tech

So, firstly, a couple of cringey graduation pictures (as promised):

Secondly, technology. So excited with recent updates to Facebook and Google(+). Facebook in particular actually (surprisingly) - if you haven't seen the plans for Facebook Timeline, you should. I literally clapped my hands with glee when I watched the respective videos - it feels like Facebook has finally got its act together in terms of design and being imaginative with its own possibilities. It's kind of felt like Facebook has been this massive half-tapped source of mint internet interactivity for a long time, but has been resting on its laurels as the dominator of social networks.

I guess it's kind of unsurprising that they haven't made any huge changes to their layout, as any time they make any kind of tweak there are floods of thousands of people going "WTF??!! Whys fb keep changeing evrything?!?!" It must be pretty wearing if each time they try and be innovative they come up against a wall of people keep clinging to the old, less user-friendly version, as though Facebook's effectively trampling over their rights as users.

It seems as though Facebook are making a very clear choice in their marketing for this new Timeline layout, which I find interesting. The advertising video is framed around a married, middle-aged man with kids: very middle-class, very conventional. Markedly absent in the "apps" video were the likes of Farmville and Mafia Wars - replaced with cooking apps, running schedules, and The Guardian. 

Are Facebook trying to phase out of their post-MySpace and -Bebo status as, like, the only social network worth using? What started as a clean, simply-designed, self-consciously middle-class alternative to MySpace and Bebo and the like has since (inevitably) become littered with "vampire requests", poorly-made and corrupted Pages linking to third-party websites, and PoStS TyPeD LiKe ThIs. Is this Facebook reclaiming their original concept of simplicity and connectivity? Are they (finally) branching out into user-directed design that was previously the realm of MySpace, and which I feel has been lacking in Facebook until now? Exciting times, people!

stitched

So, I’ve just sent my dissertation to be bound. Everyone’s been telling me how I’ll feel when I give it in – relieved, panicked, ill. But honestly, I just feel sad.

Sad because I’ve loved uni, and because, to me, this feels like the culmination of three years’ work and life and tears and hysterical laughter.

I had my last seminar this morning too, with one of my favourite tutors, and I can’t beat away the feeling that it’s all, well, ending.

It is, I know it is, it’s exam period and I knew it was coming to an end. I just didn’t feel like it was. But somehow, giving in that little pile of paper to be stitched together felt a bit like saying goodbye.

And I’m not ready for that yet.

snobs

This is something I have learned during my time at uni: English Literature students are the most inimitable snobs. That is, when it comes to pen and paper.

Writing materials, granted, are something of a necessity when attending any course at university, but never have I seen such a glorious array of handmade, embossed, and leather-bound notebooks and fluidly elegant pens than when scanning a lecture theatre full of English Lit students.

You can tell when someone has forgotten their pen - they heave their shoulders in a great sigh of consternation and begrudgingly enquire if their neighbour has a spare. The trouble is that it is not a question of merely borrowing another pen, it is the dismay at having forgotten your own hand-picked implement of perfect weight, nib-size and ink type; the pen which, after trawling through and trialling endless others, you finally rested on as the perfect vehicle for transferring your flourishing ideas to paper. The ink which does not blot, spread or seep through your page, but skates uninhibitingly across its surface.

The page which, naturally, is the perfect size, thickness, and hue to complement your pen of choice. The page bound within the book which you weighed in your hand before making the decision between lined or unlined, and thereby constraint or liberty. 

Then there is the thin margin between quality and ostentation, refinement and frivolity. There is an unspoken principle of vanity which dictates that one's writing is worth reading, and therefore the writing materials should display these luminary ideas in a manner befitting their worth. It is not mere scribbling, it is a masterpiece. We are not mere students, we are Writers.

Honestly, we'd use quills and parchment if we could.

Mary

So, first of all, happy new year one and all! Here's to 2011 - it'll be a good 'un, I can tell.

Secondly. I am currently writing my dissertation (as I'm in my third, and final, year of uni), and I've chosen to write about John Keats and Mary Shelley. I'm focusing on their personal letters rather than their literary works per se, and am discussing their desire to be remembered and their work to be recognised, as well as the huge struggles they came up against despite being incredible writers/poets.

Well, it's a blast if you're into Romantic poetry.

Anyway, I was reading some of Mary Shelley's letters today and came across this passage written after the death of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. It's so stunning that it actually made me cry. This lady knows how to write grief. I've kept her spellings:

...I can at those moments forget myself - until some idea, which I think I would communicate to him, occurs & then the yawning & dark gulph again displays itself unshaded by the rainbows which the imagination had formed. Despair, energy, love, despondency & excessive affliction are like clouds, driven across my mind, one by one, until tears blot the scene, & weariness of spirit consign me to temporary repose...

The world will surely one day feel what it has lost when this bright child of song deserted her - Is not Adonais his own Elegy - & there does he truly depict the universal woe which should overspread all good minds since he has ceased to be their fellow labourer in this worldly scene...

