Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student: Ongoing
Studying this course has the odd effect of producing a sort of bi-polar dissonance, for me at least. On one hand, I have access to a huge library, the best recording kit the university is willing to lend out, and lots of people willing to help out or be involved in filmmaking.
On the other hand... Nobody seems to care about the actual course anymore.
Put it this way. It's now week three. In week one, 20% - on average - of the people signed up to classes didn't turn up for the four classes - over three days - that we have a week. By week two, this was down to 10%. But this is just the classes; three of which have mandatory screenings. My personal favourite so far happened on Monday;
- At 4pm, the stated time the screening started, there was nobody there
- At 4:15, 40% of the class were in attendence
- At 4:45, when the projector temporarily malfunctioned, 25% left, having signed the register, leaving 15% of the 'committed' students feeling silly for staying.
The week before, the last lecture of the week was structured so that the lecture directly preceded the screening, so that people would be on campus anyway for the film. During the fifteen minute break between lecture and screening - taking place in the same room - 75% of the class left. No register was taken.
There are curiously heartening moments to all this; one of the students who did stay for the screening of Citizen Kane went over to the SU shop and bought two cans of Red Bull and a fifth of vodka. I thought this was a sensible reaction to having to watch Citizen Kane again. If I hadn't been driving, I feel I would probably have done the same.
What's also heartening are the large amount of variations for excuses to cover for 'I can't be bothered to go'. One told me that he had emailed the tutors to say he had a job, and that because they had scheduled the screenings in week zero this was too late to re-arrange his work. Work he didn't have at the time of the screenings. It's fun listening to people's self-justifying white lies.
And this is what I mean by the bi-polar, because I hate complaining about the course - in fact, I'm not complaining about the course, just the lack of dedication from some of the student body therein. Which makes me feel like an elitist ass, which is not a natural reaction to actually doing what you're supposed to do. Gotta love being uncool. Then again, it is, apparently, 'hip', so they say, 'to be sqaure'.
Complaining does, of course, nothing. It's just air through the engine, at the end of the day. And there are one or two other students who dedicatedly give a fuck, which is kind of heartening.
Things are going to get better next week, anyway, so that's a plus. Not for any particularly specific reason; I can just tell that they are. For it will be a golden land, with rivers of milk and honey tequila and lime, where the sun shineth on a transfigurated course filled with caring and dedicated students, and...
Well, you have to believe this week that next week will be better, don't you? Because, otherwise, what's the point in even being here?
Next week, on the Eton Crow channel: Things Get Better.
Our Director Writes:
Diary of a Mature Student: Twenty-Two weeks to go
I can tell that the courses this year are much more serious than last year, primarily because of the need. The need is an odd thing I experienced last time on the merry-go-round when suddenly you realise how serious everything is and you either need to step up, run away, or do something stupid.
In most of my life, the latter two have been my usual course of action, much to my disdain. But it's a natural reaction to the sudden fact that you actively need to give a shit in the second year, which I didn't get the first time around, instead trying a variety of jack moves and retreats that achieved absolutely nothing other than avoiding doing the work I needed to do.
I make no bones about the fact that, first time around, I Was A Straight C Student. (Capitals intentional.) I don't have a problem admitting that I peaked at that level of ability, which meant that when I got over the peak in my final year it was too late to change the overall result. It's the kind of thing you make peace with, as time goes on. It also becomes a challenge; something to beat, the whole 'we humans with our human limitations' thing.
It came as a little bit of a surprise when my marks last year average out (just) as a first, including the two marks that actually mattered towards my final grade. Sure, it was just over the tipping point, but even then I get the feeling that the extracurricular work was just about as rewarding as the grades themselves, although in theory I should have been putting the time from that work into the main work. And yet...
So the basic fight-or-flight - or, in this case, study-or-fuck-up - urge arriving at this point is no real surprise. I should have expected it, really, considering the step up in working and assessment practices between last year and this year.
That's not to say I'm not a little disappointed.
I'd kind of hoped for better.
But then there are those that argue that people don't really ever change, and that you should accept that you are who you are and you will always react the way you react, and personal evolution is, functionally, a myth. I don't believe in this - I'm a doe-eyed optimist that believes in the unlimited nature of human potential only being limited by opportunity, despite repeated provision of evidence to the contrary.
This is another interesting thing; in our year, there were a few idiots, the kind who didn't show up for classes week on week and expected to pass, or talked back to the lecturers, or caused generalised trouble of the sort that they would look back on in a few years time and... Probably not really care.
They're gone, now.
Oh, one or two of them have been seen on campus, but I've been signed up to several of the 'alternating compulsory' classes and they've not turned up for them, which means they're either remarkably lazy or they've moved on to do something different.
This is the one thing, really, that I didn't expect to actually happen. I expected to be plagued by these people for two more years. Oh, sure, people have actually dropped out - as I think I said they would at the end of last year - but it's always a surprise when the squeaky wheels disappear instead of getting the most oil.
So now I have to tamp down the ridiculous urge to do something... ridiculous, or to stress out about the courses and screw up, just because it's a part of me. But it's another part of me to believe that this part - stop me if this gets confusing - doesn't rule me. It's just something else to deal with, like my loquacious manner or ridiculously hot body. (My self-delusion, however, is getting along just fine, thank you.)
One handy side of this year is that in this semester I'm forced to group with two other people to make a film. Being handcuffed to other students is something I would normally rail against but that I now actually get - technically, if the tutors want to they can handcuff last year's A student to last year's D student to see if they bring the average grade up, but so far they've managed not to do anything quite so crass. So now I have an incentive not to pull a jack move, because if I do, other people may, if not suffer, be mildly inconvenienced.
And that would be wrong.
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.
