Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student: NewSemesterRestartGO!
And so, it all kicks off again this week, for another nine eight seven months of hard work, intensive study, and rich personal rewards.
Well, for some people, at least.
Whether it's particularly intentional or not, a university class is like a handy microcosm of life. For every forty students, thirty will turn up on time. Twenty of those will turn up on time and, crucially, in the right place. Ten of them - conversatively - will turn up on time, in the right place, and with the course materials. Because I am old, and therefore worry about things like punctuality and preparation, I'm one of these ten, which isn't as much of a comfort as it should be.
Still, it's nice to be back, even if it feels like I've been back since, oh, say, September, given that I've been on campus once or twice a week just to remind myself that I would be going back. This was important, given the paucity of summer work and the need to be doing something. But I feel like sometimes I'm happier if there's something to complain about - whether it's not having work to do, or whether the work I do have to do is worthwhile, or how it's organised.... Blah, blah, blah.
A case in point; it's week zero, i.e. introduction week, and already things are being changed around. Monday's lecture is now on a Tuesday morning, Friday's lecture is now on Wednesday night - and night lectures are a special fun all to theirselves, let's be fair now - and Tuesday's lecture - well, Tuesday's lecture is still on a Tuesday. So that's nice. Heaven forfend that the published hours on the syllabus remain static, because this is a forward-thinking institution with change at it's core. Which is, naturally, another thing...
The entire campus is being rebuilt. Which is a good thing for future generations of students, because it means bugger-all to my year except disruption and other such fun concepts. I say this literally because the work being undertaken at the moment will not even be completed until after my (adopted) generation graduates. So... Good luck, future students!
But this is all just wind through the engine, because, well, it's good to be back, and see people I haven't seen since the start of the Long Hot Summer, and it's good to be studying and doing something again, so... I figure I should stop complaining just to complain and complain about something worth complaining about, such as the repetition of the word complain...
Our Director writes:
Diary of a Mature Student: T-2 weeks until kiss kiss, bang bang
... Or not.
It's fun learning new things. This weekend, I have learnt;
- That when the petrol guage on the car pings orange, you have more time than you might think to refill before everything goes wrong. You have no idea how good it was to find this out.
- It takes a surprisingly long time to paint someone's entire head white.
- A corrolary to this; you don't need to paint the entire head white, especially when you're using a hood. Just work out where the hood will land, demarcate it and only paint what you need.
- I have really, really, really good friends, as evidenced by letting me paint their head white.
It was for a good reason. Really. If you're going to make a homage to The Seventh Seal, then you need a Death / Grim Reaper. And, with luck, I will be making a scene in a few weeks that homages - and I know there should be an accent in there somewhere, bút héy - the portayal of Death within the original film.
So I thought it a good idea to get some practice at the whole facepainting thing, having never done it before. And now I know that
- Less is more
- White paint shows up nicely on camera
- A bald cap does make a person look like an advert for condoms
- and Mr Hairdryer Is Not Your Friend.
I am looking forward to going back - and if I keep repeating that, I'll start to believe it more and more, I hope - but it's a little strange. The first taste of returning to higher education was intoxicating, and strange, and amazing, because I was able to use the skills I've spent years obtaining in my job to do something I wanted to do, instead of mollycoddling recalcitrant regulatory staff.
The second year is more real, physically and mentally, because now the marks actually start to matter. In the first year, everyone's having fun because the marks are immaterial. Now, things - and people - matter. This is not a bad thing. It's just... different.
Granted, I remember my second year from my last merry-go-round with something less than fondness, because the transition from Not Having To Give A Shit to Having To Care Muchly was not handled gracefully on my part or the tutor's parts. There is a certain amount of winnowing and horse trading that goes on between year one and two; people drop out, switch courses, switch modules, switch paths etc, in the hope that by year three they know exactly that the hell they want out of the place. So Year Two is just as transitional as any other year - in Year One you transition into education, in Year Two you transition into seriousness, and in Year Three you start to transition out into The Real World.
Which is not a fun place, script kiddies, mark my words...
Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student: Year Two @ T-3 weeks, +/-
When I was +/- 16 years old, a parental unit gave me a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. At the time, I thought this was a rare moment of intuition, in giving me something that would show me journalism wasn't just people in offices writing articles; sometimes, it seemed, the journalist became part of the story, or, in extreme cases, was the story.
