Week… I Actually Couldn’t Tell You (Too Many Weeks Into Lockdown)

Right.

So I think it’s Week 12? Or what would have been Week 12 if college was open and all was right with the world? I don’t know. Feeling a little like Tom Hanks in Cast Away these days, although at least I have housemates and haven’t had to resort to fashioning my own Wilson-like companion. Yet.

if lockdown is extended past May 5th this is what my house will look and sound like

My major difficulty in all this is the lack of structure to my day to do work in. Having the external structure of leaving the house and going to college was a big help to me in getting my work done. Getting extensions on everything has definitely helped, as I’ve been working well by doing little bits of everything each day.

One major awkward part about working from home is that my house is on a main road, with a surprising amount of traffic considering we’re supposed to be on lockdown! I have links to record as part of my radio assignment, and I’ve had to do all my recording after midnight because my microphone keeps picking up traffic noises. Good thing my sleep pattern was already completely destroyed and I don’t go to bed ’til 3am most nights….

Between the extensions, exam dates and what work I already have done, I’ll be finished everything this semester on April 30th. It’s been an odd one for sure!

Roll on Final Week!

Easter Week (Week 4 of Lockdown)

It should be pretty obvious, dear reader, that this week has been my most productive since Lockdown started. How is it obvious you ask? I’m posting this blog on a Friday, not last minute of a Sunday night.

Yes I managed to resurrect my motivation this week and actually put some work into my assignments. I chose to focus this week on my website design project for the other half of my marks for this module (Technical Writing). We had to design a website for a company, fictional or real. My website is actually for my own business that I’ve been running since last April with a friend, Swap Shop Limerick.

It’s a swap shop event that we run on a monthly basis in the Record Room on Catherine Street in Limerick, and we were doing pretty well for ourselves til we’ve had to cancel all our events since March *shakes fist in general direction of Corona Virus*.

I had been discussing the idea of setting us up a website with my partner Aimee briefly when we first started but we figured we’d stick with Instagram and Facebook for now (go check us out!). Given that I was setting up a website anyway for an assignment, it just makes sense I’d do it for my own little business.

I decided to go with using the new Google Sites builder, which I found very easy to use. I actually had to start over from scratch about halfway through as I realised I’d been setting it up logged in via my personal email, rather than our email for the swap shop. I wanted to set up a simple, but attractive looking site that we could use for promoting our events, posting photos and also publish blogs on. The theme I used is ‘Aristotle’, and it had colours already available that actually matched our logo really well without having to change them too much. My plan is to look into obtaining a proper domain name for us as well, maybe swapshoplimerick.ie if I can get it.

Next week I have an in-class assessment (does it still count as ‘in-class’ if we’re working from home?) for my Sub Editing/Indesign module, so I plan on focusing on that and my final History essay for that week. The week after that I’ll have my Radio Journalism project due and a Public Administration exam so I’ll be focusing on them for Week 12.

And of course I’ll be working on my final two blogs posts. It’s crazy to think how close we are to the end now.

Roll on Week 11!

Week 10 (Week 3 of Lockdown/Losing My Mind)

So I will be straight up: my mental health is taking a beating during Lockdown. Today was the first day since this started that I was actually able to read the news and look at articles on Covid-19. I was doing pretty good with keeping up with assignments and my online lectures until about halfway through Week 9. Then my brain pulled a Mr Rochester: it locked my motivation in the attic and decided it would be a lot happier with comfort reading and bed and decided to court those instead.

my motivation is like the mad first wife in the attic for the last week and a half, can you tell I’ve been re-reading a lot of classical literature?

Easter week is next week, and I’ve decided that rather than take it as my ‘week off’ as I would have if this were a normal semester and the world were not on lockdown, I can use it to make up the time from Week 9 I spent binging Jane Austen adaptations (ma’am that’s my emotional support literary hero please).

I’ve come up with a new idea for my website for Technical Writing, the other 50% of this module. For now I’ll keep going with creating it on Google Sites, but I may have a play around with the site builder on WordPress, as a few of my classmates are using it and like it a lot, but we’ll see.

For the rest of my modules, I’ve got readings to catch up on for Public Admin and History, an assessment for Sub Editing/Indesign the week after Easter, and my radio documentary. I had emailed one of my interviewees to see about conducting our interview through WhatsApp voice messages instead of in person due to the Covid-19 restrictions, but unfortunately he’s not answering my emails. I’m a little disappointed because I was really looking forward to that interview and producing my radio piece on my chosen topic, about Give Us the Night and their campaign to get licencing laws in Ireland changed. However our lecturer has given us alternative audio to edit down into a piece so at least I can make use of that if I don’t hear back from my interviewee at all.

I’ll be posting during Easter week now, seeing as I missed last week. That’s if I survive the egg hunt my housemates and I are planning around the house, which already is shaping up to be fiercely competitive! Roll on Easter Week!

Week 8 (Week 1 of Lockdown)

Welcome to the longest week of my life, Week 8! Since the start of term the weeks have been going by so fast and now that the college is closed and the country is on lockdown and I’m self-isolating trying to avoid my housemates that still have to work, time has just slowed itself right down. It’s maddening.

