QUT : Year 1 Semester 1

I will be looking over my shoulder for this one, hoping it will not be too expository till the extent that I will be receiving an email from the administration requesting me to delete this post or else. I will disclose the course subjects but where is the fun in that? However, I shall keep the names initial-wised but then again, it is not as if they switch lecturers and tutors every semester so I guess I am just well fucked.

Class #1: Writing for Creative Industries
As the semester draws to a close, I just learned to dislike the subject more and more. Core subjects have a way of making themselves compulsory and misleading you with the mere word 'creative'. Well, this one is not as bad as another one called Creative Industries - nothing to do with creativity at.all. The professor is most fun one for this semester. He is also my unit coordinator so I have my individual sessions with him regarding academic issues to find out he is just a clown without makeup in a proper suit. Occasionally, his favourite pet rottie will make a cameo appearance on his lecture slides during class. And if you must know, I have a soft spot for dogs period. Lectures can go boring for this as it is the third and last class on Mondays and I just wanted to go home as soon as possible. Even an hour's duration is considered too long for me already. However, there are some laughs ringing true when the professor cracks jokes.

My tutor is something to talk about. I did not know tutors can be that young until I attended his first tutorial class. As he stood at the front of the class, I think I must have dropped my jaw onto the floor. I enjoy calling him my 'Emo Tutor' to my friends due to his emo hair and funky T-shirts underneath his blazer. His muddy chucks pwned my ass on the first day I could not take my eyes off of them. I had to frown when he comes to class with other pairs of shoes but it was all good on the last day when he came in with worn out Chucks in green. Whatever happened to the black muddy ones will forever remain a mystery. Once, he came into class with a striking pink tie. I think I swallowed my tongue when I first saw that. He reminds me of The All-American Rejects' lead singer. Something to do with his bright eyes, I guess. He has a tendency to swallow his words when he talks. I doubt he has lunches before our class. Someone must be holding a remote and as he talks, the person gradually lowers the volume and tunes it back up to the max when he starts a new sentence. He is the first ever person I have met who has a problem with Wikipedia and thesaurus, two of the things I consider the best invention since slice bread for inarticulate writers like me. Imagine my disappointment when he announced, "Look, I know Wikipedia is a marvelous source but no, I cannot accept it in your research essays." I had to go through rows of books in the library just to find definitions for my essay.

Assignments for this subject kind of sucked ass. Readings were interesting but the exercises are just pushing it. We have to write a research essay on whatever our hearts desire. Fresh out from the Malaysian education system, that is already considered too much liberation for me to chew. With my bad times at the beginning of the semester, I came up with a lame topic and had to change it halfway through. Even with that one, I still did not think it is a good idea. The essay seemed to be peeking over my shoulder every fucking time I just wanted it done and over with but yet could not because I just like putting what I hate to do the last item on my list.

Class #2 : Introduction to Creative Writing
My subconscious loves this class. She drags me out from bed in the wee mornings to go to classes, listening to a gay professor speaks words of wisdom that sometimes cracks me up. She also keeps my perseverance strong braving the 5pm cold winds to get to the tutorial classes and rush home just in time to watch Lost. I have never liked timetable gaps this big. I had one back in college and it was a web-designing class. I hated the class so much. The teacher was always late and I was learning things I have learned two years ago. I would be absent forever if I could but the teacher wanted to see website progresses and I had to entertain her with some.

My professor is awesome. I did not quite know what just happened after she so matter-of-factly announced that she is gay. I was quite bleary and when it was said, I had to double back to check with myself if she just said what she did. She referred to sexual intercourses frequent in a lighthearted way and hated Dan Brown's writing as much as I do. "You have one whole page of the Landon guy talking and another whole page of Gandalf replying, then another whole page of the Landon guy talking and at the very end, someone serves tea." Elle em a oh indeed. She challenged the mainstream and is a truest writer I can ever find so far. When I grow up, I want to be just like her. Except maybe, the gay part.

For our tutorial classes, it is just endless of critiques to our own works. I will admit I do not like the fixed deadlines on 4pm every Sunday to submit our weekly writing tasks. The deadlines just conceive crappy works I can muster. I wrote three poems and a short story based on the theme and settings of Margo Lanagan's Singing My Sister Down. Just think of writing fanfictions and you will know which page I am at. My first poem sucks big time ass because I am never a poet, but gotten better with the second and third. I would direct you to links here but I doubt you would be interested. For my short story, I think I killed it on my rewrite. The critiques were constructive. I just put wrong bricks and built an extra horn. It is doomed.

