What a mess, what a marvel

EDITOR'S NOTE: This was supposed to be published directly after the last entry, but Blogger decided this just wasn't, apparently, the done thing. Anyway...

Our Director Writes;



Diary of a Mature Student: Semester 2, Week 2; Addendum



Of course, the last entry looks incredibly churlish. But hopefully the point gets across.



Because the course I'm doing doesn't quite fill out the course units spectrum, we get plunked into other courses from other fields with relative impunity sometimes. Last year we were left in a course slightly to basic for the field students and slightly too advanced for our course.



This year, they've stuck us in a room with two hundred other students from a very popular course and, well, just left us to get on with it. I say us; I recognised something like ten out of the two hundred as being from my course, so there's either been a prodigious drop-off rate or something odd's going on.



The other thing is that it's a course that my previous degree was in. I don't plan to mention this at any point during the proceedings, because how the hell does that work? "Hi, I'm Eton, and I'm already qualified in this area - I'm just doing this for the laughs."



Kind of funny, kind of... Well... Patronising.



What was kind of funny, however, was being - thanks to a 66% dropout rate in the male student population of my seminar group - the only person of a male persuasion there.



Me.



The lecturer (a lovely lady, for those keeping score.)



Twenty-one eighteen-and-nineteen year old girls.



Hmm.



In all total honesty; what exactly does one do in that situation?



I opted for sitting fairly quietly and letting them all get on with it, because frankly it seemed like the safest option. Besides which, what exactly would I have to offer someone from the generation before me other than a searing insight into a time before downloadable content?



It's one of those tricky social situations. For I am not a particularly manly man's man; I'm a geek, and proud of it. Hell, you have to be a bit of a geek to study Film. They put it in the UCAS requirements and everything. And god knows I don't want to end up some strange Steve Buscemi-a-like character in the class. So contributing occasionally but otherwise sitting quietly seems to be, for me, the way forward.