Very Very Good News

On September 25th 2015, 193 world leaders unanimously committed to 17 Goals for their countries to achieve by 2030. The list of goals aims to address human suffering by alleviating poverty, hunger, war and environmental disaster.

No poverty

No hunger

Good health

Quality education

Gender equality

Clean water and sanitation

Renewable energy

Good jobs and economic growth

Innovation and infrastructure

Reduced inequalities

Sustainable cities and communities

Responsible consumption

Climate action

Life below water

Life on land

Peace and justice

Partnership for the goals

With the ongoing student protests in South Africa, it’s never been clearer that we as students are the future and have the power to make changes in our countries. The #feesmustfall campaign is seeking to make education accessible for all which falls under goal number 4 (quality, accessible education). Since Vega is a private institution, it did not take part in the #feesmustfall campaign but that doesn’t mean we can’t take part in others.

The goals each represent an easily identifiable activism movement. If every student devoted some time to one goal that they cared about and encouraged their peers to do the same, we could create student outreach programs. Some of the goals can be helped by careful consumption, some by monetary donation and others with activism. Each movement has a range of needs that students can fulfil and our college is a great source of young communicators for outreach projects.

Each goal is carefully spelled out on the global goals websitewith links to resources on helping towards each individual goal.

Shiela and Kerdon are back and now they’re on  safari. Find out what wildlife awaits you on the Vega campus 

Many students were expected an exhilirating experience that was promised to each and every student when Vega gave a speech promoting the institution.The situation raises a question to "Was Vega doing this all for the money and that's it ?" , well 80% of the students may agree, which is probably why most students plan to leave the institution and go else where. It's funny how Vega promotes its Vega Healthy Brand Criteria specifically " A healthy brand is transparent & lives up to all its promises " yet they're doing the totally opposite. Students feel that the college focuses more on theory rather than practicals.  Now we may only hope that Vega makes a change, be more lively or they will loose more students !

Most universities across South Africa are being shut down, due to the 10,8% fee increase which will be implemented by 2016. Students have started protesting peacefully, although there have been a few violent protests that have led to the involvement of the police.

We interviewed a few students that have been involved in the protest of having their fees dropped.  A UCT student that was involved in a peaceful strike explained that during the peaceful protest, students were tear gassed, had stun grenades thrown at them and were threatened with deadly weapons by policemen. This seems to be a common occurrence that is portrayed in the media throughout governmental educational institutions across the country.

It is evident that the policemen are merely pawns for the government by following strict instructions, even if it means using violent acts to break up what is clearly a peaceful, non-violent protest.

Students at these universities feel that it is necessary to conduct these protests, they attend government institutions but by 2016 they will be paying the same fees that students pay at private institutions yet they aren’t given the same opportunities as those in private institutions. Most students that attend these universities are working through their years of studying in order to be able to afford tertiary education and by attending a government institution it should be one that is affordable and subsidised by government in order to advance and educate our country, by not exploiting students by raising fees that soon becomes exorbitant.

As a young chicken, attending first year can come with many difficulties. One of them mainly being, unable to find parking, anywhere.

Waking up at 5:00 AM , finding yourself in an absolute hurry to get to Vega before 6am is one of the norms, especially if you have a lecture at 9.  Many of us can agree to this struggle as no matter how early you wake up and get to Vega, there will still be no parking.   

There is no life of the luxury for the young chickens, it one of the ways of being a Vega student. Threats will be thrown your way if you park along a wall. It will cause chaos due to the fact that the other cars have to go reverse up a one way, which could lead to possible key marks down the side of your car, so a word of advice, rather park your car in the middle of a freeway. It’s safer.

Some Veganites share their stories and opinions of their Orientation week at Vega

At the beginning of the month, Vega School and Design School hosted an event whereby students could attend and participate in showcasing their drawing and artistic skills.This event was hosted on Thursday, 1 October 2015 at 6:00pm at design school (70 Armstrong Ave La Lucia).Approximately 200 people attended the event, however there was not enough space for everyone to sit and draw on the tables, in true Vega fashion it wasn’t likely there would be such a great turn out, which left many people sitting either on the floor or on a chair.

The theme for the evening was be “Doodle by Lantern Light”. it worked like this: studentswere invited to come along, have a beer/coffee, hangout and doodle whatever you like on an A5 piece of paper (or whatever surface you like as long as it was on an A5 sized paper). This artwork then gets collected and sent up to JHB for an inner-city art exhibition where it is sold to raise funds for art education.

What started out as a relaxed setting, soon turned into males competing to be the best, as soon as the “sketch-off” was announced. There was also plenty craft beer and burgers for all the guests, the standard male happy meal.

The drawings from the males also seemed to be more elaborate and exaggerated by comparison to the ladies. The prize for the best drawing for the night were a Sorbet gift card, two craft beers and an Oh3One t-shirt.

It was great entertainment watching the males compete against each other and pushing each other to produce the best work they could in the allocated time.Overall, it was a night for everyone to showcase their talents, and to give back to the art community.

The Vega Culture

Breaking News - Common Sense Stolen

We all do it, it’s a problem and it seldom comes up in lectures. Your navigator briefs you in for next hand in and tells you that you have 4 weeks till due date. You brush it off because 4 weeks is plenty of time to get your project finished and, besides, you still have briefs from other subjects due much sooner. Flash forward to the night before hand in, you’re hastily brewing your 5th cup of coffee and you aren’t anywhere near finished. The threat of procrastination is ever present and is often the reason for poor academic performance and sleep deprivation. Colleges are full of procrastinators and Vega is definitely not an exception.

