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What's this? An assessment mark?

Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Remember that POP1 practical assessment I did the day before I came home for Christmas?
Well, 56 days later, I finally got my marks today...

Conceptual Development: B
Creativity: B
Content: B
Skills and Techniques: B
Investigation/Research: B

Group Story: This was a simple, coherent and intelligent performance. Physically and structurally this was a very strong performance. You worked very well indeed with the pushing out/pulling in of energy and demonstrated your ability to work effectively at different paces. Your interjections in the performance worked very well indeed and you were all able to move in and out of these and between altered states/bodies/levels with ease and clarity. You also worked well with the notes that I gave you in class supervisions, and demonstrated some very good transitions. You need now to all work at developing your ability to engage fully with aspects of transformation, there were moments when you seemed to ‘drop out’ of the transformation. You could have pushed your alteration of your physicality even more for this work, and taken more risks. In terms of the rhythm of ‘characters’ you need to now be a little more rigorous, there were moments of inconsistency when your rhythmic qualities altered and fell back to more familiar territory for you. Consistency in any kind of transformative physical work is highly demanding and requires extremes of physical investment as well as investment of time (through repetition you will find such consistency easier to manage). Lizzy, you have a lovely everyday body in the space, it is engaging and highly watchable (you never disappear), you also have a very strong and energised neutral body and demonstrate moments of consistency in your physical transformations.

Overall mark: 66%

Ok, so I'm not the happiest of bunnies with this mark because of the amount of work etc that I put into the classes and the final piece, but I guess it's a strong 2:1 at the end of the day and I should be pleased that I didn't fail abysmally! Hopefully I can do better next time around with POP2 (I have the same tutor again).






Lies, all lies..

Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Yes, BBC Weather lies.


It IS NOT snowing here. It snowed for about 10 minutes yesterday evening, leaving a slight powdery residue on the car park tarmac. It did not, however, even manage that today. Instead, it decided to rain bucketloads.
So, the moral of this story? Do not trust the BBC.

In other news...
...we found our ultimate and final Dream House. This house beats all other houses because it is £53 a week and is still dreamy. AND my potential room has a slanty roof - yays! After a long debate lasting two buses, we decided that, for that price and such a nice house, we are going to go for it. So, currently, I am trying to get through to my parents to talk to them about it, but someone seems to have been on the phone for the last hour. So, hopefully by the end of the evening, we will have secured Ultimate Dream House!
Unfortunately I don't have any photos because the current tenants were dotted about over the house and it didn't really seem very appropriate to take photos around them, but I can assure you that it has a nice medium-sized kitchen, a lovely lounge, a slightly green-carpeted (as in it was coloured, not mouldy) bathroom, and three nice bedrooms. One with a slanty roof. :D
So yay for Number 40 Argie Road!






Brace yourselves...

Tuesday, January 23, 2007
... and look with wondrous awe at the pieces of paper that cost me a fiver.



Yes, a fiver.
Now, most of you will be thinking that I got ripped off. Oh no - if I hadn't bought this at the introductory lecture this morning, it would have cost me a whole TWO POUNDS FIFTY extra. And, not only were these pieces of paper value for money, they are vital, yes VITAL for me to actually work on my Collaborative Processes module. Because, unbeknown to me, the tutors for this module are refusing to use our beloved Nathan Bodington and are instead insisting on us buying this book full of photocopied articles. And the pages aren't even numbered.
Meh, I guess I pay £55 a month for an even smaller piece of paper to get me around West Yorkshire.

Next on the agenda - the amazing ability of the electricians to muck up an hour of my life.
I came home after an intensive day of lectures, workshops and self-directed time to find a small balding man on my bedroom floor. (At this point, I'd like to say that he then explained he was there to check the electricity flow and that I should have been notified by letter that someone would come into my room this week - a letter that i conveniently never received) Now, I'm used to unexplainable things happening now that I live here, but I REALLY needed the toilet and wasn't too pleased when I realised I wasn't going to be able to without baldie listening to my every move. So, bladder bursting, I went and waited in the lounge (with crossed legs).
Eventually I was allowed back into my room.
I pottered about in my room, doing some work on my computer for about 20 minutes, until suddenly all the lights and my computer turned off simultaneously. Angered at the loss of 20 minutes of work, I stepped out of my room to look for a pesky electrician. I found one after about 5 minutes, who then kindly explained that he was wondering why the power was still on in the room he was trying to work on, and that he would go and turn my power back on immediately. What a gent. What an imbecile.

