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

Rough draft: Speech = 60%; Sense of Place A Passage to India (3,000 word - almost mini dissertation) = 63% !!! At rough draft!!! Woooo Hoooo!! Downside - yeah, I can't WAIT to turn those suckers around o_O. In anycase, the major headache is out of the way, three left - then it's pedal to the metal and do the resubmission.

Another good day - I must count my blessings and hope they all stick together somehow :-D

Really not well again, this bug brings you down, lets you recover then comes back around for another try. I have broken through the 3,000 pain barrier (absolute maximum should be 3,300) and I am about 80% done i.e. need to rewrite/ look for academic essays to quote from. Drinking herb tea, because anything with milk in it tastes like cheese and makes me cough more.  I need to have an extension on a couple of things, so I will be getting a sick note on Tuesday if possible.  The weather outside has turned cold and rainy and actually all I want to do is curl up in a ball and sleep.

18:37
3,085 - will expand on some, pare back on others.  Can't get on Lit Online as it won't let me in and The English Review has a Shibboleth error (internal internet forum problem).  So much for sprinkles, they will have to be added at a later date.

I do feel better than at least 2/3rds of the work is done but I have a long trek ahead.  I am not resentful that I have to sit through the Easter holiday to do this - Hubby has to work and both Prodigal 1 & 2 are working in the holiday trade, this year at the same place.  It is just me and Classic FM for company, which is fine.  However, i do feel so very lethargic - I've been told to take the weekend off, but how can I with work stacked up? I would be less relaxed if I was vegetating on the settee with the assignment mountain growing in the office.

13:26
There is some cohesion at long last - as I am beginning to yank my pre-typed phrases to support my arguments, out of my Word Dump that exisists at the end of all my work (literally, I type something mid thought stream or something I have read and dump it at the end of the text, with view to use later on).

21:24
2,463 - I am done for now.  Had to take a break to organise delivery of Roux's bookshelf.  She gave me her Liquorice Allsorts tea caddy, which was nice.  I'll have to renew my passport now she's moving to Tenerife - a lovely excuse to visit.

Well, I'm back to the coalface again - though I am still coughing like an 80-a-day lag and bunged up to the hilt.  Thankfully managed to resuscitate the essay, all 1,320 words of it.  Need to be more driven than I am at the moment.  It is bothering me that there are still three other essays to write between now and May, then the grand turn around of essays between May 1st and June 2nd.  I am seriously worried about this.  Just trying to think of it as Level 4: Access Course with bells on top :-/

15:03
Well....you know when you are not so well, yet you have typed more than you usually do? That somehow, it all makes sense and you can pat yourself on the back for being equally prolific and proficient.  I have just looked at last Friday's writing.  All I can say is - Good Lord o_O.  I have had a few ' say what?? ' moments - in some areas, I understand the gist, but absolutely NONE of the syntax and visa-versa.  What was I on about - or ON even? I remember now - Corvonia and Lemsip. I have 1,458 words, but I really need to edit before I go on.

20:25
Have taken a break, mostly to get some echinacea and lip salve from the market. Lips are cracked and I feel like I have been punched in the face. 1,658 words.  Not sure how I am going to pull this round, to be honest.  I have to signpost it back to the original title and pepper observations as Forster's own, plus read around the subject a bit more.

22: 46
I have managed 2,046, I think I have to change the way I plan essays.  I read the book with the idea that I would be using key phrases, so I had the presence of mind to log them - but I think I could have done with typing them out first of all, so the essay would fit better.  I had a good plan which has worked, but it needs an awful amount of meshing to make any sense.

It is difficult to talk of cultural differences, unless you get inside the mind of a different race and how can you walk in a mile in the shoes of that person?  Plus also sometimes I totally get why the subtext gets confused on both sides and Forster goes to great pains to show it via his text, but there is something more tangible I am trying to grasp here.  A feeling that mere words cannot express.  I can see the tailcoats of it, but words do not come to mind.  It is a sensory thing of which my emotional body can understand, but of which my intellect has problems. It is paradoxically the simplicity and the complexities of it and my word-finding faculties have gone to the wall. 

Right now, I am pouring over the features of Forster's India and how the people live.  I have to be so careful what I write here, because I start to feel inspired whilst writing the log - then worry about using it in the essay (everything I write in the essay is scanned and if my LJ turns up, I have to explain myself - then have the embarrassment of citing myself.  Right now, I can do without that).  550 words so far - go me.

16:23
Not overly pleased, as I have had continual interruptions and veer from plodding with a vague plan, to looking at the screen with a giant blankness.  Tomorrow will be broken up a bit too - i am just concerned this this is starting to slip a bit and I really need to get back on track. For some reason, I came across an Aphex Twin vid and now I am thoroughly disturbed - good old Youtube, now scarred for life LOL :-)

21:09
I was hoping to have this done by Sunday night, but I am way off schedule as I have things to do and promises to keep.  I have done 800 words so far and I am glad re the research I did and the notes I made, but I have to keep showing how sociology/psychology/philosophy are sandwich between the Topology/Climate and continual Culture clashes. Difficult - plus I will have to ask Hubby to take up the slack when it comes to work/family issues.  I am sick and tired of the phone ringing all day.

