"Get a job!"
It is Saturday morning. Were I still working at Team Arena, I would actually BE working right now. Instead, I am at home, and enjoying it immensely. Working 6 days a week for 3 years is tiring. Working for idiots even more so.
But that is the whole purpose of my sudden move to being a student. By working hard and struggling for the next couple of years, the plan is to have something better to aim for at the end of it all. If everything goes to plan, I can be applying for those £30,000 salaried careers I see advertised in Edge magazine. Better yet, I can form my own company, and turn Power Bastard into the world famous icon he desrves to be!
Having just finished my first week as a student, I have to say how enthralled I remain with the idea. 2 of my modules in particular are very exciting to me, these being Creative Technologies, and Introductory Games Studies. Audio Principles is interesting. Data, Networks and the Web seems easy. Platforms and Scripting seems partially irrelevant, and mostly dull. However, I will still give of my best to them all. I am paying enough for this privilege, so I am going to work damn hard at it.
My timetable is still not 100% sorted out, so at this moment in time I am unsure of when my workshop is on Monday. I am due to start at either 11am, 1pm, or 3pm. It would be nice to find out this information before 11am Monday, but I am not counting on it. (The university admin department clearly needs help, as at least 3 of the lectures were in rooms that could hold a maximum number of students that was significantly less than the number of students timetabled to attend them.) But, it is a large place, and you have to expect that not everything will go smoothly at first. Students complaining about being timetabled for 7 straight hours of lectures on Friday do have a point, as this is actually illegal, but it is not something that is going to last forever. Nor is it that big of a deal, to be honest. In the 'real world' I have worked 14 hour shifts before now. Admittedly not very often, but it has happened. I dealt with that, 7 hours of sitting there listening, talking, and scribbling the occasional note is a stroll in the park by comparison. God bless Virtual Campus's! (Campii?)
The best thing about it all is that I can literally feel the creativity starting to re-awaken in me. It turns out that I missed a workshop for Introductory Games Studies, in which they were to use GameMaker to make a game where all control is handled by a single button. Within 2 minutes of hearing this, I had thought of at least 3 ideas about how I would have accomplished this task. I am still thinking about it, even though it is completely non-essential to the course. Then, when I found out that we will be making a bunch of games throughout the year, based on different themes, I decided that if I were to make some kind of character now, then I could use it through them all, thus freeing up time, and possibly even helping to crystalise the concepts quicker through out the year. I have the character just waiting to be used, Power Bastard, but suddenly I thought of several other possibilities. It has been a VERY long time since I have been able to do this, the inspiration has been lacking. Take me out of the 9-5 rut, and it floods back. And, it is electric. I honestly get rushes when ideas form, and it is something I have been sadly missing.
Meantime, my Creative Technologies homework was to set-up a blog. Instantly, I thought of several outlandish ways to do this, before deciding that since this is going to be looked at by external examiners in the future, then it would be best to be a bit less .... well, a bit less 'Lee' than I usually am. (If anybody is interested, the blog can be found here. The pic is the same one as is on my student ID!)
Finally, completely off-topic, is this the best TV show of all time? I think it may well be, Sir!
But that is the whole purpose of my sudden move to being a student. By working hard and struggling for the next couple of years, the plan is to have something better to aim for at the end of it all. If everything goes to plan, I can be applying for those £30,000 salaried careers I see advertised in Edge magazine. Better yet, I can form my own company, and turn Power Bastard into the world famous icon he desrves to be!
Having just finished my first week as a student, I have to say how enthralled I remain with the idea. 2 of my modules in particular are very exciting to me, these being Creative Technologies, and Introductory Games Studies. Audio Principles is interesting. Data, Networks and the Web seems easy. Platforms and Scripting seems partially irrelevant, and mostly dull. However, I will still give of my best to them all. I am paying enough for this privilege, so I am going to work damn hard at it.
My timetable is still not 100% sorted out, so at this moment in time I am unsure of when my workshop is on Monday. I am due to start at either 11am, 1pm, or 3pm. It would be nice to find out this information before 11am Monday, but I am not counting on it. (The university admin department clearly needs help, as at least 3 of the lectures were in rooms that could hold a maximum number of students that was significantly less than the number of students timetabled to attend them.) But, it is a large place, and you have to expect that not everything will go smoothly at first. Students complaining about being timetabled for 7 straight hours of lectures on Friday do have a point, as this is actually illegal, but it is not something that is going to last forever. Nor is it that big of a deal, to be honest. In the 'real world' I have worked 14 hour shifts before now. Admittedly not very often, but it has happened. I dealt with that, 7 hours of sitting there listening, talking, and scribbling the occasional note is a stroll in the park by comparison. God bless Virtual Campus's! (Campii?)
The best thing about it all is that I can literally feel the creativity starting to re-awaken in me. It turns out that I missed a workshop for Introductory Games Studies, in which they were to use GameMaker to make a game where all control is handled by a single button. Within 2 minutes of hearing this, I had thought of at least 3 ideas about how I would have accomplished this task. I am still thinking about it, even though it is completely non-essential to the course. Then, when I found out that we will be making a bunch of games throughout the year, based on different themes, I decided that if I were to make some kind of character now, then I could use it through them all, thus freeing up time, and possibly even helping to crystalise the concepts quicker through out the year. I have the character just waiting to be used, Power Bastard, but suddenly I thought of several other possibilities. It has been a VERY long time since I have been able to do this, the inspiration has been lacking. Take me out of the 9-5 rut, and it floods back. And, it is electric. I honestly get rushes when ideas form, and it is something I have been sadly missing.
Meantime, my Creative Technologies homework was to set-up a blog. Instantly, I thought of several outlandish ways to do this, before deciding that since this is going to be looked at by external examiners in the future, then it would be best to be a bit less .... well, a bit less 'Lee' than I usually am. (If anybody is interested, the blog can be found here. The pic is the same one as is on my student ID!)
Finally, completely off-topic, is this the best TV show of all time? I think it may well be, Sir!