I feel like I haven’t written a blog in a while and God knows I need to in order to preserve my sanity. So after my two days of orientation the week before I was freaking the fuck out. I knew no one doing my course, not even anyone doing any creative media courses in my college. Those orientation days were really lonely, and if it weren’t for my friends checking up on me via both Snapchat and texts, I probably would’ve cried. I know that I need to make friends within my college and my course, but on those early days I just needed people I knew, who were my friends to tell me everything was going to be alright. Going up for my first day of orientation was also the first time I used public transport without being with my parents or with school. It was my first time seeing the college too as I never went up there for the open day. I went to the Limerick open day and I even had begun to think that maybe I would’ve been better off going to UL instead (not that I could’ve seeing as I didn’t get enough points for the course I wanted to do there). Although there was only a handful of people going there that I knew, I am way more familiar with the campus up there. My brother is currently in his 4th and final year of college (he’s only 20, and he’s delighted not be living at home all year round). He kept saying to me that I should move out and get accommodation at wherever I wanted to go to college. Well I never took his advice, mostly because I don’t think that I could handle it right now. I’ve since realized how much handier it would be if I lived in Tralee. The bus back and forth everyday isn’t the most fun thing, also not the most reliable thing. I wasn’t able to go to any freshers events, except for ones on campus. Correction, there was only one on campus. It was this bad magician that required too much set up for his mind reading tricks. Thank God I had a class so I didn’t have to stay around for the end of it. Also for clubs and societies, they’ll be on late so I have to wait until 20 to 10 for the bus.
Staying on that topic, I signed up for soccer on Thursday and trials are on Monday at 6pm. I have a pretty full timetable on a Monday so that’s going to be an extra long day for me. Also, I’m nervous I won’t make the team. Since I don’t cycle anymore, I need some sort of exercise. Not that the cycling helped but I’m going to pretend like it did. My hope is that only the number of girls needed for a full team and subs, is how many girls actually signed up. Therefore, I will have to be part of the team by default.Sign up day for societies isn’t until Wednesday so I’m not entirely sure how many I’ll join. A couple people have said that they’re just going to join loads of them just to meet new people and see what the society itself is like. For us being TV and Radio students, they suggested we join the radio society and the TV and Film society. I’m still on the fence about most societies but I know that I’m joining the radio society for sure. We were waiting outside a room for a class on Tuesday, and we met some people who were in 2nd year of our course. They were really nice to us and wanted to know all our names and encouraged us to all join the radio society, with one of them saying “we’ll take care of you” in a really creepy way. The guy that said that also said that we’ll meet the best and the only good people in the school, because apparently all the rest are dickheads according to him. Needless to say, I can’t wait to join the radio society.
Now that I’ve experienced all my classes, bar one tutorial, I’ve realized I know nothing. Well it’s not like we did any of this in secondary school. Computer class consisted of talking and playing online games, not using audio editing software like Pro Tools, no we had to learn typing. Well a quote from one of my lecturers the other day was “now I’m not testing your typing skills.” Like what the fuck! I wasted an entire year doing that, for it to amount to nothing, I could type fast enough before so it was for the most part a waste of time. We didn’t even have computer class in 6th year, it’s not like it’s a viable career or anything. I mean who needs computer skills for their career. A robot? I apparently live in 1950 and computers are non-existence. So the first class I had was Social Media Technologies. This module it has 2 lecturers. One focuses on Social Media, the other on IT skills. So this was the social media lecturer and she was teaching us how to use Google Drive. Also we will be creating a website using, WordPress as our platform!! Next we had a Sound and Digital Audio lecture. He showed us 3 videos, without telling us why he was showing them to us. I was really confused why we were watching them. Then he said talked about music being emotive, and then how our brain perceives music. The next day, first thing in the morning, I had New Media Concepts. Now we had been warned about this lecturer in advance. We must attend all his lectures and we will question our life walking out of them, because he’s so philosophical ans shit. Jesus, was his lecture intense. It didn’t help that this was the first time most of us had him and it was a 2 hour lecture. He set up a Facebook group page for our