I am thoroughly pleased that we are exploring the ideas of Utopia and Dystopia in class (I hope this isn't to the detriment of the Goth genre proposal).  Inevitably, we were shown the work of Tudor courtier Thomas More - Utopia
( Info on Thomas More's Utopia )

Invariably, we have looked at my favourite works - Under cut for photo size

( George Orwell's 1984 )

( Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, )

( Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale )
I have always been fascinated with Utopia/Dystopia ever since I watched Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner as a child.  Many, many sci fi/fantasies are built on Uto/Dysto societies and it does explore the dark side of what people do when they have power over others on a massive scale. Lord of the Flies/Rings are prime examples as well as Terry Pratchett's Discworld Series. If I have a chance to do this as part of a dissertation, I will be cock-a-hoop.

I have had a marathon reading/annotation session of A Passage to India and I have only a 100 pages left.  When I first read it, I found it rather heavy going, but in taking my time the second time around all I could think was ::: what an exquisite writer E.M. Forster was!!  The descriptions of the towns, the characters and the all invading heat, cupped by skies of sultry sunsets and moonlit mystery. I cannot endorse this book enough and it does show how the cultures struggled so much.

Many people feel that the west becoming involved with the east was a good idea as it brought a different culture and united people with a single language.  Both Indians and English profited they would argue - until at least 50 years ago; now the whole world has a different perspective.  The west has mixed feelings about it now, some will even argue the toss over how it was a good thing, maybe as a defense of their looting ancestors.  We freed the crap out of you etc.  Personally, before last year my social history was at best sketchy.  But after studying Achebe's Things Fall Apart (insider), my own post colonial studies power point and Forster's A Passage to India (outsider), it is not to feel not only empathy to indigenous populations, but to truly feeling scathing about the colonials, who stole their land. Righteous for me, only - but more justified for them as they had to endure it.

I know ::: too simplified, when I am a bit more au fait with my literature theories, I may reconsider.  Right now, I will have to read the court scene on Saturday - it's back to college tomorrow :-)

I have to finish this today as I have to move on the the Othello/newspaper article soon.  I have managed to shave off a meagre 200 words this morning and I am about only half done.  I will have to do the rest then mesh as I have never meshed before.  I need a crash course in Microsoft Publisher, which I will look at in our free break tomorrow morning. 2,717 down to 2,433. 284 in fact. It's times like this when you realised you have doubled up somewhere along the line, or have glaring omissions.  My main concern is that it doesn't matter how often I rearrange the paragraphs, the problems still remain.

16:41
I am down to 2,096 words and I am worried now that I have confused the issue somewhere along the line. I am scratching my head as I have to get across what it is exactly I am getting at.  Yes the poor living conditions are caused by the economic cutbacks of the party, but also I am trying to convey how the people are kept to this level by the environment AND the brainwashing.  No description fits in this essay and I feel that it has the same monster proportions as I found with Wuthering Heights this time last year.

LOL: I just looked at my entry for this time last year and it was all about having three versions of WH on the go and wishing it would snow so I didn't have to go in!! HA!! Somethings never change.

19:13
I'm down to 1,999. 350 left if I am going for 1,500 plus 10%. Let's get to it :-)

20:09
I am sticking to 1,650 - I have 95 words to shave off.

21:39
It is done - well, it wasn't JUST about shaving off words, it was also about rewriting to lose those words. 1,650 done and dusted for now :-)

I shouldn't complain, I know - but unsurprisingly, I am finding 1984 a drag.  I have been on this a week, but realistically  it has been split time in between finishing the creative writing homework and attending college (there was also an evening out that I couldn't get out of - enjoyable as it was, it took me straight off track).  Just as Wuthering Heights before it, this is in another nemesis - another beast to slay.  It is looking a LOT better than it was,but I have a lot of judicial editing, which will include sentence rearranging and a lot of paragraph meshing to do.

I have set myself the deadline of midnight tomorrow - in actual fact I really want to be done way before that.  I am also having a peek at Microsoft Publisher for my newspaper report.  I will have to get to grips with that pretty soon and I have a feeling a trip to see the tecky-minded boys from two floors up won't come amiss.

20:34
Things are slightly better.  I am down to understanding what I have to say about the lexis area of the essay - of which Oceania has its own - Newspeak.  Also, it won't be long before I will be commenting on word classification (verb/noun etc.) and seeing what effect it has on the essay.  I will then sum up the overall effect (frickn grim and bleak springs to mind) and my reader response (now thoroughly depressed).  This hydra head is going on and on (I actually do think of this degree as being one great big Lernaean Hydra and the golden sword at the end is the final scroll), but I think I am at least 3/4s done.  Yay to me :-)

22:41
I was mistaken in my assumptions that I am 3/4 through. I haven't even touched the phonological sides yet (alliterations, plosives, fricatives et al), nor the figurative language (similies and metaphors etc.), nor the cacophonic language (there is sure as hell no euphonic language, I can tell you!!).  I have made the notes on it for now i.e. the lines and where they are in the text for tomorrow. I am at least 700 words over, if not more and as I have said, I am not done yet.

*sigh* tomorrow is another day :-/