School and Schmoop

I finished my 3 weeks placement at a secondary school in Wells. As awesome as the school was (with freakily well-behaved kids), it totally sucked. There just wasn't anything for me to do. I think I managed to get away from the back of the class in all of 5, maybe 6 lessons. The most interesting hours in the last 2 weeks were the ones spent doing paperwork, or 'resourcing'.
But once I fill in the last page on my form and send it off, I'll get £600 so it wasn't for nothing. And I know I'm probably not fit for teaching now, at least. I can't be certain, since I didn't do any teaching, but I don't think it's really for me. I haven't the patience.

I'm going to Camp Bestival next weekend. I was sad enough to actually make a list of all the things I'll need to take, and there's a lot. It has to fit in one bag so I expect I'll be cutting it down any way.

I'm participating in a sickeningly sweet multi-fandom challenge at the moment. Schmoop Bingo. I can't really write schmoop, but I liked the idea of getting a card and stuff.



See the schmoop! It's multi-fandom so there'll be something for everyone, and you can still request a card if you want to.
God knows what I'll do for most of my prompts. I tried to do one of them already, and it ended up as crazy Greek crack.

I'm kind of trying to write at the moment, but my brother's playing his godawful music super loud through his headphones and I can't concetrate with that kind of noise going on. I might go and punch him now.

New Blog!

Reading over my last few posts I have to conclude that I'm a bit of an arse. Oh well, don't pretend to be what you're not, I guess.

I have a new blog!
I'm still keeping this one as a journal/diary. The new one is more like what a blog should be.

Stuff

It was always assumed that I would just go straight on into university, and that my brother and sister would too. Now that they've decided not to go my parents act as though it's some ponsy thing to go to university. I hate that. And I also hate the transition from having a good conversation every day with people you like to coming home and finding no one has any idea what you're talking about. As soon as I even mention a book they all switch off, no matter how much I skirt around it or dumb it down. It's incredibly frustrating and I feel like I'm surrounded by idiots some times. And that's saying something because I'm not exactly the brightest tool in the box. Well, maybe I am in this box.

I'm doing my training days at the moment for a school placement that starts on the 29th. It's quite good and I've met someone who's placed at the same school as me so that's pretty good.

I'm supposed to do a presentation tomorrow and after spending an hour and a half gathering together pictures on the computer to use for it my mother came along and deleted the lot. Then I spent the same time again trying to find the pictures that she'd lost and I go to print it out only to find that the ink's run out and we have no replacement cartridges left. Now it's almost 10pm and I have nothing so I'm going to have to wake up at 6am in order to use the library printers and get my stuff together before presenting it all at 9.

Home

I've been home for less than a fortnight and I already feel sick. Having my family around me makes me emotionally weak and ill. I hate it and I know I just have to put up with this gnawing feeling in my chest and throat because I've got another 4 months before my lease in Plymouth begins. It's not that I don't like seeing my family, but prolonged contact isn't good for me.

As well as this sick feeling I'm being driven up the wall by my sister nicking my DVDs the whole time (I'm a little anal about my books and films and she doesn't look after them), my mother keeps yelling at us and my brother is being a royal twat at the moment, calling me a bitch and a slut to his friends on the other end of his computer microphone. And my brother's the sibling I do get on with.

Hardly any of my friends are around until mid June/early July and although I do have another month on the lease of Penrose Street, I don't really want to share breathing space with Matt and Kim again. When I was there I couldn't wait for the year to be over so I could get away from them and I'm still glad I don't have too see them any more, but I don't really want to be here either.

Sometimes I want to just burn all my stuff. To set it all alight because I'm too attached to it and it holds me back. I'd like to keep my books (and my films if I could but primarily my books). I want to up and leave everything behind, but I've got too many attachments, and that's more to places and 'stuff' than to people, but still I feel like I couldn't just leave it all, because I have emotional connections to it (guess it probably says something about me that I feel more connection to objects than to people). Perhaps this Summer holiday I will go through my stuff and throw away anything that I don't want to keep, then I could at least limit my things to a few shelves and boxes, because when it comes down to it, I don't think there's that much that I value outside of my bookshelves.

