Sub Rosa

Ignore the sardonic lyrics - I play this every year when my results are in.


Transactional Writing - 70% (pleased with this one, might have been let down slightly by the travel piece).

What is Theory? - 70% (now that pleasantly surprises me; I presume I did better on the Jane Eyre rewrite and I must've aced Brave New World).

Creative Writing - 72% (very pleased).

Sense of Place - 72% (both Passage to India and Nineteen Eighty-Four went well).

Identity and Nationhoood - 70% (really surprised at this one, the John Harris/Arthur Caddick  was ok, but I really thought I had trashed the last IN3. It was about literature/political purpose and I went waaaay out on a limb for this one, using media and modern-day satire, citing the TV satire and even the use of Huffpost and the irreverence of Newsthump.  Whereas I think the examiner wanted evidence in literature history.  Paid off though - I argued the toss about progression, might not gamble quiet that high in the future).

Introduction to Literature - 67% (Goddammit, must have fell back on Donne and his extended metaphors or maybe the parallels between Wordsworth and T.S Eliot was 'a bridge too far').


Credits Achieved at this stage - 120
Overall aggregate mark - 70.17%

Therefore, my measly 10% have managed to scrape a first for the first year !!! Wooohooooooooooooooo!!!!

*does a happy dance*

Onward to the FdA English Studies Year 2 :-DDDDD

I have a serious case of cabin fever right now, mostly because it is the bank holiday, it's raining and I am holed up.  I am going to do the easiest essay redraft as I really don't want to face TH2 (Jane Eyre/Feminist Theory) and instead I am doing the one that I have already got 65% on.  Plus, I need to proofread TH3 and I am not in the mood right now.

Shall I tell you what I really want to do? See the outside world.  Go to the beach (just not in the rain), read something where I don't have to look for layered meanings.  Visit friends, actually leave the county and see somewhere different.  I want to write something that I might enjoy.  For instance, I saw a picture (above) years ago - back then it didn't have an affect on me.  I then had a dream where the picture featured and it triggered such emotion in me. I can't fathom why.  Researching further, I realised now that most of Richard Long's tends to have the same effect on me.  I don't know - maybe his art forms are so.....visceral?  Who knows. I would like to write about that, someday.

Bank Holiday Monday - it is cold, grey and windy also as previously written, I don't have my car. I have no other choice but to hammer out what is left of this essay. The plus side is, today I have an empty house - Hubby is working at a friend's house and Prodigal 2 is earning part of his crust on the local caravan site.  I have had to weed out a massive chunk of the essay as it doesn't fit in with the rest of it (not just William Blake either - the political message behind nursery rhymes was another).  Thing is, this is a comparatively short essay and I didn't have elbow room for some of it.

13:51
It is done (well at least for now - I am sick of looking at it); I just have to lose 134 words.

15:04
'Tis done, woohoo!! Will peruse through possible texts for TH3 - l'ultimo :-D

I am fairly bored with this essay already, probably because all of the writers I want to use in it are off the list.  I think I will omit the older writers and will just have to just wriggle through the rest and retrace my steps. Couldn't have picked a better day, as they weather is a cold bucket of crap and my car is STILL in dock. Therefore the need to run away find displacement activity has shriveled to nought.  Until yesterday - when I kick-started my old Blog Spot page.

I have it since 2007, but only used it sporadically - I preferred LJ as was familiar with its set up.  Yet I am looking increasingly elsewhere to develop some ideas.  Alas, it also takes up too much time and I need to crack on.  I have just over 4 weeks to write 2 essays, turn round 12 essays and write various commentaries justifying my work. May is my lock-in month.  I am already so sensory deprived, that I actually felt elation when I went for a trip to the supermarket.  I can tell you this much - I can't get my car back soon enough o___O

Anyway 677 word count from yesterday - best crack on.