Anyway, with annoyances out of the way, we are trekking off to Leeds tomorrow to get another look at my Dream House 3. This is so that Isa can see what Sri and I have been raving about, and so we can finally come to a decision about which house we want to go for. I will keep you posted!






More house hunting

Monday, January 15, 2007
Well, I'm back at uni again.

Unfortunately, it's been one annoyance after another.
I came back on Wednesday last week to prepare for my Performance Perspectives exam (more on that later) on the Friday. Knowing that there weren't going to be any lectures or lessons this week, I arranged some viewings for a few houses we were half interested in. Not knowing how long this would take, I arranged a ticket home for the rest of the week for tomorrow, but after an uneventful viewing of three houses, I was left with enough time to come home anyway, but with a ticket that can't be changed. Great how these things work out, eh? To add to my annoyance of being back away from home, I found that the classes for my actual degree don't start until the week beginning 29th January. So, even though I'm coming back here next Monday for a lecture, the rest of the week is looking decidedly empty and pointless. Yay for bad university timetabling (you have to wonder what you're paying three grand a year for).

Anyway, on to the exam.
The actual paper was ok, and answering the questions was alright (or as alright as it can be when you don't really know what you're exam's about until you get into the exam room). Anyway, before we can even get to the exam room, there's the travelling there, and, in their usual style, Arriva did it again (combined with the university's inability to notice that an exam in Leeds requires over 100 Bretton people to get on one bus).
We accepted the fact that there wasn't one room big enough to hold everyone in my year to take this exam, so we can understand why we were sent to Leeds. However, what seems relatively hard to comprehend is why they had to schedule it for 9:30am. Anyway, we came to accept the hideous time we would need to catch a bus to get to the Leeds campus in time for the exam (7:45am). What we did not come to accept was that by 8:15am, the bus still hadn't turned up.. the only bus we could have caught to get there on time. Having no faith in another bus turning up on time, we took a taxi, which cost £20 (so much for my weekly bus pass). Being around 8:30am, the traffic on the M1 was abominable, and i seriously considered telling the poor cabbie to turn around and take me home so I could go back to bed. But we got there eventually, with 5 minutes before we had to be in the exam room.
A note on this exam room. Remember the reason we came to Leeds? Because there wasn't ONE room that would hold everyone. When we got to Leeds, we found out that they had put us into TWO rooms anyway (which could have been done at Bretton anyway). I don't need to elaborate. The rooms they put us into were on the most eastern point of the campus, in the Sports Block. When we got there, we walked following the signs to the exam room, only to be told by a scary loud man that this wasn't ACTUALLY the way, and that we had to walk all the way back where we'd come from and round the side of the building. SO.. we do as he says, and come to ONE room. The room I'm in (letters A-L) is no-where to be seen. So, i walk further round the building and see some people I recognise and FINALLY find my room.
The most annoying thing? After forking out a taxi fare to get there on time, the invigilator waited for the others from Bretton (whose bus was 20 mins late - hah! so what?) before starting the exam. I could have cried.
Anyway, here ends the saga of the exam. I only need to wait until May to relive it. Oh yay.

Now, to the houses.
I have to admit that I was looking forward to seeing the houses, as they seemed to be some really nice properties. Well.. the camera lies. We are half interested in the second of the three houses we viewed, although it doesn't really have much on the house we like in Armley (otherwise known as Dream House 2). Well, here are some pics from (possibly) Dream House 3...



I was going to post some shock-inducing photos of a bathroom we saw today, but luckily for you lot, blogger won’t upload pictures properly today (hence the fancy slideshow). Anyway, I’ll let you know whether we decide on 2 or 3 :D

See you Norwichy peoples tomorrow!