I just really don't want to be one of these people that nests, that surrounds themselves with things instead of experiences. I just want to get on a train and get off at some random stop up North and then walk. Just get completely lost. It's not like I'd be leaving anything important behind, because everything that I need, and I mean really need would easily fit into a single (although probably large) backpack.

Speculations on Gender

In sociology classes we get these lectures on feminism, and so much of it I think 'bullshit, that's rubbish'. A lot of it I honestly can't see, or if I can see then I can think of an equal argument for discrimination against men. I think you have to be careful with feminism, because people tend to see it everywhere and it's easy to make tenuous links. But sometimes, I wish I hadn't been born female, and I have to wonder why that is. Maybe part of it is that men are naturally, physically stronger, but then I don't think that's everything. Part of it is poetry. When I think of poetry, I think of men. A lot of people see it as a feminine activity but I've always seen it as masculine, and sometimes I feel like a poet with a woman's name wouldn't be taken as seriously, which may or may not be total rubbish, but it's just a thought, and when being objective about these things, you have to at least take subjective feeling into account.

Emotion, as well, I feel is somehow less when it's female emotion. Women are expected to cry, to display their feelings, and I don't really do that, but when I do I feel like I'm being 'girly' and that my feelings would somehow mean less. When I'm writing characters as well, I focus on male protagonist and antagonists because their emotions are more interesting to me. I feel that whatever female character I may write would end up seeming weak and not a little pathetic, and then if they didn't display their emotion it'd seem like I was trying too hard to make them more masculine.

I'm not sure if I think men and women are unequal in society, but I do think that the gender divide makes things difficult and confusing, and in popular culture that divide just keeps getting wider even though differences in opportunity are narrowing. Men are objectified just as much as women in society, but I guess when you're female it's easier to see the objectification and exploitation of women. I don't really think that exploitation is there anymore, and society is increasingly less patriarchal, although it's mostly men in charge, I don't think that really shows anything significant. It's gonna take a while for women to get into positions of power because it's to do with socialisation and they have to work their way up there. You wouldn't want a woman in charge just because she was a woman if she wasn't competent at her job.

I never used to see myself as feminist, I would have called myself a 'masculinist', because I always hated how people could say things like 'men are only thinking of one thing' and 'men are all pigs' and then moan about the marginalisation of women and how we're viewed negatively by men (and thinking about it, why should women be defined by how men see them?) But recently I've realised that feminist and masculinist means, or at least should mean the same thing, so I could say that I'm a feminist too, because it's about equality and the study of gender differences. I might not make 'studies' of it, but it's one of the things I think about, although I don't mention it much in conversation because feminism has a bad press, and when you start talking about it it makes you seem like a twat, even though it's a 'big issue' in society and these points are perfectly valid points to make.

Walk

I got my sociology essay back the other day and was pleased to find that I got 65%, which was a big relief because I'd thought I'd only get something like 53% on it because I barely did any work, didn't include much policy and of course wrote it all the day before it was due in. However, the essay I just handed in will certainly not do as well because my Dystopias lecturer has high standards for work. The fact that we had to make up our own question threw me completely so what I did was far too loosely connected to the crappy question I wrote down. I realised my mistake and tried to change the question to fit the essay better and I think I just made it worse. Hopefully I wont fail, but I guess we'll see.
I went for a walk today. I don't think I've ever even been for a proper walk in Plymouth (meaning one that doesn't involve shopping or bar crawling). It was really nice, although it did sort of highlight the fact that I am terribly unfit. I was only out for about an hour and a half and my legs ache quite a bit now. I guess I'll have to walk more often. I like going for walks, but I'm very lazy.
I wanted to check out some fields I saw at the back of the train station, so I found those and it was through a park and a little wooded area. I could see gravestones glistening in the sunlight through the trees so naturally I made my way toward them, but the graveyard has gates that they lock after 6:30! I was gonna jump over the wall but then a couple of chavily dressed people sat down on the bench table next to the only piece of wall low enough for me to climb over and started having a barbeque so I guess I'll have to go back another time, maybe when the place is actually open. Since when did dead people require visiting hours?

