Monash General Chat

[aes_999]

btw guys, what is the best way to volunteer at monash ? Looking to spice up my resume

Join stuff. Looks like you're a comm / eng. student. I don't know about eng. opportunities, but since you're comm., do the PAL program. I've been a part of their ambassadors program last year, and it was pretty fun. You go to camp before semester 1 starts and meet the other people that have signed up. Throughout the year you get to mentor 1st year students, plus help out at O - week and Open Day. It's a good thing to put to say that you've been helping out at the faculty.

Applications for Ambassadors and Leaders program open August or Sep. from what I remember. I highly recommend you join. I myself will be applying for next year's Leaders program

http://www.buseco.monash.edu.au/student/pal/ambassadors/

[achre]

So basically, for an ongoing assessment piece I have this semester I need to be able to access a couple of newspapers that are behind pay-walls. (Wall Street Journal & The Financial Times, specifically)

The instructions for the assignment say that "the full content of these sources are behind pay walls. For full access, you must log in through lib.monash.edu.au", but I've been fiddling around with the monash uni online library since last night and I can't seem to find either of them. Anyone know how to get access to subscription newspaper services using your student details?

[slothpomba]

Try here (http://www.monash.edu.au/library/databases/news.html). Yes, i know its outdated, i prefer it over the current page though. Maybe Mediascan or newsbank will work for you.

[duhherro]

Cheers for the reply alond and aes! PAL looks good but don't think i can go to the camps which means i can't join as stated haha. Thinking of hoping to get volunteering at MSA events or monash events in general !

[pi]

If the JMSS kids in the Law Lib could shut up, that'd be great. You can even hear them from other floors discussing their SACs and whatnot. Wish I didn't forget my headphones when I was there earlier

[aes_999]

Direct your concerns to Stalkerspace. Thank you come again.

[McFleurry]

I gotta say though, I did see one of them with an AN study guide...

[ninwa]

If the JMSS kids in the Law Lib could shut up, that'd be great. You can even hear them from other floors discussing their SACs and whatnot. Wish I didn't forget my headphones when I was there earlier

OH NO, NOT THE LAW LIBRARY TOO!

[eeps]

Join stuff. Looks like you're a comm / eng. student. I don't know about eng. opportunities, but since you're comm., do the PAL program. I've been a part of their ambassadors program last year, and it was pretty fun. You go to camp before semester 1 starts and meet the other people that have signed up. Throughout the year you get to mentor 1st year students, plus help out at O - week and Open Day. It's a good thing to put to say that you've been helping out at the faculty.

Applications for Ambassadors and Leaders program open August or Sep. from what I remember. I highly recommend you join. I myself will be applying for next year's Leaders program

http://www.buseco.monash.edu.au/student/pal/ambassadors/

Agree with this. To add onto this, getting involved within your own faculty can open up doors and other opportunities and it also helps to build relationships with faculty staff and other students in general (coincidentally, how I met aes_999). The Leaders program doesn't have a camp, but you have to be in your final year or close enough to graduating to be involved in that particular program. The more different and wide-ranging your experiences are, the better. It can be quite useful when in graduate and/or vacationer interview situations. Perhaps consider entering into competitions through your faculty or Monash as well, it's not volunteering per se, but it's a good way to apply your skills to something practical and a chance to meet other students.

[slothpomba]

OH NO, NOT THE LAW LIBRARY TOO!

They need a bouncer at the door.

[Chazef]

Does anybody know the full story behind all the firetrucks and ambos at clayton today right near the bus loop? I walked up and saw some guy in a crawl position on the ground with his hands clamped together and his head weighing down and he was just still, and the guys were trying to get him onto a stretcher. When he got up it was revealed that he had been crying. I asked somebody what happened and they said a gasoline tank had exploded and the guy had been hit in the nuts. Can anybody clarify this? It really was a bizarre sight.

[eeps]

Start of every semester for a Commerce/Business student, where online copies or versions of textbooks are not available:

>In Week 1 lecture lecturer says buy textbook
>Textbook comes out with new edition
>Textbook lecturer says to buy just happens to be written or co-authored by lecturer
>$100000 goes down the drain asdfghjkl
>Don’t use it the whole semester
>Gets like 1% of money spent on textbooks back on Monash SellYourSpace and/or Marketplace in the end
>Repeat

The struggle is real.

[Chazef]

how often is it necessary to buy the textbook? Surely you can get by without it, especially when the lecturer co-authored it meaning it's likely there's another book out there with a huge content overlap. And if it's piratable you can take the stance that education should be free, or that you'll pay the author/publisher back in an anonymous cash donation once you become rich of the sweet sweet knowledge from the textbook.

Come to think of it, I think lecturers shouldn't be allowed to prescribe a book they authored or co-authored, because it allows for financial exploitation (except for maybe very specific subjects)

[slothpomba]

Does anybody know the full story behind all the firetrucks and ambos at clayton today right near the bus loop? I walked up and saw some guy in a crawl position on the ground with his hands clamped together and his head weighing down and he was just still, and the guys were trying to get him onto a stretcher. When he got up it was revealed that he had been crying. I asked somebody what happened and they said a gasoline tank had exploded and the guy had been hit in the nuts. Can anybody clarify this? It really was a bizarre sight.

Cant tell if legit story or elaborate, refined 10/10 troll..

Come to think of it, I think lecturers shouldn't be allowed to prescribe a book they authored or co-authored, because it allows for financial exploitation (except for maybe very specific subjects)

The flipside is that they may see a deficiency with existing books and author a book *exactly* to their specifications. In the case of units with books authored by the lecturer, the unit has very closely mirrored the structure of the book (chaper 1, week 1, chapter 2, week 2, etc). In this regard it might actually be closer to course notes or a reader than a textbook (even though in all cases it was a legit published textbook).

Either way they would have probably authored a book, the only variable is whether they told their students to buy it. If they wrote it, they likely think its the bees knees and want their students to have it anyway.

Most of the time you can get away without the textbook imo, especially if you have PDF copies or library access. I've never really had a subject where you need daily textbook access.

[Professor Polonsky]

Lecturers get about $2-10 in royalties on each book sold. But let's go with $10.

Now, let's suppose that it's a massive first-year unit. The largest at Monash are about 800 students.

So at most, our lecturer can make $8000 out of prescribing their own textbook. And that's assuming a massive first-year core unit, no more than one co-author, and every single student buying the textbook, and getting it new.

Writing a book is really hard work. It takes up considerable time. Publication of an article in a journal can be worth some thousands of dollars for each year after publication, as an alternative to writing the textbook.

Furthermore, textbooks usually don't make any money (and thus are not likely to come to print) unless there is demand for them from several institutions. They'd have written it independently of their ability to prescribe it. And in the large scheme of things, prescribing it would only represent a fraction of what they'd make out of it.

Bottom-line: There may be a conflict-of-interest, but for the most part, the money lecturers make out of writing and prescribing their own textbooks is minor. It's unlikely to be some grand conspiracy to deprive you of your money; rather, they likely would have written it anyway and decided to prescribe it since they are familiar with it.

Oh, and there can be numerous advantages of the lecturer writing the material.