I know you like the bad girls, honey, don't you?

DoaMS: Under a Cajun Moon

Right now, I will admit, I am having a time management problem.

This is because, instead of doing the required ten hours of reading per week for one course, followed by the require five hours a week reading for another course, I am attempting to 'subject specialise' - i.e. reread the reading that I'm actually going to be writing my essay on - instead of keeping current.

This is bad, I know.

I used to have, for want of a better word, a 'process'. Between the last go on the degree merry-go-round and now, I studied with a distance-learning organisation that may have previously been mentioned in glowing terms. To begin with, however, this meant studying at the same time as working full-time, and for each assignment I was given a day's study leave, which I bolstered with a day of annual leave, which meant I gave myself two days to write postgraduate level essays.

Surprisingly, this worked out fairly well, because, as I said, I had a process. In the week running up to the deadline, I would try to do the research, isolate the quotations, etc, and generally get an idea of what need to be done. On Essay Day One, I would drink fireside tea (a version of rooibos tea with some cloves and other herbs mixed in that I have since run out of), which needed to be specially brewed (or, at least, the way I did it it did need the brewing). Then I would sit down and write the first draft, and try to make it okay.

On essay day two, I would then take that first draft, and gradually rip it to pieces, then reassemble it like the Bionic Man of essay writing. And by the deadline, it would be ready, and submissible, and it would, it turned out, pass (except for one exception, although that came later).

Right now, I have four essays to write over the next three weeks, and my brain refuses to engage. I wish I could put this down to the lack of loose-leaf fireside tea, but it feels like something completely different; last year, for instance, I actively enjoyed essay season. This year, something's changed. Annoyingly, I can't put my finger on it.

Perhaps, frankly, I'm just getting older.

See, this is something I get teased about, because I deploy the "ah, well, I am old, and my bones are weak and my mind is feeble" around the Young People Of Today too much, because, frankly, I find it funny.

At the same time, recently - very recently, in fact - I'm starting to feel like an Adult. Not a Responsible Adult, by any means - that will come a lot later - but, at least, an Adult.

You may be saying, Well, you're over thirty, you're supposed to be an adult, not just feel like one. And that's true; you can make all sorts of socioanthropological arguments about the current delaying of adolescence in western cultures, which is going to hit the generation below me worse than my generation - and that's saying something. You could make all manner of arguments and hypotheses about how I have passively chosen not to participate in the market and mortgage-driven consumer culture, that by remaining free and single I am avoiding taking part in the patriarchal hegemony that still, sadly, rules our day-to-day interactions. You could say many things.

But, in truth, you would probably be wrong.

Here's the thing; at this point, I have to quote Margaret Atwood, who puts it better than I would.

"Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise."

Here's something that anyone, anywhere in society would find extremely difficult to admit, but I will: I don't know exactly what I'm doing.

I have this envy, a deep, abiding envy, of people who knew what university and what degree they were going to do at 18 because they wanted job (x) at 21, and who have their lives planned out. Not because it's a good thing - such a regimented structure wouldn't work with me, nor many people I know - but just because they make me feel exactly like I'm making it up as I go along.

The first time on the degree merry-go-round was, for me, taking a degree because it was the best thing to do at the time. It didn't improve my employability prospects overly much, and the first three years, well, I didn't even enjoy them that much, but then I Grew The Fuck Up, stopped Fucking Around, and sorted things out, then I graduated, and things, well... Things became a matter of doing the right thing at the right time, and if you missed that time, well. Hey. At Least You Tried. Case in point; I took the first proper job I could get because it paid off my student overdraft in a little over a year, which was pretty sharp at the time; but then instead of trying for promotion, or secondment, or moving onwards and upwards, I just kind of stopped worrying.

Take the paycheck, build up the DVD collection, and don't worry about relationships, or mortgages, or children. That sort of thing.

Then when the job dried up like a well in the desert, instead of getting another job, I made a roundabout decision, and here I am.

