Assessments, assessments everywhere…

… and not a spare second for me.

Unfortunately, it’s true. I’ve cut down my NaNo goal and I’m not even sure I can reach that, because assessments have taken over my life. If I’m not rehearsing for a practical assessment, I’m learning lines for something else, or writing an essay, or writing material for the radio show, or doing something or other that takes up a hell of a lot of time and leaves me with none for myself. I don’t resent it or regret it – I love my course and I’m determined to pass – but I’m looking forward to the end of May, when it’s all over and then I’ve got the summer and then second year! Uni’s going so quick, it feels like a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of thing! 😦

It’s half past one in the morning, and no, I’m not staying up so that I can get some writing done – I’m up because I can’t sleep, just like I haven’t been able to sleep properly for the last few days. I’m only getting four hours sleep at a time because I’m up the next morning at eight or earlier each time, and it’s driving me crazy! I’m exhausted all the time anyway so this doesn’t help!

Still, I’ve started a not-so-new-but-still-newer-than-others project. It’s been in the pipeline for a while, but I was inspired by a song I heard and everything about it changed. It’s now from a different perspective, and in the FIRST PERSON (cue: “ooooooh”). I never write Terra Firma Fleet stuff in the first person, because Christopher Maine does it all third person, but I couldn’t resist. It’s also from a guy’s perspective, rather than the usual character.

Now, with regards to this character, some might think she has too much happen to her in her life. She’s constantly in one scrape or another, and at times it might seem gratuitous – like I just want bad stuff to happen to her. There’s method to my madness, I assure you. The thing is, in Terra Firma Fleet, she seems like such a kick-ass character – what I’ve read of her, anyway. She is cool, calm and collected and knows exactly what to do – and that isn’t just a skill you’re born with unless you’re really lucky (and a little tip – don’t call her lucky, ever!).

She’s seen a lot, and she’s been through a lot. She’s gotten hurt, physically and emotionally, and it’s quite a contrast to the idyllic childhood she had, but it’s supposed to be that way, because something’s got to prepare her for the storm coming ahead, and when you look at it in that context, it all seems a lot more proportional.

Just something I wanted to get off my chest.

Well… that escalated quickly.

I don’t know quite what I thought the first week of uni would be like – perhaps a bit of a “settling in” period, a time where things are quite relaxed so you can get your bearings, nothing too hard or strenuous, just a few acting exercizes to get us warmed up and things like that. So, there’s an audition on Friday, for which we have to prepare a piece from Blood Brothers (a play I’ve never studied because I was in a higher set for GCSE, so we did “An Inspector Calls”), and a song. I live in halls and while I love singing, I’m not sure my flatmates would appreciate me belting out a big musical number to practice at any hour of the day. I’m hoping we’ll get a chance to have a practice some other time, because otherwise I could make a fool out of myself!

I’m not hoping for a main part or anything like that. I’m a first year, there’s about 60 of us on the course spread over 3 years and very few main parts, so it’s fairly obvious the big roles will go to the third years, which I think is how it should be – I’d be so annoyed if I was a third year, and a first year waltzed in and got a big role at my expense (although I guess that’s showbusiness!). I’ll be fine in the chorus, especially because I don’t know the play at all and it’s not one I’m particularly fanatical about (if it was RENT or Wicked or something like that, I think I’d be thinking a little differently!). If I can’t get a spot in the chorus, and when there’s so many people that seems like a real possibility, being tech would be just as cool, especially if they need people for costume or make-up. Since I’ve started doing face-painting, I’ve discovered a new love for costuming and stage make-up, even though in this play it’ll just be normal stage make-up.

So, it’s not exactly going to be an easy first week – not that I want it to be! I want it to be jam-packed and fun, but not too tiring. I’ve explained about the issues with my back, which should make things a little easier when it starts playing up so I don’t just run away and sit down randomly, they actually know where I’m going. It’s playing up again, which is a pain – literally! – and I’m not entirely sure why, because it still doesn’t feel like bone or muscle pain, even though they’ve said that’s what it is. I’m not registered with a doctor up here either, so it’s a little tricky to get anything done really. I’ve got plenty of painkillers though.

