Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!

In late 1999 I was sitting in a classroom. When the bell rang I was one of the last to finish gathering my stuff (and 10 years on I am still to perfect the art of the quick getaway, somehow if I sit somewhere for more than half an hour my stuff just spreads) Ms Morrison, my year 10 history teacher asked me to remain behind for a moment. I did so, feeling slightly nervous although I'd done nothing wrong. She told me she thought I was one of the cleverest students in the year, she told me I could go places. She suggested the first of those places be the University of Melbourne for the MUSU Summer School to give me a head start at VCE. I looked at the black and white poster oF a smiling cartoon star which she gave me and decided, what the hell? It wasn't like I had anything planned over the summer holidays.

My parents were more than happy to send me, it turned out mum had been a student at the very first MUSU Summer School in the 1970s. Mum even gave me an allowance of $10 a day- a small fortune to a 16 year old used to bringing lunch from home. I think Mum knew I'd been a bit down over the summer, I'd had a fight with thesmartidiot early on in the holidays and though we'd made up things wern't quite right- probably because we weren't at school and forced to make up properly. I'd spent a lot of time on my own, alternating writing, swimming at the RAAF pool and reading the three Harry Potter books which had been published by then.

The very first day of Summer School I got on the wrong tram. It's funny to think of now, but back then I'd only been in the city by myself a handful of times, so I mistook Elizabeth St for Swanston st and got on the 57, thinking that as my parents had said every tram on Swanston st went to Melbourne Uni I'd be okay, imagine a little outer suburb girl's panic when the damn thing turned left at the Queen Vic Markets. Luckily the tram driver was friendly and pointed my in the right direction, and I'd left myself so much time I was still early.

I walked up Tin Alley to North Court- it was packed. As I stared at the 200 odd people milling around it hit me- I had signed myself up for two weeks of constant socialising with strangers. Oh dear God. People! I didn't really like people! People weren't interested in the same things as me (and, I thought snobbishly, people wern't really interesting). Also, lurking below the misanthropy and intellectual snobbery was intense shyness. A lot of people seemed to be there with friends, in fact, no one else seemed to have been so stupid as to sign up on their own. How was I supposed to find anyone to talk to? I grabbed my paperback out of my bag, sat down and furiously started reading so no one thought I was just standing on my own like a loser.

The tutors got up on the stage set up opposite what is now Bluzone but was then Caffine and started introducing themselves. I couldn't really hear them properly, the pa system was shit, but I liked the funky clothes they were wearing, and the fact that the guys all had long hair. One guy in particular caught my attention, I thought he looked a little like Dave Lister which made me smile. He was the English Director it turned out, fin.

Later in the day we were all taken to a lecture theatre, thinking back now it was probably in Old Arts. The tutors put on a skit that meant that until I actually started uni itself I always thought of thekit as the Great Gatsby and deathbyshinies as Ginger Spice.

The next two weeks were a revelation. I spoke to "adults", people in a position of authority over me and they spoke to me as an equal. Nobody tried to shut me up when I wanted to discuss the recent referendum, in fact they were happy to talk about it with me, and even if they disagreed with my stance that Australia should have become a republic they were interested in my point of view and interested in debating and discussing the issue. I found people as uninhibited by the strict conventions of teenage socialising as myself, people willing to make fools of themselves and give things a go for fun. I was shocked, then made curious, by one of my literature tutors who happily stretched out on the floor while leading a class discussion, exposing her hairy legs without even seeming aware of it or scared that people would tease her (I actually think this might have been vassilissa but I'm not sure). I discovered other secondary students who were taking drama or theatre studies not as a bludge subject but because they actually wanted to learn about these things. I found a boy my own age who was willing to discuss poetry and Shakespeare and made friends with him and his friends, forming a small group by the end of the first week. That boy was doesthemagkdrgn. One of the people in our small group was knave_scurvy.

In the second week I skipped a few classes, instead I wandered around the campus, and around the city. I poked about in the library, I played UNO on 2nd floor. I spent time with my new friends and enjoyed the novelty of being "cool". I was introduced to a somewhat sanitised version of uni life and very much liked what I was experiencing. I asked someone out for the first time, and it went very well.

I got back to school afterwards and it was coming down to earth with a thump. After two weeks of the kind of study and people I felt comfortable with it was depressing that nothing was different at school. I became determined to get out, to get back.

This was all ten years ago now. Ten years ago to the day I was running around campus, discovering all it offered. I look back now on those two weeks as the start of my early adult life. If it weren't for them I wouldn't have studied so hard, I wouldn't have wanted to get into the university of Melbourne no matter what. I wouldn't have known that I had the ability to build close friendships with total strangers over a few short weeks. Once I did get into uni, if I had not gone to summer school I wouldn't have thought of the Mary Cooke lounge on the 2nd floor of Union House as a haven, and I wouldn't have discovered the awesome people there. I wouldn't have met impostinator or laurenmitchell or anyone. I wouldn't have had the courage (or the reason) to go up to fin or deathbyshines or thekit and say "Hey, I know you!" No FAS, CHAS, FOUL, MUCS, boat racing, goth clubbing, Subject to Change... I wouldn't have been feeling a bit bummed that I was the only one of my group of friends from Summer School to come back apart from knave_scurvy who was doing a different degree, and wandered into the introductory lecture on Classics just so I had somewhere to sit, and if I hadn't done that then... no MUCAAS for me, no Omniprop, no UHANS, no mc_shamo... the mind boggles, or at least, mine does.

When Ms Morrison suggested I go to MUSU Summer School 2000 I doubt she had any idea what a huge impact it would have on me. Looking back ten years later it was a turning point in my life, a turning I'm extraordinarily grateful it took. I'm grateful to her, and to all the tutors and students and people who made up those two weeks.

There was a show on the ABC about ten years ago. It was Australian, and was about a bunch of young adults (and possibly teens, not sure, but they all seemed really OLD to me at the time) who'd started a radio station called RAW FM. They played cool music, mid-90s Triple J stuff (funny that, being on the ABC!)

The internet has failed me, I can find only elusive references to it.

I remember I really liked it, it was on late at night, and my parents didn't want me watching it because it had words like fuck and cock in the script. There was a girl with short, blonde spiky hair, and a guy who was dark and broody, and a young gay guy called Mark.

WHAT WAS IT CALLED???!

I've got a feeling it wasn't called "Raw FM", which is the only name I can remember associating with it, because as I said, the internet is largley silent on that point. All I got was a forum for an actual station called Raw FM, on which someone said "Hey, wasn't that the radio station in a 90s tv show?"

This is bugging me.