The Adventures of Matt (in Leeds!)

The discerning reader will note that I haven’t updated this page in a couple of weeks. Don’t be too quick to presume this means my social life has prospered, though, it’s more a matter of being too apathetic (read: lazy) to update this.

Speaking of lazy, I managed to sleep late and miss my 11am Reading Prose seminar. Not cool, especially since I really enjoy said seminar. The reason for oversleeping? Against all odds, it was because my 9am lecture that day had been moved to Fridays. The extra sleep meant I thought I had longer than I did, and woke up at ten to 11, with no chance of reaching the university by 11. I swore at myself angrily as I got dressed, and arrived to my next lecture early so I could locate someone from my group and find out what I’d missed, which turned out, luckily, to be little. Even so, I was angry at myself, so stuck a sign reading “GET UP! IDIOT!!” under my CD player, which serves as my alarm clock of a morning. So far, I’ve seen it when I get out of bed to shut off the music, and managed to resist the tempting call of my bed.

I emailed my tutor for the seminar straight afterwards and he was alright with it (although I didn’t admit to sleeping in, instead opting for a not-untrue story about my timetable confusing me). No plans to miss any more.

I’ve been reading frantically these past few days, this time with Dicken’s masterpiece ‘Great Expectations’, which I found myself really enjoying. Despite my English student status, I’d never read any Dickens until now, and definitely want to explore his work more after this introduction. I found his writing much more engaging and readable than Henry James’ ‘The Turn Of The Screw’ which we had been reading before this, despite the fact that Dickens was writing a half-century before James.

The one problem with the book is that despite the enjoyable nature of it, it’s very heavy going, at least, for me. It’s been taking me an hour to read 50 pages, and the book was just short of 450 pages. I spent almost 3 hours in the epic grandeur of the Brotherton Library, burning myself out by reading continuously. I felt mentally drained afterwards, but finished the book the next day in time for my seminar on it, during which I spoke for my group and made (if I do say so myself) some excellent points.

Sooner or later I’m going to have to give a presentation in that seminar, which should be an interesting experience. Speaking of which, we had to do group work for last week’s English Language seminar, which went down pretty well. I ended up in a group with two girls (since there are only two guys in the 10-strong class, this was a pretty likely scenario), one of whom turned out to live only a few miles from me in Nottingham and knows people I know.. small world. We had to provide examples of texts that appealed to different social groups or genders, and also, texts that showed examples of slang and jargon. Our group came off as most prepared, and in my last email to my uni address, I got told that me and the girls are now in a group for next week’s group essay; a prospect I’m a little unnerved by - how do you write an essay in a group? Someone was saying that it’s simply a matter of each writing 1500 words and linking them together, but I can’t help but worry that this will look disjointed and poorly constructed. Even so, it’s unassessed..

I’ve really been enjoying the whole university experience lately. Having spent a month here now, I can really conclude how glad I am that this was how it all turned out. I really feel sorry for friends at home who either didn’t go, or chose to stay living at home and going to a uni in their own city. Doing it this was was more of a risk, but it improves the experience so much more. I love walking around the campus and now, having settled in, feeling like I belong there, instead of feeling like an errant teenager wandering on someone else’s property.

Speaking of other people’s property, there’s been some thefts going on here. I heard word when we were coming back from a quiet drink that all of the bikes in the nearby shed had been stolen. I hurried up to my room to get my key for it, and ran back down with a torch to find that my, admittedly cheap, bike, was still there, with its feeble lock still securing it to the post. However, none of the six other bikes that normally occupied spaces there were present.. and each of these was locked with industrial sized chains. After a bit of research it seems a guy in the flat below us had his £600 bike stolen from there, and I presume that others were taken too. If it was a question of ease of theft, my bike was probably the least secure of the lot, so it seems that the thieves have chosen to insult me by implying my bike was too crap to steal. It was quite depressing.

On the other hand, my bike is now the best bike in the shed. TAKE THAT, ELITISTS!