There’s been lots of stuff going on, and a few things going wrong with finance etc, so all those creases have to be ironed out, but d’you know what? I’m excited for the year ahead. I think it’s going to be crazy and jam-packed and I’m anxious not to plan anything in advance – I’m already hoping that fate will be on my side for things planned for the rest of this year, what with Idina Menzel in two weeks and then War Of The Worlds the week before the show (eek!) – so I think it’s nose to the grindstone time; better get working hard to secure my future!

Mickey Mouse degree? Think again!

That’s a popular phrase being thrown around these days. Often mixed in with grumbles of, “too many kids going to university” and, “it wasn’t like this in my day, in my day you had to be clever to go to university!”, so many degrees are being called “Mickey Mouse”. Now then, if there was a Disney studies course, not only would I be the first one to sign up, but I’d also refer to it as a Mickey Mouse degree – not because it’s “easy”, but because it’s about Mickey Mouse. I’ve never studied Disney in Drama A Level, and I don’t think we will at degree level either, so I’m not sure where this idea of a “Mickey Mouse degree” has come from.

Of course, I know that people are referring to the idea that the course is easy – minimal contact hours, very little independent study required and very easy to get a degree. It’s usually used by the STEM students – the ones doing sciences, technologies, maths or engineering. A theme I’ve noticed in a few of these – but not all, because I’m living in a flat with three STEM students and they’re incredibly nice guys, all of them – is that they have this idea that they’re better than others – namely BA students. They have this idea that all we do is draw or prance around in leotards or write stories for a couple of hours, a few times a week, and then we get long weekends and nice lie-ins and very little independent study.

Here’s two samples of timetables.

Timetable 1

Monday – 10-1, Tuesday – 9-1, Wednesday – 9-1, Thursday – 9-12, Friday – 9-1

Timetable 2

Monday – 11-5, Tuesday – 9-5, Wednesday – 9-5, Thursday – 9-5, Friday – 11-4. 

 

So the first timetable looks pretty good, doesn’t it? And you sit there thinking “Wow, that must be an easy degree – that’s got to be the theatre one”. Actually, apparently that is the timetable for first year Maths at UCL. The second one is my timetable for Theatre, Television and Performance at Glyndwr University, which has been described as a Mickey Mouse course and a Mickey Mouse university by some people. However, it doesn’t just end there –  as well as independent study, writing essays and having to do all the reading, we also have rehearsals. We’re doing shows, we’re doing community projects, we’re putting our social lives on hold and sacrificing doing things we want to do, because that’s the only way we can get a good grade and earn a good degree. I’m not saying Maths is easy – I know I’d never be able to do it – but I often wonder if these STEM students, and anyone else who looks down their nose at the course I’m studying and others like it, would be able to do what we have to do – to spend all day rehearsing when you’re tired, busy, possibly slightly hungover. To get up onstage and perform to huge audiences, or to tiny, intimate groups of four or five.

You can learn how to do maths – yes, some have a natural aptitude, but you can learn how to balance equations and find ratios. You can’t be taught how to act – you can be given techniques and taught how to use them, but you need to have a fairly substantial natural talent for it first. So, before you see someone studying drama, or performance, or music, or media, or creative writing, and you scoff – “they don’t really need to put in any effort” -, think again. You could be on your way home after a day of work in the office, or back to your flat after a 2 hour statistics lecture – they’re having a five minute drink break in the middle of a gruelling 6 hour rehearsal where they’re being pushed to the very limit, or they’re working to an incredibly tight deadline to try and force the last few pages of a story, or an article, or a composition onto the paper.

Who really has the easy ride?

Aaaand hello writer’s block.

I had my first exam today! Drama, the re-sit of the paper I did in January and I’m so pleased with the questions, they were so much better than last time and exactly what I’d hoped for. I’m not entirely sure how I did – I messed up timing with painkillers and ended up doing the last half an hour or so with a few concentration lapses because I was in pain, and time constraints are evil on that exam because there’s so much to do, but I’m hoping it’ll be enough to get me maybe a B, which is great because it brings me closer to getting into university. My hand is killing me from all the writing I’ve done, but I’ve got eighteen days to recover before my next exam (Psychology, which is also a mass of writing to do but I’m feeling prepared for that one), and then two days until Epic Exam #3, English. Then I’m done with exams and college!