(by the way if these videos of Italians singing out their windows at each other to keep morale up doesn’t win the argument for more European style urban housing in this country I don’t know what else will convince you.)

Can’t pull this shite of in a housing estate lads

It’s really interesting getting our lectures through Sulis. So far most of mine have taken place live through ‘Big Blue Button’, which I’ve found really engaging. The most awkward part about being on lockdown is the interruption to labs though. The lab for this module especially, as I know I’ll struggle more with the website assignment without someone actually physically showing me how to do it. I’ll give it a go though!!

Really missing the social aspect of college, and I’m not talking the drinking/going out. Just spending time with classmates, going to clubs and socs meetings, it really is such a vital part of the college experience. Video and group chats are fun but I’m a social creature and I need human contact!

The sesh will be mighty when this is all over. Look out College Court…. Roll on Week Nine!!!!!

Week Six!!

Thank the Lord Week 6 is over and campus is now quiet and safe aga- oh wait, we’re on alert for Covid-19?? Oh. Well then…

So I’m officially feeling like the crabby mature student after trying to get my Public Admin group together during Rag Week, but the submission date for that got pushed out til Wednesday Week 7 so they’ve all got time to get over their hangovers and get the work done. This whippersnappers, they’re not used to drinking so much and having to work the next day. Me, I’ve had too much practice on that front. Far too much. Anyway, after next week, LULITMI is dead, long live LULITMI.

A major thing for this week was pre-registering for modules next semester. It turned out in the end that I don’t have to pre-register, but it’s still made me think seriously about which of my two electives I want to stick with for the rest of my degree. I’m currently taking Politics and International Relations, and History, two subjects I’m really enjoying, and it’s hard to choose between the two! On the one hand, History is a subject I enjoy immensely, and would have some use in conjunction with my journalism degree. Plus the research methods that I’ve learned so far in History I’ve already found really useful to apply to my journalistic practices.

My brain, currently

On the other hand, am I wasting my college experience if I take the easier option of the two I like and don’t challenge myself? Politics and International Relations is also a subject that will work really well with my degree, and a lot of what I’d be covering in History is something I can easily read up on in my own time. I’m not sure which way I’ll go yet, but it’s nice to know I’ve actually got all summer to think it over (and by that I mean stress out and twist my mind in circles, cos it’s no fun if you don’t procrastinate!).

We start the website building fun tomorrow for this module (remotely, thanks Coronavirus…) and I’m really looking forward to it but also I know I’m going to try chuck my laptop out the window in frustration. History is on Reading Week, there was an assessment last week in Sub Editing and Design, I am super on top of interviews for my radio package and got an essay in for Radio Journalism too. Overall, Week 6 has been pretty good!!

Roll on Week 7!!! (if we’re not all in quarantine by then…)

Week Five!! (Oh my God it’s Week Five?!?!)

Today I learned two valuable things.

Number one: the fastest way to sweat out a hangover is to get up on a soapbox in front of over a hundred people and give a two minute speech on welfare systems you had to come up with for a fictional country.

Number two: I am apparently quite good at public speaking, even with hastily prepared notes and the aforementioned hangover.

Today myself and my group for Public Admin presented our poster on our LULITMI assignment (setting up a fictional country just come out of 100 years of hibernation) at the Marketplace of Ideas, an event run as part of the Limerick Spring Festival of Politics and Ideas. This presentation was the result of five weeks of working our butts off, and while at times it did feel a little like I was dragging my group along with me, I can honestly say today was worth it. We finish up with our fictional LULITMI citizens next week, and I can honestly say I will miss them just a little.

This week has been a full week of learning new things. Having studied journalism and media previously, there’s quite a bit on this course that I’m familiar with, but this week I learned HTML, InDesign, gender and power structures in early modern European courts, and that you cannot trust everyone in the library cafe because it will turn out that two of them are not students and they will steal your bag off your table while you go and queue for food. Thanks to a combination of eagle-eyed fellow students, the guards, and two lovely boys living in Elm Park, my bag and laptop were safely returned to me within three hours of being stolen. On the advice of an Garda Siochána, I shall be much more careful in future, and I have also bought a lotto ticket. Just in case.

Roll on Week Six!!

(Not for RAG week though, I’m too damn old for RAG week…)

Week Four!

Week Four is here and Oi Vey! have the assignments come on hard this semester. I do feel more on top of it this term though, I feel I’ve gotten back into the swing of being in full time education. Starting this degree is my first time back in education after five years, but I know I’ve made the right decision in doing this course.

I’ll admit this conviction has been tested with the group project for my Public Admin module… I’m loving the project outline, which is setting up the public service of an imaginary country, and I am LOVING the theme set for my group, which is setting up welfare services in said imaginary country. It’s all due by week six, and trying to get all the members of my group in one place and working together (I seem to have inadvertently become group leader) is like herding freaking cats but hey, it’ll all be over by week six!

(send help, I really may not make it that far…)

Me when the project is due next week and no one’s go their work for the poster in…

Everything else so far though, loving it all. History: on top of that essay question! Radio Journalism: got that radio package all pitched out! Sub editing and layout: gotta practice that but we good! Writing for new media: well, you tell me!