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So, it's been an age since the last post. Well, almost a month - not quite an age. Still, it's been an eon in my imaginings, so it's high time for an update.

It's been a pretty big upheaval-y kind of few weeks, I have done the following:

• Moved house (new house is delish).
• Been to London. Twice.
• Worked at two of the Great Swim series.
• Stayed at two lovely hotels (neither of which I could afford but gratefully was able to stay there courtesy of the company I was working with at the above).
• Officially finished uni with a 2:1 in English Literature (graduation set for 14th July - cringe-worthy pictures will no doubt follow, fear not...).
• Applied for jobs. A lot of jobs. Kind of running out of ways to say "hire me". But very excited at the opportunities.

I've spent most of this morning doing those little niggly jobs that have needed doing a while - like divvying up the remaining money in the secondary bank account I set up for the bills for my house last year. Kind of feel like a fiscal Father Christmas, telling my ex-housemates "Here, have 94 quid". Quite nice really :)

Also, have to renew my passport (this one's of a fairly urgent nature, given I'm meant to be going to Italy avec la famille - or however you say it in Italian - at the end of July...) - to get the fast-track service I have to go to Durham to specifically ask for it, so will make a day of it with the chap. Huzzah for that!

Right, lunch break over. The job hunt continues...

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.

protest

Well, here it is - this is footage I took during the day. Slightly over-theatrical perhaps, but it conveys the mood.

 Regardless of how the media reported the day, I think this is a fair representation of the experience of 95% of the people that were there. A tiny minority of the 50,000 people that were there caused trouble - the rest of us had an incredible time.

Yes we were loud. Yes we shouted. Yes there were thousands of us. Yes we were passionate. Man, so glad that I went!

tomorrow

Firstly, I love this:

Secondly, man I'm excited!

Basically, tomorrow I'm off to London at 4:00 in the morning to attend this protest. I. Am. So. Excited.

Coming to uni, I was expecting there to be loads of protests - students up in arms at the injustices of the world, in an idealistically Les Miserables kind of way. It was something I was really looking forward to: joining the ranks of thousands of other students in an attempt to shake things up.

Yet, amidst the sea of seemingly apathetic rahs and disillusioned socialists there seemed to be a distinct lack of passion about, well, anything really. But now, in my last year at uni, I have my opportunity! In a final hurrah for my university experience, I'm going to join thousands of other students in an attempt to defend the right for my little brother to have the same opportunities I did.

For those unacquainted with the changes to be made to higher education funding in England, here's a (very) brief summary:

• Our government has taken the cap off university tuition fees - basically meaning universities can now charge anything up to £9000 a year for the benefit of attending their institution. A levy (tax) will be put in place for fees of over £6000 (last I heard), but to be honest I don't think that'll put the higher-end unis off.
• Funding for those courses which the government deems not "essential" (mainly humanities courses, like mine, such as English, History, languages that are not "strategically economically advantageous", Geography - all that kind of thing) will be cut the most severely - with government money being focused more on courses such as medicine and engineering.

Basically, the whole thing is a sham. It's outrageous. Now, I do know that compared with places like the States we still pay relatively little for university, but to suggest that students in a couple of years' time (my little brother included) will have to leave university with debts of up to £30, 000 (when our parents could attend for nothing) is scandalous.

Rant over.

So, that is why I'm off to London with a few of my coursemates and hundreds of other Newcastle students (and thousands of others from across the country) to march in front of Parliament and through central London.

Will it make a difference? Probably not. But, man, I'm buzzing for it.

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.

Wednesdays

(I was listening to this at the time)

Oh happy day!

For those of you who don't know, at uni (in the UK at least) no one has lectures or seminars on Wednesday afternoons because it's set aside for the sports teams to be able to practise or play matches.

Now, I have a lecture at 10:00 on Wednesday mornings, which incidentally is just in time to walk through the crowds of sports teams as they congregate outside the Union waiting to go to their practices and stuff. This is indeed a highlight of my day.

I go all high school and giggly and feel overwhelmed by all the 6-foot-plus lads milling about in their team tracksuits.