The words were really flowing yesterday – I was finding it really easy to write, I knew where the story I’m writing was going and everything and yet today, when I tried, it just didn’t work – the characters are completely different to how they were yesterday for some reason, I just can’t write them in the same way. I guess maybe the sheer amount of writing I’ve done today has taken it out of me and I need to give it a break. I’m still hoping to post them up here soon so that rather than me just blabbering on about my writing like I have done for the past few months, I’m actually going to post some writing up, which is what this blog was originally intended for. When I’m better, I am going to work on sorting out videos of me singing to come up on here too, I promise 🙂 Things got a little sidetracked by my misbehaving kidneys, and they’re still refusing to toe the line but we’ll get there eventually.

So, I think it’s best to leave the writing for tonight and maybe tomorrow – or maybe to just have a whole weekend away from writing and needing to think too much, and just doing things I enjoy. Face painting this weekend, pwning some n00bz on Black Ops tomorrow and then a week off to recharge my batteries and do some more revision to make sure I’m as ready as possible for the exams. It’s kind of hit me today just how important these exams are, and I’m not going to take them lightly.

Oh, and for those of you awaiting a new “inspirational pictures” post (yeah, I see you all, getting to my blog by searching google for numerous variants on the phrase “inspirational pictures”, and I’m sorry I’ve not posted any more recently but I haven’t been feeling inspirational!), it will be along soon. Not sure when, but soon.

And now, in conclusion, the mushy section of this blog post. I’ve been with my boyfriend for seventeen months yesterday (the 31st) and he’s made me so happy in those seventeen months, I don’t know what I’d do without him, so if he reads this (and I hope he reads this, because I read his blog 😉 ) I love you and thank you for everything you do for me and, to quote the vernacular, this one’s for you 😉

Remember Me?

Sorry I’ve neglected this blog so much recently. I knew exams were going to be mad but I had no idea how much. College has been an epic fail thanks to this illness so I’ve been revising like mad to make sure I have a chance of getting into uni! Add that with trying to have a social life, and yeah – it’s been crazy, and I think I’m starting to burn out. All this revision is catching up with me, I’ve ended up with one hell of a cold which, combined with having awful pains in my back every time I sneeze,  isn’t fantastic. Really hoping things will get sorted soon, or that if they don’t I can maybe apply for special consideration because of how ill I’ve been.

On a brighter note, it’s sunny outside! Yeah, I’m inside revising but I’ve got a t shirt and shorts on and it’s lovely and warm and bright outside, which cheers me up a bit and makes revision a bit more bearable. I just hope that by the time my exams are over we’ll still have such nice weather, so that I can actually enjoy it – especially on holiday for my birthday in July!

I think the wait until August is going to be a really nervewracking one – before I was so confident for my exams, but now I’m terrified because although I know I am prepared because of the amount of revision I’m doing, I still feel somehow like I should be doing more (not sure what else I can do, really, other than go to college, which doesn’t really feel like an option the way I feel at the minute!). So expect either no posts at all as I spend all day, every day rocking backwards and forwards in a gibbering heap because I’m so nervous, or lots of frightened “ohmygosh I’m gonna fail” posts. Normal service will be resumed in September.

Busy busy busy.

Well – not exactly busy. I’ve been keeping busy, but it’s hardly been anything exciting – lots and lots of revision and writing essays ready for my exams which start in a couple of weeks, and not much else. On the health front, there’s still not an awful lot of improvement, I’d hoped it would have all cleared up (to be honest, it should have cleared up within 24 hours of starting the the first course of antibiotics, but of course it didn’t and we went through that whole palaver that has now lasted nearly two months), but now I’m waiting for more scans and stuff which is fun, fun, fun right in the middle of exams season. I haven’t been to college for a while but I’m making sure that I keep going with work and essays – I’m not jeopardizing my chances of university for anything, especially not stubborn pain that won’t go away.