Yesterday I ordered a £30 bouquet of flowers for my sister’s 18th, since I can’t be there in person. I had no idea where the flower shops in Leeds were, so I wondered the streets after lectures ended at 4, knowing that most places would close not long after. I stumbled upon Interflora finally, and quickly arranged the delivery. The cheapest offer was £18 for a single flower (I wish I was exxagerating), so I opted for the next cheapest, a rather pretty (help, I’m becoming a woman) £28 bouquet. I dictated a message, almost forgetting “love from Matt”, and had to be asked if I wanted “XX” at the end. I blushed and said yes, and that was that, £30 please. I wasn’t sure if it was the best present really, since they die fairly quickly, and I dunno.. 18th birthday present = flowers? My faith was reaffirmed later today, though, when I got this message from her:

“You have made my birthday. That was so lovely of you. Made me feel like a princess. And made me and clare [friend] cry. You mean so much to me wish you could be here”.

Good to know that it was money well spent, then..

Life in Leeds has been mostly good. I’m struggling money-wise, a little, having used up all the money on the Asda card that my mum gave me in September. I don’t know where it all went, I didn’t spend much in one go, and I tended to buy cheap stuff. It’s kind of scary, money worries are keeping me up at night. There’s been some tension in the girls’ flat opposite ours, there’s been the usual female bitching and drunken comments which sparked off a bit of a divide between the louder group and the quieter ones, but apparently things are calming down now.

I went jobhunting last week; so far to no avail, but I have faith. I scoured record stores, music shops, computer related places, and other random establishments, and hopefully one of them will see the merit in my painfully forced CV (you try making 8 months of dishwashing establish you as a “dedicated team player”) and hire me.

Also of interest was my dad coming down to visit me last week. He was in the area through work and just dropped by. He came into the kitchen and asked me to make him a cup of tea, pointing out my shame to a laughing housemate Ben, that I had no real idea how to make the tea. I don’t drink it so have never made it, and just had to guess, although he did say afterwards that it was a great cup. He took me out for a meal, and we had a good chat and I was reassured to hear that he’s doing well and seemed happier. I gave him 10 (copied) CDs of stuff of mine that he’d always coveted, and some other things I thought he’d like copies of, consisting of:

• Bad Religion - The Process Of Belief
• Led Zeppelin - IV
• Simon And Garfunkel - Greatest Hits
• The Beatles - The White Album
• Johnny Cash - Unearthed [5 disc set]

He seemed really pleased with those, and I was happy to be able to give him something in return for the much needed pillows and fan he brought me. My room can get really hot, since my window has a bar to prevent it opening beyond 2 inches. As for the pillows, the ones I brought with me are far too soft, and thus uncomfortable.

My goal for next week is to get down to the aforementioned library and do some background reading for my upcoming Prose essay, which is quite the daunting task.

-Matt

The last week has been a blur. It’s not so much that I’ve been busy, with a timetable that looks like it does (see below), that’s difficult, but I just feel like I haven’t had a minute to myself to just sit down and recount everything that’s been going on.

Without going into huge detail for every day, the general theme is that we’re shaking off the introductorary feel to things and really jumping into the course.

Lectures have been straightforward. It’s hard to say that they’re gripping and I can’t wait for the next one, but I do find them interesting. The whole experience of being in a huge conference auditorium with 350 other English students is new and engaging. The variety of lecturers is also interesting. Just yesterday we had the first of several “Study Skills” lectures, that teach, well, study skills. The seafaringly-named John Whale took us for the first, a lecture on Essay Skills. Most of it was fairly obvious, at least, to me, and the main thing I got from the lecture was the instruction not to begin a sentence with the word “however” (although “this” is an excellent word to use).

I’ve also been experiencing seminars, slightly more intimidating forms of teaching since I can’t hide in a crowd of hundreds of people, and am expected to share my thoughts and criticisms of the things we’re looking at. The very first one I had was on the Literature side of the course, the Reading Prose module. I was very worried to start with, as I hadn’t finished the book we were supposed to read for preparation, due to me mixing up the seminar times and believing I had three more days to finish the book (which, incidentally, is The Turn Of The Screw, by Henry James). I managed to do some quick research and got a synopsis for the parts I hadn’t read, and did well in the seminar. Later that week I had my first Language, Text and Context seminar, which began awkwardly thanks to some odd questions by the tutor. It seemed at first to be, like the lectures, fairly similar to what I had done at AS Level, but it progressed (or hinted to..) into a deeper level, and looks like it’ll be very interesting.