What I love about this class is the critiques. Call me weird but I just love people criticising my works. I would like to hear what they have to say about them and how they would prefer to sound. And vice versa. Going to this class is real life-threatening as well for I reveal so much in my works, especially my poems. I would like to sit my crit group members down over cups of coffee and tell them how I breathed words into them but I felt that it was just giving out too much. I am never one to open up spontaneously. However, it just gets to me when it hits home. I am a fragile girl in these classes. The professor managed to speak things related to my current life so accurately and my poems seem to let out more than I can ever imagined. To be frank, I am a little sad when the class is over. My Thursday mornings will never be the same again.

Class #3 : Film and Television Scriptwriting
I took up this class because it is something new for me. I had been doing Journalism and Public Relation based subjects back in college and Broadcasting subjects are just like another family I never knew. So I took this up. Maybe I am a little disappointed during the first lecture because the lecturer was just way too bored. The lectures were the earliest class for this semester and honestly, I was just there to watch the clips they show as examples. Or else, I would not have bothered at all. Tutorials were alright although sometimes annoying when the tutor requested in-class writing tasks to be done challenging my still blurry creativity. I can never slap up something at the snap of the fingers.

I learn the basics of writing television scripts and just got oh so exciting with the new knowledge in mind. With that, I had to write my very first short film script. Which I totally blew it with a crappy plot. I was quite inarticulate at the beginning of the semester and well into the third or fourth week, we have to already submit a synopsis for the plot we are to scriptwrite. I flipped through my musebook - a notebook I use to jot down any plot bunnies that come to mind just in case I want to write them in the future, and in this case, for the assignment - and found a near suitable plot dealing with a destroyed father and son relationship. Again, not the best idea I can have at hand. I go to workshops every time feeling embarrassed with my amateur script. As I near the due date and have been sitting on it changing it again and again to make it sound less melodramatic, I just could not shake the image of it appearing to be an episode of Home And Away. Worst nightmare ever. Maybe it has to do with me ever so nonchalantly watching the show while having dinner at 7ish. The timeslot just works it is not funny at all. I might be adapting a whacked Aussie accent. Shit.

I enjoy the last workshop I had. We were in groups and we get to bring forth a scene or two that we want opinions on. Members in the group will roleplay the characters and the scriptwriters will hear it out. I was laughing so hard when they did mine. Maybe it was because they were so good that I just laugh like I do while watching soap operas. Which kind of turned out to be bad for me seeing that I am the one who wrote a soap opera. But still, it was fun nonetheless.

Class #4 : Creative Non-Fiction: Travel, Humour and The Arts
The lectures bored me out, save for a few conducted by funny guest lecturers. Most of the lectures were done by guest lecturers dealing with different fields. This subject is kind of like feature writing. Music, fashion, travel, science, humour and so on. The readings were awesome. I read about Anthony Bourdain's true inspiration to be a chef - to bang random girls at the back of the kitchen, for your information - and episodic summaries of The OC. I read about Eminem and detailed fabric textures of T-shirts. I read about an extreme ski trip in Siberia and suicidal notes by popular kill-yourselfs. Best tutorial readings go to this class.

The assignments disrupts my personal writing style a lot. I got beat down on when I saw my first assignment returned with underlined sentence fragments and grammar mistakes. Granted it was submitted without a second eye proofread but you would know how I feel as a writer to see your writing assignment coming back with too many red inks (In this case, green inks). Besides, it was merely a review for Ewan McGregor's documentary Long Way Round. I love this part when I tell my friends I am watching a TV series for my assignment. Hah. "I'm watching a show, ma." "Aren't you supposed to be doing your assignment? Get to it already!" "But, I am. I'm watching a show to do my assignment." Oh my friends are so jealous. I am never wrong when I decided Business subjects are never too nice to take up.

My second assignment is about hometown lala's. I had fun in that one although I spent my rewrite period purging out sources to support my ramblings. It was a chance for me to get even at the younger generations. I dislike them to the core. With the power of words at the tip of my pen (or my beloved laptop), I can write up a storm in a better English they fail to speak of. I might consider putting up the article here in the future. Depends on my egoism towards the piece, really.