Conventional - and, occasionally, unconventional - wisdom portrays humans as seeds in the soil of time; our parents nurture us as saplings until we are strong enough to stand tall on our own, then it's up to us to figure out what comes next. At the same time, school and university are further caregivers to the human trees, protecting them from the world until they're ready.

I'd like to dispute this; I think, in some ways, that humans - as things stand - can be seen as Unspecialised Machine Apparatus when we start out, and education is just a way of turning us into Specialised Machine Apparatus. Once you're done with being educated, this wisdom states, you're primed, pumped and prepared to do something - some specific thing - and do it well.

This is even true for me; I was primed and prepared to be a 'writer', except that I didn't know what to write about. Still don't, as anyone who's read my short fiction will tell you. So now I'm adding even more parts to my soul machine, with the same amount of conviction that I know what I'm doing.

But some conviction, as they say, is probably better than none.

And now the pressure's on, the heat is rising - the time has come to stop apologising

DoaMS: It's that time of year again (whether you like it or not)

Before you ask, this is, yes, me avoiding work.

I've also been avoiding Blogger as a whole recently thanks to a set of circumstances whereby my practical tutor ended up viewing my youtube channel, which - being named the same as this blog - means that in any sane world I've now managed to 'expose' this blog to said tutor and, by extension, the faculty at large.

Hi!

I had managed to maintain a veneer of anonymity by never mentioning my University of Choice, or referring to specific people, staff or courses by name, but I kind of suspect that's all over now.

(Then again, considering nobody reads this blog anyway, it's maybe churlish to complain about an uptick in reading figures. But anyway.)

I'm guilty, I will admit, of using this blog as an outlet for frustrations and problems that being a mature student has brought out and that I don't really have any other avenue for expression. Nothing in this world is perfect, as you already know, and while the last two-years-and-change have been amazing and instructive in equal measure, well, there have been times when it's been difficult to tamp down a rising feeling of sheer frustration.

Case one: Film Studies is a young course.

Not strictly speaking, of course, but compared with other academic disciplines, and especially compared with other academic disciplines in England, film studies is the hyperactive younger brother to English and, perhaps, History.

While teaching Film Theory may not have changed overly much over the past, say, twenty years - as evidenced by the majority of our textbooks being across a 1970s / 2000s split in authorship decade - practical filmmaking courses now change every six months.

I wish I were joking, but I'm not, alas. Put it this way; my academic year is unique, because no other year after us will have to take the same course choices as we do, and the courses themselves changed as soon as we had finished them. Some examples;

- The practical skills course we took in year one was gone by year two, replaced by a production course, and by this year the requirement to take this course was replaced with a revamped version of the practical skills course

- Which, fact fans, is now the first assignment of practical skills in filmmaking II brought forward to year one - i.e. my year, in taking practical skills in filmmaking II, is now unique as the course has already changed and the first assignment from PSII is now the entirety of PSI.

This means that if you're in my year - or, arguably, the year above me that graduated in june - you're a test subject. Oh yes, the students in the years below you will get the benefit of the tutors observing your interactions and how the courses work, but let's be selfish for a moment here; how fair is that on us?

I have a lot of sympathy for the PSI/PSII tutors, because they're just trying to make the best course possible for the students who are soon going to be in the £9,000 + tuition fees bracket, and soon value for money will be the key credo. It must be difficult to constantly have to rewrite the rules and values of the practical courses.

But as difficult as it is for them, how difficult do you think it is to be part of a student body now constantly in transition?

... Although, now I come to think of it, it's almost exactly the same as being back at work, where if there wasn't a transition every six months, we felt neglected.

Here's the thing: there's no point complaining. Which, yes, means you've just spent a few minutes reading pointless complaining. Sorry about that. At the end of the day, this is an amazing course filled with creative people, and with which I will hopefully be able to do fantastic things. It'd just be nice not to feel like an Aperture Science Approved Test Subject once in a while.