Angel Butts

I'm back in Plymouth now and the first thing I did was go into town and buy a copy of Supernatural magazine and head to the bookshop. I was sat on the floor of Waterstones for about an hour muttering to myself and flipping through a book of Enochian Magick, trying to decide if I should get that or 'Goth: Undead Subculture'. I went with the latter and it was the right choice. Not only was a couple of quid less expensive, but it could be useful for my module on sexualities next year. I could do my presentation on the goth subculture and fetishism. The problem with that is that one of the main researchers is called Angel Butts and I crack up laughing every time I read it or even think about it. If I had to actually say it aloud I would die.
Oh and there's a guy who calls himself 'Count Von Sexbat' but his real name is Simon.

Bad!fic

So, I have one essay, six poems with a 700 word commentary on each to complete, two books to read and two exams to revise for. The next couple of weeks should be a lark.
However, today I'm writing fic. To be honest, what I am writing squicks me out, but I was reading something that had a really good premise, but the writing was terrible. So much repition and long, overflowy dialogue from characters that are supposed to at least pretend to be more stoic than that. I felt I was screaming at the screen when a particulary godawful horror flick is one, the one where you're like 'oh for god's sake, woman, DON'T go into the woods!'
So I thought I'd write something with a similar outline, although I have to say it's not the same, not at all. Not the same plot, just the same genre.
And yeah, what I've written creeps me out, and I think if I was looking for fics to read, I'd probably avoid this one.
This is what I do with my spare time x_x or rather, my time that really should not be spare because I have more important things/work that I ought to fill it with.

Dark Side of the Moon

I'm feeling better about my name. It might be really very boring, but at least it has some horror film references, e.g. Poltergeist. Aaand said reference was mentioned in Supernatural this week, so now I'm all like ... happy!face =P
Oh and I don't know if I've written about this before but I have paid for my Supernatural Asylum 5 convention tickets. Annoyingly they don't send confirmation until about four weeks before the event (WHYFORGOD'SSAKEWHY???) so I'll have to e-mail them and ask them about it before I book the hotel room (which is non-refundable).
It should be a good event, Misha Collins will be there (who I may or may not be slightly in love with), not to mention all the other awesome people that are there (Anna, Gabriel, Azazel; YAY!)

Team Steals

Great night out in Taunton yesterday, courtesy of the wonderful Miss Powell who lives at Toad Hall. Jemma and I played Team Steals.
I unscrewed an LED light from the toilets and kept that, it will come in handy since I have no night light at the moment. I also got a piece of paper that was taped to the window (but it was only a job advertisement) and one of the long mats from the bar top. It's all sticky and needs washing, but I'm keeping that too.
Jemma won. She also got a bar mat; a light bulb that doesn't work; a shard of a 'No Smoking' sign (No King); a laminated 'it is illegal to sell liquor to under 18s' sign; one of the containers on the bar top that hold serviettes, straws and cocktail stirrers; an inflatable cowboy hat from a random boy we met in the street, and a plate that she swiped from a pile behind stacked just behind the bar.
Clearly, my effort was pitiful. I blame the teeny tiny bag I was carrying rather than sheer cowardice.

Red Peppers are the Devil's Testicles

I just came back from an evening of strange and wonderful poetry at the Barbican Theatre in Plymouth. Our lecturer, Paul, managed to arrange ten tickets for the class to go free :D
We saw:
Rob Auton
and
The Poeticats
as well as Kayo Chingonyi and Jean Binta Breeze.
It was all very interesting, and funny (:

Also, watch this video: Stranger Danger.
It's not the end that disturbs me, that all seems fairly logical, but the little girl sniffing the pink flower really creeps me out.

