It
hasn’t been too shabby a week. I’ve acquired a Facebook friend
and maybe even a Facebook friend I will see in person from time to
time, I got some decent grades on my end of term assignments and
received a bit of typing work to throw into the money pot. Hell, I
even put some air in my tyres. (It’s 30 PSI front, 28 back).
Unfortunately I’ve been so busy with the typing that the blog is
going to get less love this week just when I do have something to
write about. Here it goes, anyway...
Monday and Tuesday were pleasant enough, if somewhat dull. I think I’m attending the lectures and seminars mainly to give my life routine. The half-empty: they are super simple, repetitive, GCSE level, (if that) and there is a lack of insight that is frustrating. The half-full: they are friendly, accessible, with some helpful overlap and there’s going to be plenty of scope to shine in one’s essay. This week I skipped the writer’s group meeting (a new project, we’ve finished the Cruise Murder Mystery) because I felt I was having too much creative input last semester. In my absence group members who attended came up with an idea for a play about penguins. (Shakes head).
Then on Wednesday I had a nice moment in Diane’s non-fiction class. First she asked us to spend five minutes writing a rant down, then to pair up to ask each other a list of questions about our week 4 essays (which I was supposed to have at least drafted). I usually find this awkward but not today because Kerry, a girl sitting on the other side of the room (the desks are arranged in a horse shoe shape) pointed at me and motioned to suggest we work together. This in itself was heart warming but I was especially pleased about this because she showed me a kindness on my first day that endeared her to me, which I will explain further on.
So first Kerry came over and sat next to me and I asked her about her essay. Like me, she hadn’t started it but she said she wanted to write warning about the dangers of drugs, which she had got into when she was around fifteen. She started telling me about herself at that age and mentioned being on the beach at Broadstairs with a guitar during her hippie phase, to which I replied I lived in Margate. Then it turned out that she does and we started nattering about it, naturally with the heightened interest of two travellers who discover they’re from the same locale but didn’t have much time to talk about it before Diane interrupted and asked us all to read out our answers, so I made some up for Kerry.
Then we continued with another exercise. Kerry showed me her rant. I had just about enough time to read this engrossing revelation about her personal life before Diane interrupted us again- blah blah blah- some stuff about the difference between a memoir and essay and so and so forth. Finally Diane buttoned it and I told Kerry that I didn’t see a rant in her rant, but her love for her mother, who she seemed unusually close to.
“That’s true, we’re best friends and we send each other presents,” she said.
I said not only was her kindness evident in her writing but in the way she had once treated me.
“I remember you talking to me in the corridor in the English school on the first or second day of last semester and you spoke to me like a human being, not as an older person.”
It’s true. All she’d done was ask me if I was waiting for Michelle Harrison or doing this or doing that, I don’t recall, but it was very odd because despite the ostensibly mundane exchange of words I had an acute sense that she was talking to me- not to the outward appearance or me as a stranger.
“Had we not had this chance conversation you wouldn’t have known how that brightened up my day,” I said.
Kerry asked to read what I wrote, which was a rant about Brian Cox saying there is no other intelligent life in the galaxy (it was either going to be that or a rant about Harold Bloom worship in the light of his 'Shakespeare wrote the whole of Henry VIII' schtick).
“Can you read my writing?” I said doubtfully, my having scrawled my thoughts only for personal consumption (as Diane had said it would be). “Yeah, it’s messy but it’s like mine,” Kerry said.
Then she asked what I want to write an essay about. I said it would be me giving myself fatherly advice and guidance as a younger person, which would also include a talk about drugs. Then as the lesson drew to a close Kerry said, “Can I sit here with you next time? I like talking to you and I can’t talk to them.”
Monday and Tuesday were pleasant enough, if somewhat dull. I think I’m attending the lectures and seminars mainly to give my life routine. The half-empty: they are super simple, repetitive, GCSE level, (if that) and there is a lack of insight that is frustrating. The half-full: they are friendly, accessible, with some helpful overlap and there’s going to be plenty of scope to shine in one’s essay. This week I skipped the writer’s group meeting (a new project, we’ve finished the Cruise Murder Mystery) because I felt I was having too much creative input last semester. In my absence group members who attended came up with an idea for a play about penguins. (Shakes head).
Then on Wednesday I had a nice moment in Diane’s non-fiction class. First she asked us to spend five minutes writing a rant down, then to pair up to ask each other a list of questions about our week 4 essays (which I was supposed to have at least drafted). I usually find this awkward but not today because Kerry, a girl sitting on the other side of the room (the desks are arranged in a horse shoe shape) pointed at me and motioned to suggest we work together. This in itself was heart warming but I was especially pleased about this because she showed me a kindness on my first day that endeared her to me, which I will explain further on.
So first Kerry came over and sat next to me and I asked her about her essay. Like me, she hadn’t started it but she said she wanted to write warning about the dangers of drugs, which she had got into when she was around fifteen. She started telling me about herself at that age and mentioned being on the beach at Broadstairs with a guitar during her hippie phase, to which I replied I lived in Margate. Then it turned out that she does and we started nattering about it, naturally with the heightened interest of two travellers who discover they’re from the same locale but didn’t have much time to talk about it before Diane interrupted and asked us all to read out our answers, so I made some up for Kerry.