As you can imagine, writing is still on hiatus, as it has been for about two months now. It’s not that I can’t think of what to write – I know what I want to write, but I can’t translate it from thoughts to actual words. My new laptop should make it a bit easier once I’m back in the groove of writing, because I thrive when I’m listening to music and writing at the same time, and with my old one it kept freezing so I couldn’t really do much! I think, to get myself back in the swing, when I’ve got the two week break from exams after my first exam on the 31st, I’ll write the short story I’ve had the idea for – it’s only a really short one, but it’s related to the series of novels so it might help me to get back in the swing of things.

Anyway, I won’t keep you all reading any longer – I’m sure you all have something more important to be doing, just as I need to be getting on with more essays (I’m determined to get an A in Psychology!), as much as I wish I could just write blogs all day.

Ah well.

An apology…

I haven’t posted for a couple of days, and I apologize. On Friday evening, I had to go to the doctors and it turns out I’ve got a kidney infection (they had to call the pharmacy and tell them not to close to make sure I could get the antibiotics I needed!) which, if anyone has ever had them before they’ll know, is horrible. I can’t remember the last time I felt so ill, and thankfully the antibiotics are starting to work but the pain is still agony – it’s one of the worst pains I have felt for such a long time, and I just can’t get comfy, so I’ve spent much of the weekend hiding away under a quilt feeling sorry for myself.

Today I finally got myself outside in the sunshine, which was nice – it has made me feel better, but I am still hurting a lot so once again, I apologize for the lack of blog posts. I had my drama performance evaluation on Friday and it went as well as it could’ve done considering how ill I felt! Hopefully I’ve done alright though, because I can’t re-take that exam! So it’s been quite an eventful weekend this weekend, but not in a good way. I’m also really missing my boyfriend, who’s having a training weekend ready for his medieval group, but I’m hopefully seeing him tomorrow so I’m all smiles on that front 🙂

I can’t get over how beautiful the weather is. It’s so warm and sunny, and apparently the beach has been pretty busy, and it’s so hard to believe that it’s only March! British Summer Time is here and in full swing, but I don’t know how long it’ll last! Knowing my luck, we’ll have this beautiful week of sunshine when I’m too ill to really enjoy it, and then BOOM, we’ll have three months of constant rain and thunder and cold weather. But I don’t want to jinx it, so I’m going to be happy for now and say, YAY SUNSHINE! Heard Louise Dearman’s first single, “Here Comes The Sun” today, and it’s so lovely and summery, it really got me feeling happy 🙂

Hope you’ve all had a happy, sunny, smiley weekend!

A very interesting rehearsal…

So, today is THE day before the performance exam. The day before we have to perform not just in front of our families and friends, but also the examiner, who will give us the grade which counts for 60% of our A2 Level – basically, what could be the difference between an A and a B, a B or a D and a university place or clearing! Today was Epic Rehearsal Day – from 11am till 4pm, non-stop rehearsing.

So, as you can imagine, if I was to sum up my day you’d expect me to say there was lots of remembering lines and perfecting little bits, and making sure it all flowed nicely. And sure, that happened, for about two hours. Those two hours of hard graft were swiftly followed by the most memorable event of the day.

We were introduced to face paints.

I say “Introduced” like I’ve never used or even seen them before. I have used them, quite a bit, and I love using them, I’m hoping to do a fair bit of face painting this summer actually, but today we were pretty much allowed free reign, and we were ALLOWED TO PAINT OURSELVES. And I was allowed to paint someone else too, which is always fun. It does have to be clown face paint, so I couldn’t go making people into tigers (which was a shame because tigers are my strong point when it comes to face painting!), but I still enjoyed it – I gave myself a white face, red nose and a tear under my eye, and bright red lips with a big smile (culminating in me eating a bit of face paint which I hope isn’t toxic, it certainly tasted horrible!), and I got to paint a flower and a peace sign.