The Wooden Bull

Interview went well. The location was weird. The directions said 'left at traffic lights after the Inn and past the wooden bull'. So I found the inn, walked back to where the bus had dropped me off, wandered down this road where the only obvious building was a dairy, and then ended up at this weird farmers market. I found the door, walked in and there were a lot of older people in wellingtons and overalls, with a few young people in smart clothes lingering by the doors looking doubtful. I followed a couple of girls and found where I was meant to be and sat down to wait. A lot of the people waiting were really chatty, so we exchanged information about universities and wondered what the interview would be like. We were in groups of three, and they did ask some awkward questions. I made up a total bullshit lie on one of them, making my brother sound like some kind of hapless retard that I help out with rather than ignore. I panicked, okay? Anyway, it worked because as I was on the train back I got a phone call saying I'd gotten a place on the scheme, subject to my locating certain documents that I've lost and must immediately get replacements for. That is my task for tomorrow. Get them to resend a paper copy of my driving license, get a new National Insurance card and a bank statement sent to my Somerset address.
One of the girls from the interview was also heading to the train station, so it was that weird phenomenon that you sometimes see on public transport, where you can't quite tell if the two people in front or behind you are friends, but then one gets up and says 'nice to meet you,' and gets off the train. We had lunch and then she got on her train and I hung around for mine. She was very lovely, had gingery hair and freckles and had been travelling to all sorts of interesting places, such as India, and went to university in London. She'd come from the capital the night before the interview- way more hectic than my travel arrangements. She spoke very well, and seemed really enthusiastic. We sat in the little portable diner at the train station, drinking tea out of chunky 'Dave's Diner' mugs, her flipping through a copy of Heat or Hello, commenting every now and again, me apearing a little dense, asking 'who's that?' at every other picture she stopped on, the only person that I really recognised being Keanu Reeves; he had long hair in the picture, which looked odd. I think the girl's name was Rachel, but I am not certain.
We had a lecture by Gavin Smith this evening, he talked about islands as places of potential and as dystopias, and spoke a little about his book 'DogFellow's Ghost', which we are studying in class. It was very interesting. He was a good speaker and quite funny. There was free wine, but only a small glass, so no, that didn't alter my perception of the talk.
On the way to the bus I was stopped by a strange man who looked as though he was going to walk into me, but air-kissed the side of my face instead and walked off.
I've decided that I'm probably not going to do that Louis-meets-Azazel fic. I'm involved in an AU school!verse for Supernatural. I love my beta for it, she's really helpful, and says she will call me Cas because I don't understand any of her pop culture references; XD makes me feel kind of awesome instead of inadequate.
Now I must retire to bed as I have a poetry seminar tomorrow at 10.
For some reason the word 'dystopia' comes up as wrong on my spell checker. The suggested revision is 'dustpan'.

Good Day?

I had my presentation today. Executed amid yawns and blank faces, but it is over and done with now. I didn't make eye contact but at least I didn't forget anything. Our lecturer asked some awkward questions that I don't think are to be taken as a good sign.
Went into town and spent money, on clothes of all things. I went straight to H&M since that's the only place I know of where I can find something without having trawl through everything. So I have two new tee-shirts, a suit jacket and a new necklace (that looks more like something my sister would wear, but it's pretty and old fashioned and was cheap so I am happy). I did hurt my shoulder trying to get out of a stupid dress. It actually looked quite nice but no way am I buying something that is that difficult to get out of (you can make your own joke here).
Came home after buying food and realised I'd locked myself out of my house and room, my phone battery had died so I couldn't call anyone and I had to sit in the street and wait for someone to come home. Luckily Matt and Kim came home about ten minutes later and let me in, and Matt was very lovely and broke into my room for me, which was very nice of him, especially considering the fact that we really don't get on at all. I am going to override my natural suspicion and make a new start concerning them, which shouldn't be too hard since it's two weeks until the Easter holidays and then only 4 weeks until Summer.
I have chicken goujons and baked beans (I know, fancy eh?) and ginger beer which is the best thing ever right now, although while I was looking for my fork I realised that Henry was eating with it. I very nearly freaked out entirely, but I am perfectly well grounded and so I waited for him to leave before I started muttering to myself; I just banged a few drawers to let him know I was looking for it. If it was Charlotte or someone using it, it wouldn't freak me out anywhere near as much, but because I don't know him it makes this horrible knot in my chest and I panic.
I will remember the good parts of my day and watch series one of Skins. That will make it better :)

The Crux

The presentation seems to be coming along okay despite having spent the entire weekend procrastinating. Whilst I was doing so I came across this interesting short film:



Now I shall go and ponder with tea and biscuits.

