The real world is boring, full of swine flu and makes you very sarcastic!

Results were finally published last week and I received my transcript for them on Saturday. I am to say I received a 2:1 which is very good I think considering I did party throughout my degree. However, sometimes you have to question how you are examined. Personally I think the drama department needs to start to communicate a lot more. It really comes down to the nitty gritties, some lecturers say you must do it this way others say that way and this becomes a bit of a pain. My biggest problem this year has been that most of the answers we as third years were given were 'we have sorted it out for the first year'. For example the acting part of Chekhov and Shakespearem I personally have never taken an acting module and to be honest from what I have heard the acting modules have not been great. How then is it possible for me to graded on something I have never done before? That is totally ridiculous. But of course the answer from my lecturer was 'the first years will have more training'.

Over the past two years I have learnt a lot, but this has mostly been from the 30 credit modules which offer a more intense structure to what you study. I can comptently put a lighting design together now as well as rig, focus and op it. And I now know I can write a 10,000 word essay and make it sound somewhat intelligent. I learnt that although you might put a lot of effort into something, the way you speak and hold yourself will mean that actually you do not do as well as you expected. And I learnt I can lead a half decent workshop with a class of primary school children.

The 15 credit modules for me were by and large rather pointless. Take The Musical for example, I went in hating musicals and being able to voice that opinion and back it up with relevant evidence, I left still hating musicals and still being able to voice an opinion about it cohesively. US Drama was a waste of my time, I learnt....what a regional theatre is....wait I knew that already. Shakespeare and Chekhov are two modules I learnt a lot in but of course received my two worst grades in.

In my first year I can confidently say I learnt absolutly nothing apart from that it is very easy to put together a 5 minute skit. I honestly want my £3000 back and I expect I would probably get it if I pushed harder enough.

And afterall that I have a degree and I can now go and spend the next 5 years still being skint working in a soul destroying call centre where swine flu has hit today so this maybe my last blog because if the papers are right I will probably be dead by next week!

I loved university but I don't think you could pay me to do it ever again!

Very angry with the state of the nation

A massive rant is about to take place...

Why is it that when I turn on BBC 2 politics today is it that I find 70 year old white stuck up men hounding my television!!! Parliament needs to CHANGE. I think I am quite politically in the know but I feel so disenfranchised. There is no one in politics talking to my generation and we are the generation who in a few years will be taking seats in Parliament. My voice is not being heard. These MPs pretend to be in the know but they are not. They have children who are living it up in private schools and so have no knowledge of what is happening in state schools they just want health and safety boxes to be ticked. This inevitavly means that a huge portion of the population has no interest in what is happening and this means the only politics that is taking place is the stuff that is either in the press everyday or is in the interest of the MPs themselves. As much as I hate to say it I think Cameron will be a good thing for government, he is mildly young, if not a bit pretentios, but he seems to have an eye for what is happening. But of course there is still the demographic of the country, which is not being reflected. I say out with the old in with the new. Lets stop these biggots and all go crazy. Lets throw purple flour all over the f*****rs!! let them deal with some stuff, because apparently all they need to deal with is if they get the sack because of buying some porn on expenses or taking care of their mote!

A very cultural 21st Birthday!

Last Wednesday I finally turned 21...time for the botox now! I saw that the Tate Modern had an exhibition on of an adult advnture playground. Sounded exceptionally fun so I decided thats what I wanted to do for my birthday, boy was I wrong! It was a tad boring and had no colour and I thought it was about escaping the real world and going a little crazy. Thats not what happened to me. I entered and was told to keep the noise down! I know I'm loud but if your going to house a huge playground what do you expect? Why in this modern 21st century world is noise so forbidden. Why are we constantly told to be quiet on trains, buses, even playgrounds. Is noise pollution really pollution? Forget it if I want to make a bit of noise I will! The one thing I will say for the Tate is that its free and that does make me happy, because it means everyone can go and have some fun and take a look around the gallery which although boring in my opinion does allow you to have your own opinion.

Definently not going to be the next Speilborg (is that even how you spell his name?)