Socially, things have calmed down a little, but I’ve still been out a fair bit, particularly in comparison to how often I did in Nottingham. Last Wednesday we visited Halo, a nightclub set in an old gothic church. It felt so blasphemous being in there as people scored drugs and watched podium dancers.. we’re all going to Hell. As well as that, we attempted the pub quiz in the Old Bar, one of the six bars within the Student Union. We found instantly that we couldn’t hear a single question due to the poor setup, so left a rude note on our answer paper and just went home. Everyone also went out to ‘Evolution’, a massive club. I was gonna go with them on the bus then meet up with flatmate Sarah, who was going into town with her friends from school who are also at Leeds. Once everyone else got off to go to creation, I felt my interest in going out decline and eventually just walked the 3 miles home and just chilled out on my own. I guess I just needed some time alone for a while, it’s rare that I get it lately.

Just this week we had the ‘Oxley Social’, for our accomodation. I went along, payed £4 to get into a bad pub/club packed with people, very sweaty, and playing bad music. I left after an hour and had to find my way back to the buses in the middle of the (as-yet-unexplored) city centre of Leeds. I ended up walking about a mile to the University, from where I could get a bus. Almost perfectly, a bus pulled up as I was a few hundred yards from the uni, and seemed to wait for me to reach it and get on. I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t, there weren’t many more buses at that time (12:30 am) and it was 4 miles to Oxley..

The girls in the flat opposite us have been in trouble, although it’s actually just the one girl. Holly has been throwing rubbish out of the window rather than putting it in the bin. It started off as a joke, with small items, but eventually progressed to things like wine bottles and boxes. The wardens saw/got a complaint, and subsequently threatened the whole flat with the loss of their deposits unless they sorted it out. Needless to say, the others weren’t thrilled with Holly.

To avoid more long paragraphs, here’s a nice friendly list of things I have learned so far from my University experience:

• Anyone could just (and probably does) walk in off the streets into a lecture
• There is always somebody in lectures who, upon hearing the words “Language, text and context” or “Reading Prose”, looks around in shock and scuttles out quickly.
• Similarly, there is always someone who stumbles in twenty minutes late and tries to act nonchalant and as though nobody is looking at them.
• Many people exist to make your life a wall-to-wall coalition of advertisements by standing in queues in the path of any popular destination, forcing fliers into your hand as you pass
• Drunk (or indeed sober) men can not and should not dance.
• The first three rows of desks in lecture halls (at least, in the Roger Stevens halls) do not bear interesting graffiti and desk art to read because they are below the level of the lecturer and thus can be seen when attempting to kill boredom with a pen.
• Said graffiti is much more interesting in the places where English students have sat (where else would you expect poetry?).
• At the front of every slow-moving queue of students trying to leave the lecture theatre, there will always be an irritatingly unaware person, usually a girl, chattering away to somebody without realising she is holding the progress of 150 people eager to be somewhere else.
• Asda are notorious for only stocking (fresh) bread that is due to reach sell-by date within one day of purchase.
• Pillows that feel wonderfully soft are, in fact, the worst kind, since they make sleeping a too comfortable experience.
• Shampoo is surprisingly expensive.
• Impulse buys are generally negative experiences, but discounted food must always be bought, whether it is needed or not. CHEAP GOODS!
• Science (in its broadest terms) Students are particularly antisocial and unfriendly when compared to Arts students.
• In the case of Computer Science, all the stereotypes do apply.
• At any given day, it is possible to find approximately 3.4 wizened old men with eccentric beards wandering the campus.
• In seminars, there is always a person (again, usually a girl) who laughs at a mild joke made by the tutor for far too long, and far louder than the joke deserves.
• When doing laundry, people bond for a short time, generally if only to complain about the length of time the machines take, and how much they cost.
• Learning your way around campus is an experience marked by discovering newly-created (or so it seems) passages that lead to nowhere and appear to come from a different country.
• Freshers’ tourettes is an embarassing condition affecting most first years, causing them to quickly spout “what’s your name?”, “what course are you doing?” and the tried-and-tested “where are you from?” in rapid fire, quick succession, often without listening to the answers, or taking them in at all.
• A 16″ pizza becomes a day’s worth of food.

More as it happens..