I realise that I haven’t written a real, interesting, effort-filled blog in quite some time (nor have I visited other blogs, which I why I get almost no comments! FAIL.) so I figured I ought to write SOMETHING!

This week was the second week of the semester, which means that tutorials started up for my classes. At 300 level the classes are usually small enough so that all the students are in one tutorial group, rather then split into 2 or 3 groups like at lowel levels. In some ways this is good because it means you get to know people, but at the same time it sucks because if there’s someone really annoying in the class (like Angry Man), you can’t escape them!

Speaking of Angry Man, I saw him yesterday actually. In a tutorial. Because the weather was really hideous, I went to the classroom as soon as I arrived at uni, even though there was still over half an hour to go before class started. When I got there, I put my stuff down at a desk and went to go to the bathroom. On my way back again, guess who I saw making his way down the hallway towards the room? ANGRY MAN. :/

I immediately wished I hadn’t left my bag and coat and coffee and stuff in there, because it meant I had no choice but to go back in and cross paths with him! He sat down one desk away from me and asked if I remembered being in a class with him in first year. Do I what!? I don’t think I will EVER forget that class, and his behaviour, as long as I live! He then informed me he has “changed his ideas and perspectives since then”. Yup. Whatever. I’ll believe that when I see evidence of it reflected in the way he treats other students, and so far I haven’t seen any! He’s exactly the same!

Thankfully I wasn’t in there with him for too long before other students started arriving. Just long enough to send Jenny a text saying “It’s just me and him! Help!”, to which she replied “He can’t follow you into the womens’ toilets! Run!” Brilliant. I wish I had!

Because the room was full when the rest of the class arrived, he had to move over one seat, which put him right next to me! Just as well the class involved group work, which meant I didn’t have to talk to him, since, luckily, I’m not in his group!

After it finished I was walking along talking to another woman in the class and she said she’d heard him make some very rude, racist comments towards a young woman in the class who we think is Muslim, judging by the fact that she often wears a headscarf. She came in and sat down behind him in a lecture and he turned around and said something to the effect of “Oooh! A mysterious Muslim woman in a headscarf!” WTF!? Who does that!? We think this girl (whose name I don’t know) ought to make a formal complaint, since surely she has the right to attend classes without having to put up with this twit making comments about her cultural beliefs!? I hope she does.

In other news, I have discovered crosswords. I spent half an afternoon doing a huge 200+ question one in a trashy magazine the other day, and managed to figure 95% of it out. I also now have a book of them, but, on opening it up, I discovered they are “cryptic crosswords” and very and extremely hard! I FAIL at working out riddles and clues! They make my brain want to explode! I like the ones with general knowledge clues and answers more. *commandeers puzzle section of the newspaper*

I’m also still scrapbooking. I can see why so many people are addicted to this hobby, once you start, you just cannot stop! I’m working on all my school and university photos at the moment. Not that I have a lot of photos of university itself! I wonder if I’ll regret this in 10 or 20 years! o.O

Doing anything exciting this weekend?

Yesterday was my first class at the drama school and aside from a few minor mishaps, it went pretty well. The kids are between 7 and 9 years old, which is a pretty good age group, still young enough to be cute, but old enough to be able to be directed and follow instructions.

The show they’re doing is an adaptation the teacher/director scripted from a story book about a queen who wants a dress made out of the sky! :O I haven’t read the whole book or script yet, so I’m not sure what happens, but it sounds very cool, and should last for about half an hour. It performs on the 19th of September, which, scarily, isn’t all that far away! The only rehearsals they have are their regular class times, which is an hour a week. 7 to go! o.O It seems like it’s going to be impossible to do in that time frame, but I don’t doubt that we will, the teacher is really experienced (and awesome) and does it every year! :O

In other news, I started making the invitations for my 21st tonight. I bought 6 sheets of 12×12 inch dark purple cardstock and cut them into 15×10 cm rectangles, which turned out to be a good size. So far I’ve only got 30, and I’m inviting just over 40 people (although some are couples and will be on one invitation) so I have to get some more card. Hopefully the shop I went to still has some left, otherwise I’ll have to get another colour altogether. Oh well, if it happens it happens

I feel old. Ergh. :/

Awhile ago (Ok. AGES ago!) I blogged about visiting a drama school as a kind of “active job interview” for the position of production assistant for thier annual production.

Yesterday morning the tutor phoned me back, apologised for having become so extremely behind schedule and asked me if I was still available and interested! At the time I thought the time of the class she wants me to assist with might have clashed with one of my new Sociology classes, so I told her I’d have to do a quick check and email her to let her know.