Thus may I also say - The eight years I passed with him was spun out beyond the usual length of a man's life - And what I have suffered since will write years on my brow & intrench them in my heart...

Wow.

Don't worry, I'll post something perkier next time.

aghast

Just come out of a seminar and now have an hour before my next lecture, so thought I would slump into the nearest computer cluster to do some online offloading.

Turns out I am not the English Literature proficient that I previously hoped I might be, as the vast majority of that seminar went straight over my head. Dreadful. I sat there nodding banally and taking notes furiously as people with a far vaster intellect than I can ever hope to accumulate made inciteful, probing, and - to me at least - almost incomprehensibly intelligent points about a critical essay which may as well have been written in Swahili for all I understood it.

So I'm now sat here, squatting behind an LCD monitor glancing furtively about, fearful of being exposed for the cerebral fraud that I am.

Still, I've got a children's literature lecture up next - we're studying Five Children and It this week. Much more on my level, evidently.

happy drizzly days

Well, I'm back at uni. And, as expected, I now can't imagine ever having been away. I've had all manner of introductory talks today, designed to "induct" us back into uni life, and to impress on us the great importance of working hard.

Honestly though, this year is my last at uni - and this is the one when I really really will be organised. I will start (or, at least, start planning) essays as soon as they are set, I will become attached to my diary (which, to be fair, I did most of last year and as of becoming a member of Committee for CU it became somewhat of a necessity).

I love the beginnings of new academic years. When I think back to all the starts of new years I've had - all the pencil cases bought, all the pencils sharpened and diaries purchased and then abandoned, all the new umbrellas and ill-advised winter hats - it's really incredible to think that this is the last time (at least for the time being) that I'll be doing it all.

For the last 15 years of my life, September has come around, my birthday's been celebrated, then I've gone back to school, then uni, and this is the last time!

Surrounded by all the new freshers, grinning and brandishing flyers and maps and freshers wristbands, while I trundle from one building to another sorting out module changes and handing in dissertation ideas, I can't help but feel... Well, old.

Last year I had a sense of at-home-ness, as though I knew the score and could join in with everything without the pressure of having to put myself out there and hope against hope that I would find someone who wouldn't mind hanging out with me and would find my idiosyncrases endearing.

This year I kind of feel more like I'm facilitating other people's start-of-year. And this has it's own set of charms: I can scan the crowds of people and see the familiar nervous furtive glances, and recognise the relief they feel when you go and chat and ask the familiar Big 3 ("where are you from?", "what are you studying?", "which Halls are you in?") - a breath of comforting air during probably the scariest and most exciting start-of-year that people will ever experience.

As a uni veteran I'm able to breeze around feeling confident and at home, and can enjoy being a chilled-out fish in a pretty big pond, before next year when I'll be the nervous newcomer again - trying to swim alongside even bigger fish.

planning planning

So, tomorrow is module selection. At 9:00 tomorrow morning I'm picking my modules for next year. This is what I'm thinking:

Semester 1

• Beyond Wonderland (a module on the origins and development of children's literature)
• an Extended Study (5000 words on anything I've been taught so far - basically a mini-dissertation)

Semester 2

• Contemporary Documentary (learning about the theory and practice of making documentaries. We'll be taught how to use editing software and stuff, and part of the assessment is a 4 minute film we have to make about ourselves. Eek!)
• Career Development (70 hours volunteering at a placement. This is where I'm hoping to go - it looks amazing!)
• another Extended Study

So, all in all, it looks pretty mint. Not huge amounts of taught modules this time, but there are always less in third year because of dissertation/extended studies. Eee, I'm really excited!

I've wanted to do the documentary module since the beginning of uni, but have always chickened out. It's taught by Tina Ghavari and I think there's a fair amount of practical work involved and I've got no idea what to expect, which is pretty intimidating. Thing is though, I'm thinking when else am I going to get an opportunity like this?  I love film and documentaries and it's a real chance to learn to do something I love better. So I told myself to get a grip :)

I'll have to start thinking of ideas for my 4 minute film...

so basically...

I have been absolutely useless for the past couple of weeks. I have only blogged 4 times so far this month (not including this one) with, I have to admit, not even very much interesting in those.

I could jump on the whole "my life is really busy at the moment, guys" wagon, but the truth is it isn't. Or at least it hasn't been until this week, as it is our CU's Events Week, which certainly takes some organising. It's basically a whole week full of events and lunch talks, and it's the culmination of the CU's year and we try to reach as many people as possible on campus.

It's a bloomin' mint week as there is a lo-ot going on and it means you pretty much don't have an hour to spare - but we love it :)

Aside from that I am hopelessly behind on my reading for my course, with no excuse at all - something which I plan to rectify in the next couple of days when there is the occasional lull in events. Determination is, admittedly, low but it will be done. Oh yes.