Semester One

So, last night was the final show of Blood Brothers, which marked the end of my first semester at university. I’m not sure quite what I expected my first semester to be like, but all I know is that it’s gone by too quickly, and I’ve really enjoyed it. At times it’s been tough – the work isn’t easy, but it isn’t ridiculously hard yet – but I’ve had a great time, made amazing friends, got some fantastic memories and I’m starting to get a clearer idea of what I want to do with my life!

So, what does next semester bring? A new timetable, new classes – including Movement Studies (eek!) and my elective, Radio Production (yay!) – and hopefully new exciting adventures too! First of all, though, I want to enjoy a peaceful and relaxing Christmas (if you know my family, you’ll know that the chances of that are slim!), and get a finished draft of Book One that I can edit and polish and make into something vaguely publishable by June. 

It’s been a crazy year, but I’ll leave the full musings on how I feel about my first full year of blogging until closer to New Year’s Eve – I don’t know if we’ll all survive December 21st yet! (for the record, I am joking – I don’t believe anything untoward will happen that day). Now then, I’d better get packing!

9AM Starts Are Evil.

Before I started uni, I’d always see others moaning about their 9am starts and I’d think how lucky they are – they can roll out of bed and into uni (assuming they live in halls), whereas I had to get up at half past six to be at secondary school for half past eight. I now understand what it is that people hate about them. When you’re at secondary school, you’re generally still living at home – you have someone to force you out of bed. At uni, you don’t, and if your alarm doesn’t go of and you’re in a cocodamol-induced stupor, as I was this morning, a 9am start becomes your worst enemy.

Why was I in a cocodamol-induced stupor? Because in yesterday’s lesson, I was pulled into a door during a trust exercize (yep, that’s really going to make me trust someone!), and hurt my back. My back is already not in great shape, but yesterday it was hurting a lot so before bed, I took a cocodamol to try and help me sleep. It definitely did help me sleep – unfortunately it made me sleep for a bit too long, so by the time I woke up at half past 9, the cut-off point for being allowed into the lecture had already passed (if you arrive late but before half past nine, you apologize to the class and join in. If you’re beyond half an hour late, you’re not allowed into the lecture, which is fair enough because they don’t want you disturbing the others).

So instead I’ve been productive with my morning, finding monologues that I can use for my assessed piece in November – currently thinking of either Yvaine describing her love to Tristan from “Stardust”, or a monologue from “I, Robot”, although if anyone has any suggestions they’re gratefully received! – and tidying up my room, doing a bit of re-arranging and so on 🙂 Later on I’m going into town to buy a NEW ALARM CLOCK!

So, if you’re a school/college student and think “9am starts are easy, I won’t struggle with them”, think again – when you get to university, you might just be surprised. The biggest downside to independence I’ve found so far hasn’t been having to buy your own food or clean for yourself – those things are quite rewarding and you feel proud of yourself. There’s no pride in missing a 9am lecture because you don’t have someone to force you out of bed!

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?