VVGN recently polled Vega students and found that 9 out of 10 students admitted that their procrastination habits often affected their academic work. The industry that we enter after college is very competitive and only the best portfolios or results make it. We should naturally want to put our best foot forward but procrastination seems to stand in the way of this. Vega students aren’t the only ones in tertiary education that suffer from this problem. Procrastination in universities is endemic but why do students procrastinate?

Many reasons for procrastination are offered. Perfectionism, self-doubt, fear, poor time management, personal problems, finding the project boring and a lack of concentration are all cited as causes of procrastination and avoidance. Dr. Piers Steel, author of The Procrastination Equation, offers another cause of procrastination: "Aside from the cliché that students are more impulsive, in your early 20s you're still developing your pre-frontal cortex, home of the will power".

Whatever the cause, students need help to stop their procrastination habits. There are many methods that are suggested online but the majority boil down to a few key suggestions.

One, break down your briefs into smaller goals and then give yourself deadlines for the goals. Sitting down to try and tackle an entire brief can be overwhelming. Having smaller tasks that you can complete makes the whole project seem less daunting and setting deadlines for these goals makes time management much simpler.

Two, separate work and play, especially at home. You can’t do work without your computer but it’s full of distractions. Make a separate user account specifically for college work with productivity applications that block time wasting websites (Good mobile apps for phones include). Try not to work in the same room that you sleep or relax in and never work in your bed.

Three, applying the Pomodoro technique to your work time helps with concentration. Instead of working in hours long chunks, work for 25 minutes and then take a 5 minute break to walk around and stretch your legs. Every fourth break is 30 minutes.

Finally, forgive yourself. Your lectures ran until 5:30 today and there was no way your attention span could last more than 5 seconds right now. You binge watched that series. You spent 3 hours on facebook. Relax. Worrying about doesn’t help anything. Realise that it’s not sustainable to do this every day and make changes where they’re necessary. You’re going to be okay.

The beginning of the month brought with it a wind of chatter and excitement about the much anticipated event titled ‘Night of a thousand drawings.’

Hyped up on craft beer and testosterone- the male population asserted their dominance via felt tip pens and aggressive graphite strokes. Violently out-doodling one another and parading their A5 master pieces in front of their lesser-beings. Metaphorically butting heads while pinning their works up next to others that they felt challenged their prowess.

What was meant to be a relaxed, fun evening turned into an ‘I AM MAN’ fest. From beginning to end, the maleness of the evening seeped the streamers throughthe host, the cook, the obnoxious guy sitting next to me. I went in expecting to sit and draw with my friends, listen to some calming music and maybe have a cup of coffee, but one of the first announcements made during the evening brought to light the so called “sketch offs” that were going to take place throughout the night. Not backing down from the challenge, the female demographic of the participants dominated the competitions.

While doodles by lantern light were a great idea, the night quickly escalated into just a rowdy social event.  More crafts beers and to go around and less doodles…

Dressing to impress these days is hard! Expectations are high and clothes are expensive- so lets not judge the standard sweats and takkies, even on the best of days.

Nonetheless,  Your clothes can say a whole bunch about you, the way you feel, whether you had your morning coffee.. or not, and it give people a taste of who you are as a person.The way your top falls off your shoulder or how low you pants are sagging, those shoes, wow. And what about the standard  ‘main man’ who has a  comb-over, skinnies and a trench coat. Or the hip to be square ‘main girl’ who dresses to impress, every..single. day- forgive the stereotypical shots.

At Vega there are people from all walks of life, different labels for each group of styles we find. Those who don’t care enough to put in a huge amount of enough and those who have way too much time in the morning, we have them all at Vega.

To order to fully grasp the visual identity of these stylish students of Vega, we need to take  you on the inside of Vega’s creative parameter.

Siko is wearing a coat from Zara

James is dressed in Old Khakhi with a fossil watch and Sebago shoes

Kearn is rocking a kimono from Cotton On and his top and jeans are from Mr Price

Nikita is wearing a leather jacket from Edgars, jeans from witchery and a top from Oh 3 One

Sheila and Kerdon reporting from the cafeteria.

Bringing you food news as it happens...

We have all been there at some point in our lives. Where we have walked into the test venue with a buzzing headache, nauseous ache in the stomach and a pair of sunglasses to dim the blinding light… and lets not forget to mention the bottle of water in hand to keep that dry mouth wet: these are just a few signs of the previous night’s festivities.

If you have not been there yet, I bet you are wondering what its like to write a semester test with a hangover?

Stated by a student of Vega, her exact words were, “Hard. Thought I was going to chunder at the end of it from thinking too much”. If you ever find yourself in this position – do not panic. All you have to do is pray you make it to the end of the test without vomiting. Passing will be least of your worries at the time, which will also help you have free flow of information scribbling onto your page without any sort of doubt that it might be wrong, because all you want to do is just get the hell out of there.

There are perks to writing a semester with a hangover, so don’t beat yourself up if you have decided to enjoy a night out before the test – For one, its is known to help the creative juices flow, so if you don’t even understand a question, you will be able to thumb suck whatever it is that you don’t know and come up with a pretty creative answer that who knows, could be right!

-Julia Wilson-Browne