Journalism One One One One, Lecture One.
Choose your hours, they said. It's so much easier than school, they said. Bring your own burritos, they said! University, like a malformed egg - ain't what it's cracked up to be. In fact, like a under nourished duck it ain't what it's quacked up to be. In honesty, like an Apple product it ain't what it's mac'd up to be. Hopefully I can tell you why in the ensuing document.
Lecture One, Day One, Year One, Formula One, Vote One. This is it. I roll over and subconsciously brush the vomit away from my mouth with a red-raw hand, the stench of cheap beer from the Royal Exchange wafts up my nostrils and tickles the hairs hiding there. Neuro-electric signals are fired off in all directions, causing my body to spasm into life. All limbs immediately explode, all boilers burst. The dam-busters just dropped the bomb, the Thunderbirds sent Thunderbirds 1,2,3 and 4 into blast off position all at once. Two miniature deep Arctic explorer abseil down from my brow, they reach the corner of my eyes and swing their ice-axes high above their heads and heave down to crack the brittle layer of vomit that has held my pupils hostage for the few short hours I had managed to lay unconscious in what appears to be my bed. The light thrusting through the windows hits my eyes and the world whites out like a shitty "indie" photo from instagram and...
Welcome back to tonight's episode of Actual Reality. The dream of O-Week at St. John's college is over. It's Uni time. I throw on the clothes closest to me and trundle off to wide open spaces of the University of Queensland. I walk around, pretending I know where I'm going for about 10 minutes. After swaggering around the campus for a while longer, by an act of something divine I come across I sign with shapes, numbers, letters, numbers and letters, Letters and Numbers but most importantly: the wanderer's worst nightmare, the disciple's best friend - a big, fat, red, juicy arrow that merely says "You are here". I devise a system for narrowing down the choices of building I'm meant to be in, "if I walk around in a spiral shape I might have a chance."
I took the spiral shape approach and excelled in it's use. As I became more and more dizzy, I keep checking my watch - hoping I wouldn't be late. We all know what happens when you're late right? School has drilled into me an innate sense of impending doom should I ever dare to flout the bell. The circumference of my journey became smaller and smaller. I could see the last building left on my whirlpool of walking. Just my luck it was the biggest, most central, most obvious building it could ever be in. Building 1. I could smell the Journalism already. Or was that pretentiousness and black coffee from the coffee shop? I couldn't tell, my mind lurched, I was jumping into a void of darkness. I was watching myself walk through corridors from security cameras in the hallway. The avatar dressed as me was heading down, led (seemingly) by an innate knowledge of the location of the lecture like a turtle heading to its birthplace. The figure came to an open door, and was ferried inside by a horde of students, eager to get inside. Everything blacked out. When I woke up I was inside the lecture theatre, my vision blurry and deceiving I looked up at the the projected screen and reached for my pen and notebook (freshly purchased to signify the start of my New Years resolution to be organised). I'd been prepped for this moment since January. Organistion: new books, binder folder, new pens lined in colour code according to frequency of light waves emitted from purple to red. This was it, I reach in to my bag and... shit. Nothing. Probably should have put something in there if I wanted to pull it out at Uni. Oh well, I'll borrow pen and paper from the girl next to me. Damn, she is pretty fine, but focus on the slides. Telling Factual Stories. I like white on her. "Introduction to Journalism and Communication. What is Journalism/Communication? Who are we? Best legs I've ever seen? Legtures and Tutorials. Assessment. Assassment. Harassment? Whoops, this is probably harassment... I'd better stop. Back to the task at hand: the lectures.
As you may or may not have clued on to, I'm not too sure what to write about. Do I just summarise the content? Do I give you my opinions? Do I tell you my highscore on Plants Vs Zombies? Nope, I just checked it - it's what I learnt from the discussions. Well straight off the bat I'll throw a curve ball with my instant reaction: I dislike Twitter, I'm not comfortable with having two Gmail accounts and I don't like Blogger.
I took the spiral shape approach and excelled in it's use. As I became more and more dizzy, I keep checking my watch - hoping I wouldn't be late. We all know what happens when you're late right? School has drilled into me an innate sense of impending doom should I ever dare to flout the bell. The circumference of my journey became smaller and smaller. I could see the last building left on my whirlpool of walking. Just my luck it was the biggest, most central, most obvious building it could ever be in. Building 1. I could smell the Journalism already. Or was that pretentiousness and black coffee from the coffee shop? I couldn't tell, my mind lurched, I was jumping into a void of darkness. I was watching myself walk through corridors from security cameras in the hallway. The avatar dressed as me was heading down, led (seemingly) by an innate knowledge of the location of the lecture like a turtle heading to its birthplace. The figure came to an open door, and was ferried inside by a horde of students, eager to get inside. Everything blacked out. When I woke up I was inside the lecture theatre, my vision blurry and deceiving I looked up at the the projected screen and reached for my pen and notebook (freshly purchased to signify the start of my New Years resolution to be organised). I'd been prepped for this moment since January. Organistion: new books, binder folder, new pens lined in colour code according to frequency of light waves emitted from purple to red. This was it, I reach in to my bag and... shit. Nothing. Probably should have put something in there if I wanted to pull it out at Uni. Oh well, I'll borrow pen and paper from the girl next to me. Damn, she is pretty fine, but focus on the slides. Telling Factual Stories. I like white on her. "Introduction to Journalism and Communication. What is Journalism/Communication? Who are we? Best legs I've ever seen? Legtures and Tutorials. Assessment. Assassment. Harassment? Whoops, this is probably harassment... I'd better stop. Back to the task at hand: the lectures.
As you may or may not have clued on to, I'm not too sure what to write about. Do I just summarise the content? Do I give you my opinions? Do I tell you my highscore on Plants Vs Zombies? Nope, I just checked it - it's what I learnt from the discussions. Well straight off the bat I'll throw a curve ball with my instant reaction: I dislike Twitter, I'm not comfortable with having two Gmail accounts and I don't like Blogger.
To something that is a little more substantial though, here's my thoughts on the first lecture. After an extensive search through the vast expanse that is my room, my notes and the borrowed piece of paper seem to be both missing, all that's left is a summary in my notebook from after the lecture, and from it I shalt recite, for it spake thusly:
"JOUR1111 Lecture: I didn't realise that Journalism was being rocked so hard by the internet and online newspapers. Personally I'd rather read the paper. Out of all the quotes given today, only two struck me as being worth my while: People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true. - Lewis H. Lapham and Journalism is little more than scribbling on the back of advertisements. - Anonymous. Love it. A lot of people in the lecture keep very closely up to date with the news... I probably should start that - I haven't read any form of news since I got to college. I'll catch up on that for next time. Check blackboard for assessment, tutor and timetable details."
And there you have it, my thoughts on the first lecture. I'm sorry for the lack of insight and thoughtful discussion on hard hitting topics, but it seems all I could muster was a vague description of events.
"JOUR1111 Lecture: I didn't realise that Journalism was being rocked so hard by the internet and online newspapers. Personally I'd rather read the paper. Out of all the quotes given today, only two struck me as being worth my while: People may expect too much of journalism. Not only do they expect it to be entertaining, they expect it to be true. - Lewis H. Lapham and Journalism is little more than scribbling on the back of advertisements. - Anonymous. Love it. A lot of people in the lecture keep very closely up to date with the news... I probably should start that - I haven't read any form of news since I got to college. I'll catch up on that for next time. Check blackboard for assessment, tutor and timetable details."
And there you have it, my thoughts on the first lecture. I'm sorry for the lack of insight and thoughtful discussion on hard hitting topics, but it seems all I could muster was a vague description of events.
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