Then we continued with another exercise. Kerry showed me her rant. I had just about enough time to read this engrossing revelation about her personal life before Diane interrupted us again- blah blah blah- some stuff about the difference between a memoir and essay and so and so forth. Finally Diane buttoned it and I told Kerry that I didn’t see a rant in her rant, but her love for her mother, who she seemed unusually close to.
“That’s true, we’re best friends and we send each other presents,” she said.
I said not only was her kindness evident in her writing but in the way she had once treated me.
“I remember you talking to me in the corridor in the English school on the first or second day of last semester and you spoke to me like a human being, not as an older person.”
It’s true. All she’d done was ask me if I was waiting for Michelle Harrison or doing this or doing that, I don’t recall, but it was very odd because despite the ostensibly mundane exchange of words I had an acute sense that she was talking to me- not to the outward appearance or me as a stranger.
“Had we not had this chance conversation you wouldn’t have known how that brightened up my day,” I said.
Kerry asked to read what I wrote, which was a rant about Brian Cox saying there is no other intelligent life in the galaxy (it was either going to be that or a rant about Harold Bloom worship in the light of his 'Shakespeare wrote the whole of Henry VIII' schtick).
“Can you read my writing?” I said doubtfully, my having scrawled my thoughts only for personal consumption (as Diane had said it would be). “Yeah, it’s messy but it’s like mine,” Kerry said.
Then she asked what I want to write an essay about. I said it would be me giving myself fatherly advice and guidance as a younger person, which would also include a talk about drugs. Then as the lesson drew to a close Kerry said, “Can I sit here with you next time? I like talking to you and I can’t talk to them.”
“Of course, but I don’t want to be selfish, I think you should spread yourself around and share your gift.”
Then Kerry told me that she is autistic like her brother (to me this is not obvious from her behaviour) but it manifests in different ways. For instance, she has a Peter Pan obsession and wrote 8000 words about Peter Pan the night before, just for the hell of it. We went out into the corridor and Kerry asked what my passion is. I said I had a few but I suppose ghosts was one and we talked about that and the possibility that she knew J.M. Barry in a former life. She's been obsessed with Peter Pan since she was two and is twenty now. I told her she could become a world authority and that would be her meal ticket.
After that, I went back home and stalked her on Facebook. She has been in what looks to be a happy relationship for three years and there were lots of unicorns on her page. She misses her mum so much and so much wants to help her look after her brother that she is going to change university after this semester. Nonetheless, on Sunday evening she requested to be my friend (on FB).
I think it was also around Thursday that I came out of Smiths and ran into a student who is doing my medieval English module. He'd just bought a computer game in the shop opposite. It was nice of him to shake my hand and say hello, although I felt a bit like a school teacher thinking of things to keep the brief tete a tete going. Where was he from? Kuwait, he said. His English is excellent, considering.
For the second week running Catherine was ill (sore throat) and there was no poetry, but she had emailed us to say she would make up the classes. Then on Friday evening I got my results.
For those of you who don’t know, I had 4 assignments to do by January 12 and I gave myself 3 days for each one, which turned out to be not enough. I was handing stuff in that was rushed and not checked properly with silly typos. So that being said, my result of 80/100 on the English Lit essay is pretty good. If I understood Alex correctly that sort of mark would be up in the all time highs for a 1st year student and somewhere in the 50s is average. That’s not bad, considering I skipped The Magic Toyshop lectures and did next to no supplementary reading.
To be honest, I think the mark is a little high and the essay probably went over the head of whoever marked it because there is a mistake in there that wasn’t picked up. I said patriarchy was an orchestrated performance, when I meant to say orchestrating. Anybody who truly understood what they were reading would have queried it.
I got 74 for the poetry, which is also way too high for the junk I turned in, 68 for the children’s story is more like it, and again there was nothing in the child lit lectures, not one syllable, that came in handy. Diane marked me down to 58 as punishment for plagiarising one of my old stories. The computer system TurnitIn found a 17% match with the Secret Party, which I won a small competition with back in 2016. In my defence, Diane didn’t tell us until week 11 that we couldn’t use an old story, which was weeks after the assignment had gone online, and by then I’d done most of the work. But okay, lesson learnt.
In terms of feedback, Catherine wrote no inline comments at all and a tiny paragraph of praise with no criticism so though it’s nice she gave me a 1st and said my poetry is ‘self-aware without being self-obsessed’ (funny, I think it’s the other way around) I’m none the wiser about how to up my game. The Toyshop marker was mildly helpful but I think a little out of his or her depth. Laura Dryer wrote really enthusiastic feedback about my story and I was so touched I almost wrote her an email to thank her, then remembered the last time I wrote to her she ignored my email. (To praise her Charlie and the Choc Factory lecture). I find Diane’s feedback to be dumb, stubborn, annoying and helpful- possibly one of the most helpful critters of my work ever.
Good news about the new friend, a pity if it's a bit short-lived due to her family commitments, but for the rest of the semester you should make the most of it and dare I say it use her to network, in the nicest possible way.
ReplyDeleteCertainly with the 80 grade you will be famous among the staff now, you'll probably get a combination of respect for your skills and resentment from lecturers to whom you're probably already superior. I hope the students find out somehow that you got these scores because then that 'guru' thing we talked about could materialise.