This feels weird. I’m starting a new semester at RMIT for the first time in two years. What has made the return even stranger is the recent developments of the campus – it was still being restructured and renovated when I was last here. Yet whilst there has been a little change in the physical structures, the atmosphere and excitement to be here from everyone is exactly the same, possibly even greater than last time I was here.

I’m a little apprehensive about coming back to uni, admittedly. All the people I had become friends with coming into the course have all graduated now. I find myself in a situation where I don’t really know anyone and therefore somewhat desperate to meet new people. There are parallels in that aspect to my first year to be honest. The only thing different is the fact that unlike first year, there are much more established friendship groups and, perhaps I am overthinking it, I don’t know the rigidity of those relationships. It will be interesting to see how I fare.

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As far as the new studio, it’s called Sacred Place and as far as I have been able to make out, it concerns the relationship between one’s genesis of a memory to the place associated with it. Robbie Rowlands, our teacher for the semester, was interested in exploring the depths of our earliest memories and we went round as a class explaining our own memories. I recall being very young, say three or four years old, and playing the piano in my living room and having such a strong connection to it, despite not really knowing how to play it. It was informed by the early development of senses like touch, smell and sound – the felt of the keys hitting and the wood creaking. I can so vividly remember it, and recalling it made me quite nostalgic. I’m very much looking forward to this semester, both in terms of trying to discover what it is that makes memories so potent, and hopefully going about in making some new memories with new people.