Later, I found out that they'd picked it at random, thinking I might like it. Life is like that, sometimes.
So I find myself, on a sunny, blue-skyed autumn morning, contemplating what Thompson called - I believe - The Great Magnet. The idea is that the magnet controls the flow of our lives, and when we travel towards the magnet's attraction, things flow smoothly; if we choose - knowingly or unknowingly - to fight the attractive force of The Great Magnet, we're merely placing rocks in the stream of our lives, futilely trying to break an unbreakable pull.
The last part of that last sentence is 
a fairly apt summary of this summer. Granted, I didn't expect to find the perfect part-time job that utilised my skills while providing a steady income, but I applied for, oh, say, everything locally, and only received one callback. However, because of this, the garage has never been more organised, the house has 60% less clutter and crap knocking around the place, and I still feel annoyed because I appear to be defying the magnet's flow without even consciously realising it.
This has led to a fairly unique symptom that I've experienced once or twice before; suddenly, nobody responds to any attempts at contact. Emails go unanswered, phone calls too - or fobbed off, which is, curiously, worse; even unsolicited email gets in on the act too, with messages from people I'd quite happily not hear from popping up of a Thursday afternoon, bringing with them dire tidings and annoyance.
It's a fairly unique phenomnenom - and that's a word I can't spell as well as say, right there - and it's always curious when it happens, a kind of electronic susurrus. Suddenly you're on a becalmed, idyllic but irritating island where nothing, apparently, can reach you.
In some ways, it makes a kind of sense when it comes to fellow students, because the summertime is traditionally a way of getting away from everything, and emails serve as an unwelcome reminder of the existence of the place you have to go back to in, oh, say, five months. Which is partly why I didn't start emailing until a month beforehand, to minimise the tension convention of remembering you have to actually, y'know, complete another two years of this thing they call 'study' before you enter the heady world of graduate unemployment.
And if that sounds like a negative assessment, take a look at the world at the moment and you might start to think that everything has a negative assessment.
Still, of course, there are worse things to complain about than people not responding to any means of contact. So... Why worry?
Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student: Another Weekend, Another Planet
So there have been a few good things about this summer, one of which is due to take place tomorrow.
But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous.
Tomorrow, you see, two good friends are (finally!) getting married. And I mean it when I say they're good friends, because as well as being friends, they're good people (by my estimation, so hey, your mileage may vary) and they're beacons of sensibility in my otherwise slightly different world.
They are also touchstones for my last time on the merry-go-round, being as we studied for the same degree at the same time - although thanks to my involuntary sabbatical year, I started with one of them and graduated with the other, their having started their studies a year apart. So it's nice to have links to the past that I treasure rather than avoid, frankly, because we all have things we've said or done that we'd rather stayed buried. Such, as they say, is life.
The reason I'm nervous (I keep wanting to say a little nervous, but that would be an economical untruth) is because there's the vague possibility that An Ex will also be there. And let's bear in mind the crushing stupidity of this, because we're (I think) the same age, so we've both grown up, matured, moved on, got some life experience, yadda yadda ya... But it's still nervous-making, all the same, because of the uncertainty of how I'd feel around her, and possibly even how she'd feel around me.
So here's a lesson for the students of today; relationships, like it or not, can have shelf lives. Yes, true love is possible - and part of me hopes it's even probable, given the way of the world - and you might meet the person you stay with and love for the rest of your life.
Then again, you might not. So with the wedding - as a social engagement - upcoming, I've been devoting more thought than I would have liked to this whole thing. The conclusion I've come to is that this relationship of the past had a shelf-life of six months - a month and a half of flirtation, three months of romantic engagement, and a month and a half of disentanglement - and that this was then stretched over the course of two years, to both our detriment, because the flirtation took six months, and then once the six months of thinly-stretched romanticism was done with, I made her life difficult for another six, and she made mine difficult for another six after that, until, finally, it was over. Technically, it was over after eighteen months, but really, don't ask about the last six months, because god knows I won't talk about it.
So there's the prospect of a spade being struck into the dirt of my past, and I really really really don't want it getting in the way of anything tomorrow, so I'm just going to have to work on this one for a while, realistically - oh, say, another eighteen hours?
Then again, I love a deadline.
Tomorrow will be a beautiful reaffirment of the love that two people I care for have for each other. And that is that.
So... There!
Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student: Year Two, T-Five Weeks
Technically, the university is open for business students again from today, although I'm not sure if you could tell - the only students who I've met on campus are haggard, worried-looking ones with a burning need to submit their dissertation on time. Rarely have I seen any people looking more hunted than these, waiting on the library opening hours to print and the hurrying to the media shop to bind the culmination of their work.
Looking at them, I'm thinking; this is probably me in another two years' time. I like to think that I'll have finished the dissertation before the deadline, had it proofread, got it bound and submitted it a day or two early. I like to think this, but I know it's patently not true; I'm a creature of deadlines, and always have been. I do what is arguably my 'best work' - quotes intentional - right up against the final reckoning.
This is why the summer break - the best part of five months - rankles and annoys. Don't get me wrong - I'm sure the Young People Of Today appreciate a six months on / six months off structure, because otherwise, bless them, they might start to feel a little stressed.
But when you're faced with five months with literally nothing to do, tempers can get a little frayed.
I want to be working. I don't mind if it's a bad little part-time job that pays just enough to keep my car running and pay for food. But there's nothing going out there at the moment, and it's maddening. I would understand the long break more if there was anything to do academically, but the courses that involve actually watching films don't seem to publish their viewing schedules - otherwise those pesky students might take the initiative and study the films before term starts, rather than turn up to the scheduled screenings that suit nobody other than the ones living within fifteen minutes' walk of the campus.
... Granted, this means everyone other than mature students, and even then some of them live near campus, but for the commuters... Eesh.
So this has been a Long Hot Summer
, at the end of which the garage will be half as full and - shock horror - painted, the loft will be nearly empty and possibly even panelled, and, strangely, my attention span seems to be returning to the point where next year may be just that little bit less ADHD.
Let's unpack that last comment. If you know me, then you know I've always been hyperactive. A good friend summarised it in basic terms where I'm fine as long as someone gives me a metaphorical slap to bring me down to earth. So now imagine how five months without too much to do might impact psychologically.
Here's the weird thing, though - immediately upon starting a course on Film, my ability to watch an entire film began to suffer. This isn't new - previously, though, it had been related to music, in that occasionally I found it difficult to listen to a whole track on a CD while travelling, a source of no little irritation for some friends. But to be unable to comfortably sit through a film was a new one; I'd find myself wandering off, reading, playing games on my mobile phone, and occasionally fast-forwarding through to near the end, the equivalent of reading the last chapter of a book and just as asinine.
Over the last few weeks, however, this seems to have abated, to the point where I actually started actively wanting to see films again. A case in point; Centurion
, which I actively went out and sought over the weekend for no discernible reason other than a respect for Neil Marshall.
Let's reminisce for a moment. A few years ago, upon graduating from the first merry-go-round, I moved home with a degree I had struggled through and a nascent love for film that I had no idea how to practically use or train. A little lost, and a little confused, I ended up buying Dog Soldiers
on DVD for no real reason other than the cover intrigued me and the premise was solid; Squaddies versus werewolves - what more do you want?
Bear in mind that at that point I hadn't seen any of the Evil Dead films - I know, philistine, right? - or any low-budget horror films in particular that I can remember. Films for me at the time were foreign cinema (don't ask) or the big-budget hollywood films that played at the mainstream cinemas, including the early experiments into second-wave superhero films by Marvel (Hulk, and Daredevil, both of which I saw in the cinema at the time, although please, please see the Directors' Cut of Daredevil if you've only seen the original release... There's an entire subplot with Coolio that was cut from the theatrical release, and less cheesy fireside lovemaking...)
Anyway. So Dog Soldiers was a bit of a revelation, in terms of film. By definition, all British films are low-budget when compared with Hollywood productions, but this film did a lot with a little to the point where instead of CGI, the werewolves looked better as practical costumes and well-edited set-pieces. This was the first true application I saw of Robert Rodriguez's 'Money Hose' theory, in that if you have a huge budget, you just turn the hose on any problems and wash them away with money, but if you have no money, you have to solve the problems creatively rather than financially.
Like I say, kind of a revelation.
If this is rambling, it's because I want to salvage something positive from a long summer of nothing but domesticity and applying for part-time work only to be knocked back in favour of under-16s who can be paid 80p less per hour on the minimum wage. Finally, I have an attention span where previously there was just ADHD.
Look out, world.
