This week is officially ‘Week 4′ of teaching at the University of Leeds, and including Freshers Week I’ve now been at University for a month. Huzzah! It’s been a very mixed couple of weeks in all honesty, with highs and lows, but I’m happy to report that I am starting to really settle into University life, both socially and academically.
Things in the house are good, we’re not going out all that much due our individual commitments but that should change over the next month or two as we have a few things planned. The place is clean, everyone is chipping in and I’ve definitely landed on my feet with a cool bunch of guys and gals. Having three pubs within about a minute walk of the house is something we need to take more advantage of. Plenty of time yet.
On the course, I find myself having mixed reactions to the modules I have. The ‘History of Communications’ module is an absolutely engaging, as we’re looking at communications in a very wide context starting with the modern 9-11/Iraq/Afghanistan era and working backwards; we just covered the Cold War and tomorrow we have more historical goodness.
My personal tutor, who is also one of my lecturers in this module is a bit of an expert in propaganda and has a crazy amount of military contacts and plenty of experience dealing with them; he often regales us with stories of work he has done for NATO, the United Nations, U.S Armed Forces etc. Christ, he was even consulted during the process of trying Slobodan Milosevic for genocide at the Hague! He is also a specialist on all things al-Qaeda and ‘War on Terror’ and respect author is his field. Bought his book today which was a little surreal.
To most people, that last paragraph meant nothing. To me, as a complete geek when it comes to warfare, propaganda and ‘War on Terror’ matters it gives me a lot of motivation and I’m genuinely interested in what I’m learning.
In my other two modules, I don’t find myself being as motivated as I’d like. Academic skills is quite, quite boring although we are learning skills that will put us in good stead for the rest of the course. The biggest let-down is my Introduction to Cinema’ module, where I find the lectures to be incredibly boring (albeit sprinkled with interesting tid-bits of learning) although the weekly seminar is much better. At the moment it just seems to be an excuse to watch films in all honesty.
All in all, I’m confident that I can get through this first semester and I’ve settled into a rhythm with organising and producing my work; I just need to spend a lot more time in the library.
One of my biggest concerns right now is that I’m not doing anything with my camera, and I’m trying to come up with ideas that let me dust off the equipment and get me shooting things again. Joe: The Sequel may yet happen. Brendan!!!