Rest of exams, TolkSoc Challenge 2008, new modules
OK, it's been over a week since my Revs & Evs (Victorian lit) exam and I've only just got round to posting about it. I apologise.
I liked my Revs & Evs exam. Because I'd said on Monday afternoon that I need the darker purple and not the lilac they gave me on Monday, the invigilator passed that on and I turned up Wednesday morning to find that they'd done my exam on the darker purple!!! Yay!!! Revs & Evs is basically "Here's a list of 12 questions. You have to present an argument by answering one of the questions". I did the one about discussing the role of the narrator(s) in relation to 2 texts. I wrote about Charlotte Bronte's novel Villette (of which I only got round to reading about a third; thank God for lectures/seminars/online plot summaries!) and George Egerton's short story Virgin Soil. My argument boiled down to the narrator is all-powerful and has complete control over what they impart to and withold withhold keep back from the reader. Hopefully whoever is marking my paper will take pit on me and give me the correct spelling of the above struck-out word. Both look wrong, but it certainly doesn't have three 'h's in!
This has actually led on to me coming up with an idea for the planned TolkSoc mock-academic journal. I'm thinking of doing my article on the reliability of Bilbo Baggins as narrator of The Hobbit. I had considered doing some kind of critical analysis of some of the poetry/songs in the books, but that didn't really inspire me. This, on the other hand, is something I could write a lot about. I'm going to find out if there are any particularly big Tolkien fans in the English department.
It was nice to have a few days' break after the exams. Then it was TolkSoc Challenge, held as usual at the House of Special (ie. this one). People arrived just after ten, although we didn't get started until about eleven! This year I did a caption competition - one sheet of photos of various members of the society (mostly nicked from Facebook profiles!) and one sheet of movie stills. So far Mike is the only one who's done all of them. I'm going to have a go at some point, probably over the weekend when I've written up my notes from this week and done some reading. I was doing the fanfic challenge again, although I failed miserably - I only got 3 partially written. For one of them I had a bit of a dyslexic moment - instead of writing "Boromir quietly closed the door and removed his cloak", I wrote "...and removed his clothes"! Oopsie!
There were also a couple of celebrations, for which I'd got cake last Saturday - the 5th anniversary of our affiliation to the Guild, and it was also one member's birthday! Double cake!! We got some good quotes out of the day as well, including
coloursofdusk's one for her society stash: "Don't drop the knife on the sofa; it'll pop!" (
georgia_pumpkin has an inflatable M&Ms sofa)
I started my new modules this week! Chaucer & his Contemporaries and Intro to American Lit. So far I'm really enjoying them both. I did Chaucer at A-Level and really enjoyed it, plus the module leader is Eddie Jones, who is really sweet and lovely and a brilliant lecturer. I took American Lit because it looked like it would be a good module, and I had the module leader for my C&C1 seminar tutor last year, and he's relaly lovely and a decent lecturer, too. When you get to this level you do have to consider the lecturers - one of the reasons I didn't do the Enlightenment module is that the module leader is terrifying (my friend, who is taking that module, says that this is still the case). He really really knows his stuff and he's a brilliant lecturer, but he's scary as hell!! My American Lit seminar leader is really lovely and I think we've got a decent group. One of my friends from P&P last year, plus Revs & Evs seminar group last semester who also did the Renaissance Comedy module as well, is in both my seminar groups this semester. Yay!!! I know I have Elliott for my Chaucer seminar. I didn't go to that this week. Why?
I got up at 7.15am on Wednesday, to make sure that I was up on campus in time for my 9am seminar. I got up there, went to the room, sat down and got my stuff out. A couple of minutes later a boy comes in, sits down and gets out his calculator. This somewhat confused me.
He was there for maths.
So maybe I had the wrong room. So I went round all the seminar rooms in Peter Chalk. No Chaucer seminar.
Somewhat perplexed and confused, I went down to Queen's to find out if there had been a last-minute room change. I found out what happened.
I was 24 hours too late. The seminar is 9am on TUESDAYS.
Ohhhhh dear. So I went to the PC room in Queen's and e-mailed Elliott, who it turns out is my seminar tutor. He'd thought it was a bit odd and unlike me to not show up to the seminar without a good reason (he was my personal tutor last year so knows me fairly well). Apparently also there was a late timetable change. So a combo of events led to yesterday happening. *shrugs* Oh well. It's all sorted now. No major disasters!
