It won't be very long - you will look for me, and I'll be gone

Diary of a Mature Student: Some Kind Of Conclusion

An hour ago, as I stood outside, the sun had set but the sky was not quite dark, and there was a pleasant breeze. It felt like a perfect moment, crystallised for the briefest instant.

In the last couple of weeks, I've put in several fourteen-to-sixteen hour days.

I've spent hour upon hour working on the same film clips in the same timeline for the same objective.

On top of this, I spent many hours on a personal project that will contribute nothing other than a vague sense of professionalism to the proceedings.

Thanks to all this, my body clock appears to have reset itself to Samoan time; I've not slept more than five hours a night (down from the usual eight to nine) for three nights now, having seen the sun rise two days in a row.

This has been an off-the-books disaster of a seminar, for various reasons. The main reason for this is Practical Filmmaking Two. But let's decompress that.

Practical Filmmaking Two is a module for next year. It offers students the chance to create their own short film project, narrative or documentary, up to a length of twenty minutes. It is, in short, (relative) creative freedom to do something we're being taught, and primed, to do.

Practical Filmmaking Two has a fucking laundry list of prerequisites.

To begin with, in your first year you have to have taken Screenwriting One. This is less to have done the course - Screenwriting One is fifteen weeks of purgatory with no practical outcome - but more because you have to take Screenwriting One in order to take Screenwriting Two in your second year.

Screenwriting Two is no less an exercise in frustration and mundanity. But it's important, because without that, you can't get on Practical Filmmaking One, which is, you've guessed it, the prerequisite for PF2.

Meanwhile, you also have to take an unrelated course - Technical Filmmaking Two - (don't worry, you don't have to have passed TF1) - at the same time as PF1.

So in order to take a single module to make your own short film, you have to take SW1, SW2, PF1 and TF1.

PF1 has just finished, and the only conceivable reason - having just had the experience - that anyone would ever, ever take it is to do PF2. It feels oddly like I've just passed a gang initiation or a fraternity hazing that nobody had the good manners to declare was even going on.

Meanwhile, at the hall of justice my admittedly low contributions to extracurricular work have been systematically airbrushed out of the picture in the name of good press.

This means that I leave this semester with a fifteen minute technical exercise - the filmmaking equivalent of measuring your dick in a public place - two lackadaisical music videos, and a powerful wish to take the film theory path instead of the practical path, strewn as the latter is with bullshit, badly-run courses, and a basic inability to actually let filmmakers be creative in any way possible.

And now, just for laughs, there's a five month break before the next year during one of the worst times for employment possible, where the choices are either hibernate or sell my dignity to the Jobcenter Plus for dole money.

When I stood outside, earlier, in the crisp, perfect evening breeze, I felt a momentary peacefulness, because all the shit that I and my fellow students have had to put up with is over, now, for another twenty weeks.

Now, I'm thinking; next year, students are going to pay over 250% what I pay at the moment for tuition fees. If they have to take SW1, SW2, PF1, and TF1 just to have the opportunity to make their own films, then God help them, frankly.

I still maintain my position that this course, right now, is cheaper than equipment hire and comes with a pre-built contacts creation engine, a large, mostly free-to-use set for a campus, and access to premium software. But when, for this most recent semester, the course doesn't actually count as a tangible benefit to attending the university, where does that leave you, exactly?