class, which consists of my course, music technology, animation, and creative writing. Some of these people are really opinionated, which is the exact opposite to me because I have no opinions on anything. I worry about how well I will do in this class. It does seem rather interesting though as we will have lectures on things like Feminism and Marxism. We then had Media Principles with probably my most boring lecturer. I mean we had our lecture in a Mac computer lab and he goes “We won’t be using the computers for this, I just want you to listen.” He wasn’t in the room for a good 15 minutes so I had logged in and it was my first time ever using a Mac. I don’t really know how I feel about it yet. We had the IT lecturer for Social Media Technologies and that 2 hour class consisted of creating folders for each of our modules for Semesters 1 and 2. I had to make an email for that too and it starts with socmed (abbreviation of Social Media), so I feel like I start telling people that I’m a med student. We had a class called Concept Development, where we will work towards branding ourselves and making logos for our brand. I keep trying to think of something to use for my brand but every name under the sun is akready fucking taken like “Walk The Line Productions” and literally any good and bad names I can think of, someone has already taken it. Then we had Learning at Third Level, which is essentially supposed to ease us into college life and help us sort out want we want our of college and our respective courses. So we did a test online about our Interpersonal Skills. I knew this wasn’t going to end well because I have the social skills of turtle. I hide away in the event of another human being acknowledging my existence. So my overall score was 44% which wasn’t too bad I guess I mean I still passed, if we’re using the Irish grading system. My listening skills scored 54%, which frankly annoyed me because I think I’m a great listener. Look I know that sometimes I can get a bit excited and interrupt but usually I’m great at listening. It told me that I don’t show enough interest in the conversation, and I need to show whoever I’m talking to that I’m actually paying attention. My emotional intelligence was only 57%, I was furious when I saw this. I like to think that I’m an expert in understanding the emotions of others, sometimes even before they do. I feel like I’m able to pick out the problem quickly enough, due to their current actions or the way thy’re speaking. It told me that I lack the ability to help myself and others to actually deal with the problem, this I couldn’t really disagree with because I know I’m not any bit helpful although I wish I could be. My verbal communication was 36% and my communicating in groups was 31%, the only surprise with these results is that they weren’t any lower. The lecturer was telling me that we really need to work on those. It’s not like I didn’t know this already, I’ve struggled with being social for longer than my course has existed (the course started 7 years ago). I had a Sound and Digital Audio practical, that lecturer was kinda weird. She’s was trying to relate by making some jokes every now and then. The jokes themselves weren’t very funny it was the way she said them, the delivery was key. She was showing us these different cables and there was on that has pins in one type and holes in the other. The one with pins was called the male, and the one with holes was called the female. The lecturer went ” Do I need to explain why that is to any of you?” We were all like no we get it and she goes “Oh you’re a very educated group aren’t ye hahaha.” She then brought us downstairs in the college to the TV Studio where she had gotten the equipment people to set up a soundboard with a microphone and they had cables and stuff in there to connect to instruments. It was really cool and she went and connected the guitar and microphone up to the speakers. There was also a keyboard and a snare drum in the room. She then left the room and let us have a free for all and play the instruments, so I went for the guitar when the guy who was playing it wanted to go look at the other instruments. I played that for a couple of minutes, it was really cool hearing it amplified. Also as we went down to the studio we met the people from 2nd year year of our course and again and when they saw we were going into the studio, they were like “Hey we never got to go into the studio in 1st year!”
My course is the biggest creative media one this year, or so I’ve heard. My course only has 12 people,Music Tech. has 10, I don’t know what Animation has, and Creative Writing has 4. Including me there is 4 girls in my course. As it’s only the beginning, I don’t know what to think of the course yet. I do like having a routine again though. I’ve had breakfast every week day this week, and I’ve been having a lunch at school. It’s good being busy, it helps some of the anxieties go away. Unfortunately, tomorrow is my least favourite day of the year and obviously it’s a Sunday so I won’t be in college. It will be full of anxiety so if I can get over tomorrow I will be happy.
Also these are the videos he showed us in the lecture that he gave no reason for.