Week 5: Exploring Brum and Essay Talk

Apologies for another Monday post (though it should say Saturday). This is because I wrote the first draft on Saturday then forgot to write the concluding paragraph on Sunday because I was essay planning. This means that this post is in two parts. One written on Saturday, one written on Monday with new news.

Part 1:
Amazingly, Wednesday was the first day I've been out in Birmingham centre to do some shopping/browsing since I moved here. I've visited before briefly but never really had a proper look round. Wednesday was Neon Night at Gatecrasher so my boyfriend and I took the train from the University station to New Street and browsed the centre of Birmingham for anything that might be of use. We also walked through Brindley Place (gorgeous) to the NIA in search of a way to buy tickets to see the Stereophonics in March without paying extortionate booking fees. The box office was closed so that was a failed journey. (And the tickets were bought online as soon as we got back to the flat.) After that we sampled a few shops in Birmingham and had a browse round the city.

I'm not yet acquainted with the city enough to report back about it properly but I have noticed that a shopping trip at home in Doncaster takes me about an hour in which I can buy several (about 6) things whereas in Birmingham it takes me far longer because the place is so huge and the variety is epic. I went today to buy a sewing kit for myself and a coat for my boyfriend and it took us about three or four hours of browsing and shopping. The time does fly because there's so much to see and so many shops to look through (Selfridges is AMAZING!) but I was amazed at how many hours it took us to buy so little. The sewing kit purchase was because I've been allocated to do costume for Vinegar Tom (a play by Caryl Churchill, performed by the third years) so figured I may as well get equipped. We took ages browsing random shops like Claires and Debenhams before finally found a Cath Kidston section in Selfridges where I found a kit for £12.

Nothing particularly interesting has happened in lectures, classes and seminars this week apart from essay talk. In several lectures I've been given advice on writing the essays that've been set. I have one for the 10th, one for the 17th and one for January. Generally, its good to have the essay finished at least a week before deadline day so you can leave it for a few days and reread it to see if your points make sense and your argument is understandable after a sleep or three. It's also advisable to get a trustworthy flatmate to proof read it on paper (not screen) and see if they understand it (though obviously the theory may not be as understandable to them as to the person who will be marking it). A bad way to approach it is definitely the last-minute method that needs only an unhealthy supply of Relentless and one evening/night/morning. I won't be doing that any time soon.

Part 2:
So yesterday (Sunday) I spent a good few hours planning my first essay. I say planning, what I really meaning is planning the planning. That does make sense: allow me to explain. For every essay at University, you have to do proper references with a bibliography at the end. There are plenty of helpful guidelines on WebCT, the online database for documents (well organised for your subject), so there's nothing to worry about. The guidelines serve as a really good skeleton for adapting your own references (just replace their titles, authors, dates etc with your own from your reference). What I'm getting at here is that my method at the moment is to figure out which books or articles I'm going to reference and use in an essay, write a list of them, find out where they're going to be found (in the library, on the web, in a reading pack, my bookshelf, Amazon etc) and use that to direct my essay. I would publish my list but I think that would be some form of cheating so I can't really do that. I will say, though, that I've listed about four to six books from the library, a handful of weblinks including reviews and interviews from The Guardian and The Times and a few articles that are part of the essential reading on the course. This, I suppose, could give you a rough idea of what is expected. With that planning of planning done, today I'm off to the Main Library (fun fact: the university owns 2.5 million books including its Special Collection of over 80,000 pre-1850 books and 3 million manuscripts dating from 1471 - thanks to Thom Straw for that one) to find said books and make use of my highlighters.

On that note, I'm going to make myself some lunch. I did fancy spaghetti bolognese but I'm lacking in the fresh meat department and I'm very confused about how much money I have left this week (Week 6 budget fail) so it's just spaghetti and tomato-ey sauce for me. Student luxury!