I liked my Revs & Evs exam. Because I'd said on Monday afternoon that I need the darker purple and not the lilac they gave me on Monday, the invigilator passed that on and I turned up Wednesday morning to find that they'd done my exam on the darker purple!!! Yay!!! Revs & Evs is basically "Here's a list of 12 questions. You have to present an argument by answering one of the questions". I did the one about discussing the role of the narrator(s) in relation to 2 texts. I wrote about Charlotte Bronte's novel Villette (of which I only got round to reading about a third; thank God for lectures/seminars/online plot summaries!) and George Egerton's short story Virgin Soil. My argument boiled down to the narrator is all-powerful and has complete control over what they impart to and withold withhold keep back from the reader. Hopefully whoever is marking my paper will take pit on me and give me the correct spelling of the above struck-out word. Both look wrong, but it certainly doesn't have three 'h's in!
This has actually led on to me coming up with an idea for the planned TolkSoc mock-academic journal. I'm thinking of doing my article on the reliability of Bilbo Baggins as narrator of The Hobbit. I had considered doing some kind of critical analysis of some of the poetry/songs in the books, but that didn't really inspire me. This, on the other hand, is something I could write a lot about. I'm going to find out if there are any particularly big Tolkien fans in the English department.
It was nice to have a few days' break after the exams. Then it was TolkSoc Challenge, held as usual at the House of Special (ie. this one). People arrived just after ten, although we didn't get started until about eleven! This year I did a caption competition - one sheet of photos of various members of the society (mostly nicked from Facebook profiles!) and one sheet of movie stills. So far Mike is the only one who's done all of them. I'm going to have a go at some point, probably over the weekend when I've written up my notes from this week and done some reading. I was doing the fanfic challenge again, although I failed miserably - I only got 3 partially written. For one of them I had a bit of a dyslexic moment - instead of writing "Boromir quietly closed the door and removed his cloak", I wrote "...and removed his clothes"! Oopsie!
There were also a couple of celebrations, for which I'd got cake last Saturday - the 5th anniversary of our affiliation to the Guild, and it was also one member's birthday! Double cake!! We got some good quotes out of the day as well, including
coloursofdusk's one for her society stash: "Don't drop the knife on the sofa; it'll pop!" (
georgia_pumpkin has an inflatable M&Ms sofa)
I started my new modules this week! Chaucer & his Contemporaries and Intro to American Lit. So far I'm really enjoying them both. I did Chaucer at A-Level and really enjoyed it, plus the module leader is Eddie Jones, who is really sweet and lovely and a brilliant lecturer. I took American Lit because it looked like it would be a good module, and I had the module leader for my C&C1 seminar tutor last year, and he's relaly lovely and a decent lecturer, too. When you get to this level you do have to consider the lecturers - one of the reasons I didn't do the Enlightenment module is that the module leader is terrifying (my friend, who is taking that module, says that this is still the case). He really really knows his stuff and he's a brilliant lecturer, but he's scary as hell!! My American Lit seminar leader is really lovely and I think we've got a decent group. One of my friends from P&P last year, plus Revs & Evs seminar group last semester who also did the Renaissance Comedy module as well, is in both my seminar groups this semester. Yay!!! I know I have Elliott for my Chaucer seminar. I didn't go to that this week. Why?
I got up at 7.15am on Wednesday, to make sure that I was up on campus in time for my 9am seminar. I got up there, went to the room, sat down and got my stuff out. A couple of minutes later a boy comes in, sits down and gets out his calculator. This somewhat confused me.
He was there for maths.
So maybe I had the wrong room. So I went round all the seminar rooms in Peter Chalk. No Chaucer seminar.
Somewhat perplexed and confused, I went down to Queen's to find out if there had been a last-minute room change. I found out what happened.
I was 24 hours too late. The seminar is 9am on TUESDAYS.
Ohhhhh dear. So I went to the PC room in Queen's and e-mailed Elliott, who it turns out is my seminar tutor. He'd thought it was a bit odd and unlike me to not show up to the seminar without a good reason (he was my personal tutor last year so knows me fairly well). Apparently also there was a late timetable change. So a combo of events led to yesterday happening. *shrugs* Oh well. It's all sorted now. No major disasters!