Victorian Slang

My cousin sent me this link yesterday. Victorian sex slang. It brings a whole new meaning to the act of finding a cab after a night out.

Work Overload

Okay, so I'm really struggling with my work now. My strategy for dealing with this work overload so far seems to be to ignore it, which really doesn't help. Thankfully, after Monday, I wont have any deadlines for 6 weeks, which will give me a chance to sort out my poetry stuff and catch up with my reading for Dark Futures.
I got an interview for the Student Associate Scheme, but it's on a day I specifically said I couldn't do, so I have to miss my lecture in the morning, and then get back to Plymouth for 5:30 in order to go to the Gavin Smith talk. If the interview is any time after 2:30 then I can't do it; 600 quid or no. I suppose, really it'd be more beneficial to go to the interview, but I'm not even certain that I want it. I'm only doing it for work experience to get onto a PGCE and not because I actually want to do it. Plus, my mum isn't around that day, so I will have no lifts at all. I'll have to take my suitcase to the interview, which will involve me catching two busses to get to in the first place, then I'll have to rush to the train station in order to get back in time, still in my smart clothes. Not happy.
Now it is time to brave Illich and powerpoint presentations. Good day.

Poems

Two of my favourite poems at the moment:
'Bird in the Chimney' by Stephen Devereux
and
'Baby Pants' by Misha Collins

Paranoia

I am hiding out in my room. I feel like crap right now and E.H has a bunch of friends round, they're all laughing in the back 'garden' and I can hear them through the window. My paranoia is rearing its foul face again and I feel like they're all laughing at me, even though I can hear what they are saying. Whenever I miss a word I get that creeping panic. I have to go downstairs in ten minutes to get food out of the oven. I hope they are gone by then.
I hate this.

Stress

Feeling crappy due to sore throat and a stuffy head, not to mention work overload. I've finished for the night. I sat in the kitchen because I couldn't concentrate amongst the clutter of my room. I sat there for 6 hours, typing away and flipping through the gargantuan pile of books (10) beside me. Too much, man. This essay is killing me, mostly because of the amount of procrastination I've been doing on it. I guess that's a stress thing. I never thought of myself as some one who gets stressed over work, but I guess I am; probably only because I know that this year counts. GCSEs and A levels ... no one really looks at those, they're just stepping stones leading up to this. I am in the final level of a game here- the points I gather in this section make my final score.
I thought I would read a fanfic to make myself feel better. I found a really amazing one here, but it isn't exactly cheery. Still, I do feel better for having read it, just because it is so perfect.
I think that once this essay is done (and the presentation for next week), I will take a break from the computer, perhaps just for a day or two. Of course I still have poetry to edit, so I can't make it too long. Oh, and fanfiction to write because I have deadlines for those too. Not that I mind that, these latter are fun deadlines (:

Abyss

I am so tired. This is a common complaint of mine, but usually it is due to an 'unsociable' sleeping pattern and too many hours in bed. Now I have a socially acceptable pattern but I am only getting seven or eight hours a night and that isn't enough. My most productive time of the day is the evening but now I am just so tired when that comes around. I keep waking up at 9 even though I want a lie in. It's so annoying, and even if I go to bed early I can't sleep for three or four hours due to my hard mattress and the inability to switch off my brain.
I want to read Dead Until Dark and edit my newest poem but I can't because I have this stupid essay due in for Monday (which I still am not clear about- but my teacher is a pile of poo and wont explain things to me- so I am just going to have to wing it) and I want to do my Louis-meets-Azazel fic but can't until after this and the presentation the week after.
I woke up the other day and realised why I went into further and higher education in the first place. Yes, I enjoy it. Yes, I love learning about my chosen subjects; but really it is all just to delay stepping into the abyss that awaits me. As soon as I step out of education I will fall into this black hole and I don't know if I'll be able to crawl back out of it again. I'm approaching the end of my 2nd year. Uni is going all to quickly and darkness awaits. Frankly, it's terrifying.
And I am coming down with a cold. This is going to be such a fun weekend!
All in all I am not a happy bunny at the moment. Oh well.