However, I didn’t quite realize just how hard the face paints are to get off. I mean, it’s snazaroo so it wasn’t incredibly difficult, but it wasn’t easy either, and I now have two very white eyebrows, a white hairline and bits of white in my just-washed hair, which was great. And an orange nose, thanks to the fact that the red stuff didn’t want to wash off either – I ended up looking like someone had punched me in the nose and it had exploded, which was both funny and rather embarrassing having to wait to be picked up like that.

So, today has been memorable not because I think we made amazing progress with the rehearsing (although it did go very well and I am very excited and nervous for tomorrow!), but because I got to play with face paints. Drama A Level at it’s best.

Please ignore the toilet in the background, people at college don't seem to understand the need for toilet doors.

Roll On Wednesday Evening!

I just feel so busy at the moment, it’s like I’m drowning in stuff that I have to do! The drama practical exam on Wednesday has taken over completely, it feels like ages since I’ve written anything properly on my story and I’m itching to get back to it but I know I need to perfect this exam to give myself the best chance of getting an A on it, or at least a B! I also have a Psychology powerpoint to do, but that is nearly finished and can wait for the weekend to absolutely finish.

I’m so looking forwards to Wednesday afternoon – once the exam is finished, there’ll be no more work to do apart from a little bit in preparation for the self-evaluation Friday morning, and I can relax with my boyfriend and not be stressing about anything.

As for writing, I really am eager to get back into it. Finished a brilliant book today and it’s got me itching to get back and start writing, even if I can only do a couple of thousand words or something, it’d still be progress, and that’s what I really want to be making right now! One of the only benefits of doing revision/college work over writing is that I can listen to music with actual lyrics in it. When I write fiction, it has to be epic score type music, but if I’m writing out essays or just revising, I can actually listen to music with lyrics and everything. Currently, my “Wordy Music” playlist consists of –

• “Paradise” – Coldplay
• “Brighter Than The Sun” – Colbie Caillat
• “Somebody That I Used To Know” – Gotye ft. Kimbra
• “Everlasting Love” – Jamie Cullum
• “Lego House” – Ed Sheeran
• “Drunk” – Ed Sheeran
• “What Doesn’t Kill You” – Kelly Clarkson
• “Video Games” – Lana Del Rey
• “Last Friday Night” – Katy Perry
• “Skinny Love” – Birdy
• “A-Team”  – Birdy’s version (I love Ed Sheeran’s, but Birdy’s has so much emotion in it!)

So, that was a little peek into my musical tastes! Approve, disapprove, I don’t really care – it helps me feel more productive with my work and also makes me feel a little more human, as opposed to a writing machine who listens to nothing but epic score on a loop in her head.

On Making Very Little Writing Progress.

Once again, life gets in the way of writing. In some ways, I really don’t mind – as much as I love writing, I would much rather spend a weekend with my boyfriend, as I have just done, because he means a lot to me and I want him to know how much I love him 🙂 on the other hand, some things which are either not so good, or not things I really want to think about, are also getting in the way. 

In terms of the not so good, I’ve had a lovely weekend and managed to stop myself from thinking about it for much of the time, but problems with college keep cropping up, and the most recent one is definitely the biggest I’ve encountered so far (and hopefully the biggest I actually WILL encounter considering I’ve got about 7 weeks of actual lessons left, and I don’t want anything else to happen). I’m not going to go into details about it because I don’t particularly want to think about it in too much detail, but the stress of it is not only making me ill, it’s also disrupting the writing, which isn’t a good thing. 

As for the things I’d rather not think about, it’s actually quite exciting and I’m looking forwards to it, but I’m also really nervous! Well, more anxious than nervous… I want to get it over and done with, but I really want to enjoy it and do well. It’s my drama A Level performance exam on Wednesday, and while I’m really pleased with how we’re doing – the text piece is going really well and I think I’ve got my lines sorted, and the devised piece sounds great but I’m struggling with lines a bit – I’m also really nervous, because my parents and boyfriend are coming to see it, and I really hope they enjoy it! It is distracting me from my writing, but because I’m determined to get at least a B, if not an A if I can manage it, I really want to do well, so it’s worth it! Plus, it is really fun – we’ve been doing quite a lot of rehearsals and it’s been great and really helpful.