Week 3: Keeping Busy

This week I've managed to do something every day which meant I was out of the flat or not in the mood for revising. I don't recommend that but it does mean I have a fair bit to report back on.

First of all, on Tuesday I decided to treat my boyfriend to a Big John's (Selly Oak's answer to halal KFC - with proper chips) after an exam he was dreading. Thankfully, it was a lovely day so we could eat it outside Joe's Bar (at the Guild) and enjoy the sun. Before coming to Uni, I generally didn't even think about take-away food because I always cooked it myself or my Mum would cook. My association with take-aways was (and still is, mostly) grease and fat and horrible stuff. I found Big John's, though, and treat myself to a dinner from there every few weeks. Ah and the milkshakes are gorgeous. Proper value for money!

Wednesday was insanely busy. I had to call for a committee meeting in the morning, for the Northern Society, because we needed to expand our committee and talk about a few more important things. That was really productive and we had a good discussion, coming up with many ideas both for now and for the next academic year. Then I went off to the centre to find a dress worthy of wow-ing my boyfriend as he had asked me out to dinner at Strada at the ICC in Brindley Place. I headed straight to New Look because I love their clothes and their prices are student-friendly. After spending about an hour trying on and deciding, I went up to pay and noticed they were running a limited student discount. Whipping out my NUS card, I slashed a £25 dress down to a £20 dress. Good times! On a different note, I'd reserved some dumbbells from Argos (in the Pallisades, the shopping centre attached to New Street and the Bull Ring) so I headed back to pick them up and go back to Tennis Courts to get ready. That was a silly idea. Dumbbells are heavy! I managed to get them back to my flat without any help but weighed the box - I'd been lugging about 20lbs (I weighed my weekly shop last week and that was about 30lbs altogether, too). Dinner was lovely. Strada is always a very good place to eat. The prices are not too bad and there's usually a discount voucher either online or laying around somewhere in a voucher book (about 10 got shoved through my flat door a while back so that's a lot of discounts right there!). For two main meals and a drink (I stuck with water, boyf had a coke - which is served in a posh bottle), we paid around £12. Well, when I say 'we', I mean 'he'.

Quite a few of the people on my course get involved in the Guild's many performance student groups. I've been to see them in Equus (amazing) and on Thursday I went to see Alice in Wonderland. The design of that piece was absolutely fantastic. The costumes were brilliant, the set was awesome and the use of lighting, especially to show Alice growing and shrinking, was really well thought out. Even if you're not naturally into theatre or performing, you should definitely go and see any of the many productions put on by the various performance groups. Even just to appreciate how much effort they put into them - whilst maintaining a good standard of work in their own degrees. Brilliant.

On Friday it was the End of Year Drama night out at the o2 for Propaganda. I don't really go out a lot but because this was the end of year one, I decided to make an effort and join them. I put the message out that I would provide my flat for the meeting point and we'd all go to Propaganda from there. The night was really fun and more people than I imagined turned up, which did wonders for my social esteem. I was able to let off some steam by dancing the night away to really good indie tunes and eventually getting back to my flat at about 3.30am. I'll definitely be joining the drama people for a night out again soon. It was good to see everyone again after finishing the year and not quite realising we had no more classes together until October.

This weekend has been a nice relaxing one, so far, and the only thing left to do is go to Bar One for a few games of pool and see if anyone turns up for the pub quiz. Due to exams, the quiz has been sparse for the past couple of weeks. They'll probably cancel it soon then restart it back in October. One thing I haven't indulged in is a BBQ on the Vale, which I assume is allowed because disposables are being sold in Cost Cutter and I haven't heard of anyone being told off for it, yet. That must be done before term ends completely.

Week 10: Seemingly Packed

I've been almost non-stop this week. Or, at least, I think I have. Last week's post was written on Monday so I've already revealed what happened that day. I'll start with Tuesday.

On Tuesday, I managed to go over-budget again by buying almost £40 worth of food. To be fair, I hadn't been food shopping in a while so I figured that I'd take that excuse to stock up. I did buy a lot of things I wasn't going to eat straight away, such as tins of chopped tomatoes (essential for student living), tomato soup (also essential) and kidney beans (as before). I was, however, being money conscious. I went round with the calculator on my phone and tried to keep track. It appears I missed one or two things because I was about £3 off but it didn't matter anyway. I had to call a taxi to cart all the stuff back to TC because it was simply too heavy to carry healthily. The taxi driver then alluded to me being a princess simply because of my name (my surname is Royle). Lovely. He got to keep the change.

As I'd promised to meet Oli at the Guild, I had to rush to put all my things away and make 'portable food' so I could avoid the grump monster that attacks me when I get hungry. It was absolutely gorgeous so sitting outside Joe's Bar sipping a glass of water and my 30 second burger (frikadillen in a burger bun/roll with pickle) was a breeze. We then moved down to Student Development in the basement to make posters for our first society event which, later, we had to alter due to circumstances I'll reveal in a bit. At ten to four we headed up to the Thomson Training Suite for the Cultural societies mini-forum.

Mini-forums are organised for societies with similar aims (there's a media mini-forum, a departmental one, an indoor activities one, etc.). The VP SAD (Vice President of Student Activities and Development) chairs the meeting and any issues are put to her (at the moment it is Emma Packham). This time round, the candidates running for Emma's job were there and presented their pitch to us. When the elections come round again, it's really important that everyone votes because the Guild is a democracy and needs the input of the students. It is run for students, after all. After the candidates had their half an hour, they left and Emma introduced the Referendum. This is only relevant to this year, I think, so I won't really say much. I can't even say if I agree or not. If you want to find more about the Referendum, there's more on the Guild website and on Facebook groups. Eventually the focus turned to the groups. We went round the table in turn reporting on the year's successes and difficulties (note: not failures). It was interesting to hear what events people were putting on and to hear that societies which have been running for a long time are still struggling with getting funding due to their small amount of members. The list of societies is, again, on the Guild website under 'Get Involved'.

As I said earlier, we had problems with our first event. We had planned to meet at Joe's Bar at 8.30pm because it's an easily accessible place but when we went down to Joe's to talk to the staff about it, they said they were hosting a Sports Night on the same day so would have to charge our members £4 for entry and would have to shift our time to 9pm. We didn't want to do that so we changed our venue to Bar One, on the Vale, and the manager was happy for us to put some posters up advertising the event. We can't say for sure how the posters have helped or hindered the promotion of the event but we have had a small increase in group members on Facebook. There's also a poster up in the TeCRA office thanks to the enthusiasm of one of the RAs who claims to be a proud Northerner.

Thursday was a bit of a low, blank day for me. I had rehearsals at 10am which meant waking up at 7am (I always leave the flat an hour before I need to be up at the Selly Oak campus and wake up two hours before I need to leave). That wasn't altogether pleasant. I think I need some sort of schedule back in my life. I may well go ahead and make one, considering I have about 7500 words to write over Easter and an exam to prepare for and the gym to go to. After 19th May, though, I'll be a free woman! That's the beauty of University: it's intense but the finishing date is earlier than your previous.

Yesterday was quite refreshing, actually, in that the morning was quite slack. I had to be in Selly Oak for 2pm so I didn't have to set my alarm, which is always good. I amused myself with the Friday Night Comedy podcast on the walk up to George Cadbury Hall which made me about twenty minutes early. That's also always good. The reason I was up there was the cueing exercise that we have to do every four weeks (minus the costume run) of Theatre Crafts. This time round it was sound. We had to go up into the sound box and were taught how to use the cueing programme then, essentially, made sound happen at the right time. Techie times!

A heart shaped slice of leek I found in my salad. How sweet.

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!