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08/01/07: Well, this is a complete 'reboot' of my site, with a new, flashier interface (still html) and a new web host, so I thought it best to reboot the journal as well. Plus, the old one was getting a little too ranty - this time 'round I'll try to dial back the insanity and save the real vitrol for the dedicated "Rants" section.
Having just said that, I'm now going to let rip on the useless assignment we've just been given. As regular readers will know, I'm currently studying Creative Writing* at Bath Spa University. However, throughout the course every single tutor has toed some kind of invisible party line and declared that it's not their place to teach us how to write, but to teach us how to "read" so we can rip off Steven King instead. Our "Writing: The Process" tutor not 30 minutes ago declared that anyone wanting to become a screenwriter must, and I quote "spend eight hours a week watching film". Y'know, because University students are just renowned for being workaholics and need to be told to chill out on the couch once in a while.
When someone raised an objection to this infuriatingly monolithic stance based on the fact that the name of the course strongly implies an emphasis on learning through doing, not learning through "classic English literature", said tutor sneered that the concept of "reading for a degree" was obviously alien to us ingrateful slugs. Coming directly after he had just declared "we must get in touch with our feminine side (as readers)" and that the coursework we had previously handed in to him was, in general, "pretty crap", any respect I might have had for him has just evaporated. Did I mention he was "disappointed" no-one had done the "incest option" for said coursework and commended to us the 'incest classic' "A Spell Of Winter" by Helen Dunmore, who he let slip is also a financier of the course? It also didn't help that he subsequently sided with our resident (goatee-and-eye-liner wearing) music video director in praising eugenicist loony --Richard Dawkins-- . Gah.
But I digress. Our assignment was to write down our life objectives ten years from now (although he suggested based on our potential life expectancy we should prepare an "eighty year plan"), three to five years from now, and in six months, and a daily regimen to be reassessed on the first day of every month. Are you beginning to see something a little "off" here? Yes, our incest and eugenics promoting professor (more accurately 'lecturer', as he is studying for his Masters degree) now believes he is entitled to tell us how to run our lives as a single assignment. What is especially infuriating is the way he smoothly moved from "draw up a hypothetical life plan to illustrate the importance of planning out your projects" to "map out your life for the next ten years and bring in said map for me to review". I hate the world.
Anyway, I made up a little ditty on the way out of class (to be sung to the tune of "My Old Man's A Dustman"):
"Dawkins worships Hitler,
And his eugenic friends,
All those who believe in him
Will come to sticky ends.
Oh!
Fascist academics,
Promote incestuous poo,
And that's why our society
Is going down the loo".
Signing off, blessings all round, stay clear of lightning rods, etc.
* It was originally billed as Creative Studies in English, but they evidently wanted to make it sound less rigorous, so they changed the name of the course.