I am sitting in house I have been in for less than 24 hours listening to some REM and having a bit of a facebook stalk....this is the life of a production assistant on a low budget film in a beautiful house in Kew. I am being paid and I have learnt all about fake blood but this is definently not the industry for me. Film just does not not compare to theatre. None of the actors (there is one at the moment) have rehearsed and it takes literally an hour to film one shot. It all seems a bit silly to me! Where is the audience??? Who is actually going to see this film? Is it going into affect any change. I MISS KALKU!

We were here until 4am last night and it looks the same tonight. The cast and crew are filming on location at the moment and I have been put in charge of looking after the house. I do enjoy the responisbility of this job but it comes with a lot of sittig around and not really being able to see much of the filming. But I have made some good contacts and will be working with Ray ....... he was in Harry Potter next weekend. And I also sat next to Jonny Wilkinson yesterday having a coffee, he is even more good looking in real life!

Finding a job

When your not really sure what you want to do but definently need money there is a huge difficulty in finding a job particularly when there is credit crunch happening. I am officially a graduand, a term I only found out last week, it means I have finished my degree and am awaiting my results. So now I am in limbo. No job, No money, No life! I am applying for jobs everyday, trying to stay away from retail, bar work and office jobs but this is very hard. All the jobs I have applied for so far I seem to be totally underqualified for. The problem I'm finding is you need more than six months experience which is how long I was working on Kalku for. There is only so much experience you can blag. I have found a job for the next two weekends as a production assistant on a low budget film which although is not very good money it is good for my CV. At this moment in time I am thinking of dipping into my savings so I can do the TEFL course which costs far too much money than I care to think about and then hopping on a plane to teach in Cambodia. But with the costs of the course, flights and visas I am not too sure I can afford it and I also have to pay off the horrible overdraft I stupidly decided to take out in my second year. But it seems to me I can gain very good experience doing this and will benefit me in the long run. Day time television is becoming very boring, I can't even afford to buy the next book I want to read in the Twilight series (very good if you like a tacky story about vampires and young love).

All in all I think we have realised the credit crunch is CRAP and the only way to escape it is to crawl into a cave and grow your own food and become totally self sufficient, have no friends and be a complete SNORE!

The Shrinking Land of Kalku

Our community project has finally, after months of hard work, ended. The show was fantastic and the children loved it although the same can't be said for come of the teachers. The tech week ran pretty smoothly with a few hiccups and some changes to the script. There was a lot of waiting around, which can only be expected on a show like Kalku, but everyone was very good about it and enjoyed the time to grab a rest, some food and even some sun which we were very lucky with.

I think everyone involved ejoyed themselves and it was brilliant to have members from all the different pathways and years. The show has very much bonded us as a group and with the champagne flowing, the get out went very well. As a technician myself I find it hard sometimes to realise that some people are not used to fit up's and get outs because they have not had that type of responisbility before. But generally everyone mucked in and we were out of the park within an hour and 30 minutes of the show ending!

Skye the stage manager on the show has done a brilliant job alongside the other technicians. When it was needed she told you to step up and she was a huge support through rehearsals when it felt we were in a complete rut. I have to say that out of all the stage managers I have worked with Skye has definently been one of the best, I think Al has another Emily Thorpe on his hands!

The End of the Beginning

So I'm approching the last week of my degree and it is very scary! I had my last ever lecture yesterday and as yet it hasn't hit me that actually I will be leaving St Mary's very soon. Though I am very excited about starting a career and working with professionals. Each week my life plan changes. First of all I wanted to go travelling as soon as I could afford it and then it changed to moving to York in September then I decided to wait until 2010 to move to York and work until then. But I think I am back at the beginning again, travelling was the most amazing experience I have ever had and I think I need to do it again before I settle down for good. My play at the moment is to graudate (hopefully) and then get a lovely job in a call centre, bore myself to near death and then jump on a plane to Bangkok. However, I do want to carry on with drama until then so working and doing drama at the same time has also been on my mind. I think at the moment all I can do is play it by year and see what happens. Although I think travelling is a definate for me. When I was in Thailand and Malaysia I met so many wonderful people from so many different backgrounds and I would love to do this again for longer.