On the insistence of those who apparently know better I have started my blog. When considering the content one must bear in mind that this is compulsory. That said if its worth doing its worth doing right. So, to the essay which was the last deadline we had.
Having spent the reading week in Ireland working and hiding from assorted Bournemouth related problems I came back to find pretty much everyone I knew in a self imposed social Siberia. The essay they said, had to be done. In my previous incarnation as a compulsive proctrastinator I would have normally left everything to the last minute. It turns out that leaving everything to the last minute isn't the best policy. Due to my being dyslexic I have a tendency to miss massive and indeed glaring errors in both grammar and spelling which drags my mark down. I know what you're thinking. Why don't you proof read it? Well thanks for the feedback but the problem was that I would miss these errors even when I had proof read it quite a few times. I was advised to finish my essay, proof read it and then proof read it again a day or two later. Good advice but it rules out a last minute approach.
I'm getting older. I realise that the last minute approach was something I did at school when my aim was to pass my exams and move on from the whole sorry secondary school affair. Having actively chosen to come here and jumped through quite a few hoops to get in, the last minute approach is selling myself short. I should want to do this stuff and I should be able to do a decent job. That said I did my forty minute script last minute and I got 69%, okay I didn't get a first due to an abundance of typos but still last minute was good while it lasted.
The usual hysteria surrounding any submission was quite off putting until one puts it into context. The phrase ' I know I failed' coming from a fellow student would normally trigger alarm bells and instant advice on how to fix the situation. However this phrase coming from a fellow student in the week before an assignment is due should be ignored. Its a symptom of delayed guilt over either a) not having attended lectures or b) not having paid attention in lectures. The essay is the whole point of your lectures. Which is why you show up and take notes. The essay instantly becomes less daunting when you look back on these notes. For those of us who write in the style of drunken monkeys or simply don't take very good notes media 2 has all the lecture notes. Simple.
Another handy way of looking at your essay is that the essay relates not just to the term, but to everything you learned to date. Handy terms like 'autuer' and 'mise en scene' that you learned in year one but forgot by year two make your essay look like you have a clue what you're talking about. Not to put too fine a point on it but that's pretty much the aim.
Once you have understood the question the next thing to do is back up your argument. Reading list, library or e-brary. Quote as needed. Half the essay battle is the stuff you do during term however the part we stress out about is the actual writing of it.
I finished my essay on Tuesday, re-drafted it on Wednesday and did a final proof read on Thursday. I obviously won't know how I did for awhile but I have a reasonable expectation that I'll keep up my average.
The next deadline we have coming is our series bible and presentation. More on that next week.
