a 5 minute radius: Your daily 10,000 steps speedrun challenge. A whole workout disguised as “getting to class”. The migraines I got during the Summer of Semester 2 last year were agonising (hydration is key).
- Susan Wakil: The AC heaven that makes me question why I didn’t just embrace the Filipino stereotype and do nursing.
- Quad Rooms: Stop romanticising them. High ceiling fans are useless. There is no ventilation and no aircon. Just plain old aesthetic suffering.
- Chem Building and PNR: No comment…. You guys stick out, and not in a good way.
- Chau Chak Wing Museum: Perfect for killing time between classes!
- Graffiti Tunnel: For paint smell enthusiasts and I guess for art appreciators too.
- Manning House: Shout out to the USU spaces.
- Charles Perkins Centre: Your instagram aesthetic dreams come true.Take notes ABS.
- Fisher Library Terrace: Elite people-watching spot.
- Pro tip: Have multiple photos of different campus spots saved. Perfect for lying about your whereabouts when needed.
- Victoria Park: When you need to touch grass and appreciate life. It’s not a coincidence that the Law Building is right beside it.
The Sacred Rules of Campus Life
- Embrace your embarrassing moments. You will walk into the wrong class at least twice per semester. It’s exposure therapy.
- Join societies, but choose wisely. Sure, waste $5 on each membership, and then ghost them harder than your high school friends, by all means. Yes, I see you hovering around the Anime Society booth. Don’t even think about it. Unlike the university’s approach to student activities, at least society membership is still your choice to regret.
- Consider getting lost in Carslaw as a rite of passage.
- Good bathrooms exist, but, like any sacred knowledge, you must venture forth and discover them yourself.
- Want to run a society event? Better plan ahead. Our beloved university, which proudly advertises it’s history of student protests and activism, now needs 72 hours notice if you want to put up a poster. If you’re thinking of a simple bake sale, just ask ACAR who got shooed away from Eastern Avenue to Parramatta Road for selling cookies to raise funds for a family in Gaza.
Essential Survival Tips
- Learn the art of gay walking (speed walking). It deters people from approaching you with flyers.
- If you don’t understand the content, neither does half your class.
- NEVER chat in hallway bottlenecks. You will be someone’s villain origin story.
- Download the USyd app: it’s actually useful for finding rooms (when it works).
- Save your timetable as your phone background during Week 1.
- Always keep a charger with you. You’ll never know when you need it! Yes, campus food is overpriced, but you’ll buy it anyway.
- Try and participate in tutorials. Your tutors will appreciate any answer over deafening silence, even if you’re wildly wrong because your tutor is tired of talking to themselves.
Ultimately, university is its own beast. Leave your ego behind as it takes time and effort to figure out how you learn best. Think of it as character development: painful but necessary.Embrace the chaos, own your mistakes, and remember: it’s not about avoiding embarrassment, it’s about handling it with style.
P.S.: Please walk on your left, I would very much appreciate it.
