The Summer School Week 1
I promised a proper update so here it is :)
This past week has been a LOT of FUN. I was really looking forward to it beforehand but it's even better than I thought it would be. I only began actual subject seminars on Wednesday but we've already had nine sessions and I enjoyed every single one of them. I think I'm going to break this down into a few sections so that if you're only interested in certain things you can just skip to those bits!
The Work:
The course covers different types of mediums - novels, plays, short stories, film and poetry - and we have to choose a question relating to one of those things. So far I've been to sessions on genre and poetry and we also watched Hitchcock's Vertigo which we'll be analysing and discussing on Monday. The texts and things we've looked at so far have been really enjoyable to study. With genre we looked at a few extracts from texts and also looked at the opening to Legally Blonde. Then yesterday we had four sessions of poetry. In the first we looked at the poetry of Duffy and Philip Larkin, the second we looked at poetry by Wendy Cope and Tony Harrison (who is awesome, by the way!) and then in the other sessions we looked at issues of gender and class within the poems we'd looked at earlier. I really enjoyed it because everyone (including the woman running the session) was really down to earth and, contrary to some discussions I'd had in classes at school, no-one there was snobby about people from working/lower-middle classes (in fact, most of the people there have similar backgrounds to me) so it was interesting.
Friends:
I've made lots. I've spent a bit more time with the people that I'd already met at the tutorials - swapped phone numbers etc with them and they're really awesome people. I've also made friends with another great group that are very like me and we have a lot in common. One of them, we'll call him S, is in my Literature seminars with me, another who we'll call R is doing English Language, C is doing Chemistry and H is doing History (which is good b/c it means I'll know someone doing my other subject as well.) Anyway, they're lovely people and we have so much in common (Harry Potter, not feeling the need to get drunk, Neighbours, scrabble.)
The Social Event:
On Wednesday there was a massive quiz night. Around 300 out of 500 people turned up so it wasa pretty good turnout. I was in a team of eight with the second group of friends that I mentioned above and a few other people that they knew from school (who were all lovely, too.) It was such a great night; there were rounds about the local area and music and tv as well as a true/false round and a general knowledge round. People who were caught cheating (with their phones out) or who were being too pedantic and asking for clarification all the time were made to dance around the room wearing feather boas to the YMCA (all in good fun, though) AND MY TEAM CAME THIRD. I think that's pretty good considering how many teams were there!
Other Things:
- I'm very, very tired! On Wednesday I was out in seminars and then at the quiz from 9.30 till 11. Then yesterday I was in from 9.30 - 5 without any breaks apart from lunch then straight to Brownies for 6. Next week's timetable is a bit quieter, I think.
- Please let me know if I've missed anything important and link me to it/tell me about it here.
- My sister and I are going into town later to go shopping for presents for my mum (it's her birthday on Thursday.) K might be meeting us to go for pizza (fingers crossed!)
- I'm going to postpone the memes etc until summer school is over because I'm not sure when I'll be able to get online etc.