I suppose I should've expected as much, but the quality of teaching at UWS is appalling…read more That's a little unfair, I guess. Most of the units had great lecturers, excellent tutors, and relevant course material, all in all, I did enjoy the experience. The cafeteria was always well-stocked, the library had up-to-date equipment, there were several computer rooms, the gym was excellent, and I had great access to the tennis and basketball courts. But it had one fatal flaw, which ruined *everything*. Statistics. The most difficult, hard-to-grasp subject I was required to do, and they did not have a tutor! Technically, they did. They had a lecturer who read out some material that was available online, and they had a tutor who would just sit there for an hour silently, expect us to do our own work, and answer the occasional question. There was no interaction, there was no explanation of the topic! It was ridiculous... utterly ridiculous. It boggled the mind that they would let this hardest of subjects go almost completely untaught, unlike the other units. This, of course, resulted in a spectacularly high fail-rate for the unit, and finally they wised up and got a different tutor who actually taught. Too little too late! An oversight of this sort is not redeemable.

With recent State Govt funding cuts, NSW State Records have had to close their city premises, and…read moreso now their only public reading room is in Kingswood. Public transport is possible, but it's not super easy. So, for many people this means facing the gruelling Parramatta Road / M4 slog. So my associations with State Records are inevitably tied up with memories of driving for 3 hours a day in heavy traffic. Ug. Rumour has it that the State Records repository was deliberately built out in Kingswood (in the days before cloud computing), because it was "beyond the bomb blast zone" - so, you know, even if Sydney endured a nuclear winter, at least the government documents would be salvaged, right? I jest, for sure, but as a historian, the State Records is extremely important to me. It's an incredibly rich resource and it's valuable for professionals and amateur family historians alike. This is not really a place to turn up and have a browse. Generally, one comes here with a particular search in mind, and having done a bunch of pre-orders online beforehand. It can be quite convoluted to use the archival searches online, and the archivists working behind the desk range from being extremely helpful and sweet ... to downright prickly and suspicious. The staff have been extremely generous to me, pulling things out of conservation when I wanted to take a look at them, and giving me plenty of space to spread out. It's not a fancy establishment - though it does have a little tea-room with free tea and instant coffee, and styrofoam cups. There are NO food or coffee establishments nearby, so if you're doing a whole-day research trip, it's best to bring your own lunch. Though they usually get visits from lunch trucks and mobile coffee stands. Here's to hoping that the BOF government doesn't cut them any further, and State Records can keep going strong.