Luckily it turned out that there was no clash, since the drama class is on Monday evenings and my lecture is on Tuesday evenings. That said though, even if it had clashed, I wouldn’t have hesitated to drop this class (which is not compulsory) and picked up another SOCI one, with the same number of points, and a more suitable time, since it’s still only the very beginning of the semester. It’s not like I would have let this go!

I start this coming Monday, and end when the production performs, which is the 19th of September, so it’s not that long, but hopefully it’s enough to give me some insight into whether or not I want to teach drama!

Totally off-topic..go and see Mamma Mia, it’s pretty darn awesome.

Some of you might remember this post, where I wrote about a man who has been in several university classes with my friends and I over the last 2 and a half years.

Today was the first day of the second semester and had the first lecture of one of my two classes, Psychosocial Analysis. I arrived slightly early to find the room and talk to some new people (Yup. I’m one of those really annoying friendly types! ) and just after I sat down, the door opened and HE walked in. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Or my bad luck.

Just before the class was due to start, the girl sitting next to me asked if I had “ever had any other classes with ‘that man’ before”! Apparently I’m not the only one who has encountered him and his obnoxious attitudes! It appears he has become rather infamous!

Luckily it’s a fairly big class, and if I arrive early enough I can arrange to sit somewhere where I’ll be “hemmed in” by other students, not have to sit too close to him, and therefore manage to avoid being lambasted with his latest offensive, bigoted opinion on something totally irrelevant!

Although. On a positive note. Some of the things he says are so stupid they’re actually funny, so who knows, maybe he’ll provide a bit of entertainment if this subject ever becomes boring!

Recently I read this article about the efforts one school made to teach their students about the dangers of drinking and driving.

Scared Straight or Scared Stiff: Do Alcohol Awareness Programs Sometimes Go Too Far?

Students and Teachers at High School Divided Over Benefits of Staged Deaths

It was a typical first period class on a Monday morning at El Camino High School in the beach town of Oceanside, Calif., when the students got the shock of their lives.

A uniformed police officer walked into several classrooms and somberly announced that fellow students had been killed in a drunken driving accident. After reading a brief eulogy, the officer placed a rose on the deceased student’s seat and left the room. The reaction was immediate: Some students broke into tears, others gasped in silent despair and a few became nearly hysterical. After two hours of coping with their grief, the stunned juniors and seniors were led into an athletic stadium to witness the gruesome scene as the “dead” students, streaked in blood, were pulled out of the wrecked car by local police and firefighters.

That’s when they were finally told that it was all part of a ruse designed to educate them about the dangers of drinking and driving. It was an extreme version of “Every 15 Minutes,” a program popular in high schools around the country (the title of which refers to how often an alcohol-related traffic fatality occurs in the United States). But some traumatized students and teachers, including a popular English instructor, were still reeling, upset and angry at the deception. “It was outrageous,” says one parent who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation. “My daughter came home a wreck — she didn’t get over it for days. She was more freaked out than educated about drunk driving.”

The school was divided over the program in the first few days.
“Some [of those] who were upset felt that they’d been duped … some were so caught up in feeling they were tricked that they didn’t get the message,” says Brittany Bennett, the editor of the school paper, who played one of the dead students.

“It was about half and half. I was nervous about going to school the next day — I heard that people were angry.”

But Bennett says that most students, including friends of hers who sent her frantic text messages when they heard about the “accident,” got the message and said that it would stop them from drinking and driving.

Source

Although I’m aware that some teachers, counsellors and parents could try and justify this by saying “Better to be temporarily traumatised (scared straight) than permanently dead.”, but personally, I think there are better ways to warn teenagers about drinking and driving which don’t involve setting them up like a practical joke, telling than that their specific friends and classmates ARE DEAD, and potentially leading them to distrust both the police and their school administration, both of whom they ought to respect and be able to trust.

Not only am I surprised that it was El Camino High School’s COUNSELLOR who came up with this EPIC FAIL of an idea, but also that there were a reasonable number of students who agreed to participate in this ruse, and, presumably, hide somewhere on Monday morning, while their friends were being informed of their apparent passing, and allowed to grieve for several hours! I don’t know about you, but if I’d been friends with somebody who “died”, yes, I’d be glad when I found out that they weren’t really dead, but I’d have also been really upset, and maybe even angry, that this had been done to me to begin with!

Basically, in my opinion, disgusting, manipulative, disgraceful, and FAR too far on the part of the school and the police. You?