Now, ordinarily I don't go for the "jock" type, but all those self-confident lads milling about and preening themselves in their apparent overt masculinity is evidently too much for my primitive little mind. I've even caught myself looking at the initials on their trackies and putting them into some puerile hierarchy - these are the shameful not-so-subconscious judgements that go through my mind:

• rugby/hockey/rowing - yum.
• football - not too bad.
• lacrosse/volleyball - pshh.

Good grief. I'm so basic.

recap

Oh hello blog, you lovely thing. It's been a while.

Well, now that I'm back home after almost 3 weeks without internet I thought I'd tell you just what I've been doing in the mean time. It has been a good 3 weeks!

Ok, first week I was on a barge on the Oxfordshire canal, which was bea-utiful. We became expert storm-dodgers and, if I do say so myself, I was soon steering the boat like a pro, even in the pouring rain:

An amusing incident on the barge: I was steering fairly early in the morning and looking like a real bargee, when I looked to my feet and saw the hatch down to the engine, and noticed a small brass sign next to it explaining what it was. Now, for my somewhat immature mind, this sign turned out to be more than I could bear to keep to myself. I called to my brother at the front of the barge: "Oi Tom, there's a funny sign on the barge!" He asked me what it said, and I bellowed out over the noise of the engine: "It says FUEL COCK BELOW!" Then fell about in helpless hysterics. It wasn't until cruel coincidence caused me to turn round that I saw the old bloke on the tow path that was out walking his dog, looking at me in surprised amusement and pity as I rolled about the deck cackling like a schoolgirl. I was so embarrassed that, naturally, I went and hid in the toilet for the next half hour.

So, the week after the barge we went to stay in a cottage in Dorset (in Lulworth Cove, if you're interested). The weather was much better that week, and we went on plenty of day trips to explore everything around. One of the highlights of the week was when we went sea kayaking - it was incredible! I would so recommend it if you haven't done it before. Tom and I shared a kayak, and we were crashing through waves and dodging in and out of rocks and caves - whistling the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack, naturally.

Another highlight was our trip to Lulworth Castle for the annual jousting festival - where I learned that not only do I need a boyfriend, but he must be of the armour-wearing "I-shall-win-this-tournament-for-your-honour" type.

Needless to say, the baddie knight ("Lord Odious", as it happened) was my favourite, and - I am ashamed to say - without any other appropriate favour to give him (women used to give knights handkerchiefs and things to show their favour during the jousts) I was seriously considering removing my bra to give him in a moment of madness, but it seems a young girl beat me to the underwear offering:

She was on her dad's shoulders next to us and told him she wanted to give him her spare pair of knickers. On ascertaining that it was in fact the baddie that she wanted to favour, he said amusingly: "I'm not sure if I approve of this!" 

The final highlight, was the Anniversary of the Battle of Britain Air Show in Duxford. Man, I have never seen anything like it. So many World War II planes - they had sixteen Spitfires flying together! And I'm no fighter plane expert but I'm told that's rather a big deal. Of course, the Red Arrows are always a big hit with me.

So, this brings us on to this week, where I have been at Forum 2010, organised by UCCF (the national organisation of Christian Unions in universities). It was one of the most incredible weeks ever, honestly. The teaching was fantastic (click here to listen to any of them - Graham Daniels' talk was particularly brilliant) and we all learned to much and got really fired up for going back to uni and organising our CU freshers events. I nearly lost my voice from all the singing we did! Picture it: pitch black outside - no clouds but loads of stars, a huge marquee and a thousand students belting it out so that you can hardly hear your own voice. So good. So so good!

So, here I am - complete with a host of new books from Forum, a miniature model of a Red Arrow plane, and flip flop tan lines. It's been a mint few weeks!

in the milk bottle

on my desk. Something pretty to look at amidst essay-writing.

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.

ach

Fairly uninspired of late, it has to be said.

Possibly due to the fact that whenever I do anything that isn't tackling my essay I can't help but feel as though I should be tackling my essay.

Still, tomorrow is Bonfire Night: bangers and mash all round and a nice helping of spectacular fireworks should get the creative juices flowing.

Here are a couple of moments from last year:

thoughts, albeit outdated, from halls of residence