16:49
I have managed to squeeze Swift in by making a small reference to A Modest Proposal, then I dragged William Blake into the mix, using the Chimney Sweeper/Experience poem.  However, I have moved onto the sixties and The Frost Report class sketch and onward to the eighties, Spitting Image and beyond. Feel happier now - have 869 words with a maximum of 231 words left.  I would say that 50% of it is well-written and the remaining is about collating the more modern-day stuff and using various conjunctions and modifiers throughout.

20:29
I have stumbled upon various academic documents in regards to Orwell's 1984, but some of it is so convoluted not to mention too impossibly high brow to use in a mere 1,000 essay, where he only has a cameo appearance.  Don't get me wrong - if I was writing a mini or full-sized dissertation, I will know where to go.  Right now, I am finding myself on the socialist side of the track and maybe wading a little too deep at this conjecture. I am writing something that needs to be sorted by this Tuesday at the latest.

21:48
1,053.  Truthfully? It looks a frick'n mess.  It has happened many times before and I dread it.  I can kinda see a way forward, but the last 40% I need to fill in BEFORE the conclusion - looks very, very messy.  At wits end, but I have three days (I can hear a Time Team metaphor spilling out here) to nail this sucker.  Then it's the finale, the mega-beast: 1 text (of my choice); 2 Theories (can use any but Feminist). 2,000 words go go go.

Right now, I just want to see the end of this :-(

I am really dragging my backside on this one.  Too many days staring at a computer - I remember I was like this this time last year.  When you get a whiff of freedom, you just want to make a bolt for the door. Well, I can't go anywhere at the moment, as my car is languishing at the mechanics (been there over a week now - hard to source bits for a car over 20 years old) and I am praying that I get her back, rather than say the death rites over her. Especially since I really don't have a sizable chunk of change to hand over for another knackered-but-running car.

Can Literature have a political purpose? Yes. Discuss. No thanks :-(

17;25
Brain has gone into shut down. 269 words, most of that is the basic planner and from what the dictionary definition is for the terms 'literature' and 'political' actually mean.  I know some of what I want to say, but somehow the words won't flow and then I draw a blank.

Later
It all went to the wall for me a bit.  I have the most massive block on this and I already know why.  I just need to talk myself around it.  I already have a sketchy plan.  Just have to rethink a few things.

We had to stage a debate this morning - All literature should have a political basis. Interesting. I had to be on the opposing team and trying to prove that there shouldn't be politics in all literature - however, most of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels have some kind of feudal system and any trashy novel has some form of sexual politics, so more difficult than we thought. Define politics - Define literature. Politics: are they just morals and values channeled into governing society? It would make the written word an even more terrifying tool - akin to fascism and communism under Hitler or Stalin.

Thankfully, we were prepared with enough ammo - how it would stunt education, devalue scientific discoveries and cause divisions where there would not have been any.  If you enforced politics into literature in past, present and future text - at the very most there would be concerns of brainwashing/paranoia; at the very least, some people would lose interest and not read at all. Could you imagine the drive to find more and more 'neutral' books and just how boring that would be? A horrible Orwellian world of sanctioned books etc.

Edit ::: I forgot to mention that I used the children's story 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' as part of the argument. Try stuffing politics into the life cycle of a butterfly, you will come unstuck.

I have done as best as I can at the moment with Pope/Swift etc.  I would say that I am two thirds done of that, but need a lot more time to finish things off.  Still, the aim of the game is to prioritise and I have noticed that the main lecturer has underlined that this one and TH2 has to be in by next Wednesday/Friday respectively.  Thankfully, IN2 is comparatively short (1,000 words + 10% = 1,150 max), so I am hoping that a little bit of biography and a lot of poetry will bunce up the word count and will provide a decent essay.

( IN2 Criteria )
For now, I have decided on Jack Clemo and I am undecided as to whether I use Pol Hodge, Arthur Caddick, Bert Biscoe, or John Harris.

20:36
300 words - just short of 30% (if we go to the absolute max).  Not brill - trying to decipher the annotation I have scribbled over the poem (Snowfall at Kernick).  Mine workings in the snow - very bleak.