Grrrr.
So I got a couple of emails today informing me that two subjects I’d selected for next year have been cancelled. I was really looking forward to them, too. One was entitled “Television And Australian Culture”, the other “The Victorian Supernatural”. Now I have to find some replacement 3rd year Cinema and Literary Studies subjects, all the while avoiding the dreaded ‘tutorial presentation’ requirement.
It’s kind of annoying to have subjects cancelled this late in the year. I don’t know if there weren’t enough students enrolled, or the subject coordinators just decided to bugger off to Europe next year, or what. They’d better not cancel the William Blake lovefest subject (entitled simply “Blake”) on me, cos then I’ll really be pissed. I’ve been looking forward to that subject ever since first year.
I was at uni yesterday to return some books and pick up some holiday reading, but the self-checkout machine wouldn’t let me do my thang because there were ‘unresolved issues with my account’. Turns out I owe $24 in fines for overdue books. I just dumped the books I wanted at the nearest ‘recent returns’ trolley and got the hell out of there.
I could’ve just gone to the loans desk and paid the fine, but I was feeling like a bit of a dickhead and didn’t want to have some librarian tsk-tsking at my infringement. That’s the good thing about machines; they don’t judge you.
I’ll probably go back tomorrow morning and pay the fine so that I can drink deep of the font of all knowledge. I have a lot of reading to catch up on over the holidays, some of it academic, but most of it just taking advantage of the library’s many splendid hardcover comics collections. Will Eisner’s The Spirit, the classic E.C. titles, pretty much all of Marvel’s Masterworks and Essentials collections, and the handful of Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman works I’ve yet to read… so much comicky goodness. Alternatively, I could just refuse to pay the fines and go sit in the library reading all day for FREE, but that’d be kinda tight-assed.
Speaking of comics, there’s an interesting-looking exhibition on at the State Library of Victoria from RIGHT NOW until February; Heroes & Villains: Australian Comics and their Creators. The title is a mild example of the ‘Biff! Pow! Zap!’ attitude towards comics from non-comics-type-people, but that’s okay. It’s nice to see the funnybooks getting some recognition in an institution like the State Library. I’ll definitely be checking it out, but there’s strength in numbers, so let me know if any of y’all wanna go.
That sucks. I haven’t even registered for 2nd semester yet (yikes). I’ll probably do that today.
Oh and you think that fine is bad? I owe the public library in my hometown $70 bucks somehow, and I guess I’ve owed it for so long they reported it to a collection agency. Oops.
Well, as I said, it wasn’t so much the amount of the fine as feeling like an idiot at having allowed it to accrue.
Ahh, the dreaded tutorial presentation assignment. I stupidly enrolled in an Arts elective which had one of those very things. I made up some excuse that I was at work when the “seminar” was on and somehow got away with it.
That was the only class at uni I’ve heard of called a seminar, too good to be a tutorial or practical eh?!
These days I similarly like to avoid the dreaded group assignment, they’re always a nightmare if you know nobody.
Actually, last semester I enrolled in a course called ‘From Manchu to Mao Zedong’ and it was cancelled because the professor got a ‘better’ job offer at a ‘better’ university…I ended up having to pick some bullshit Strategic Studies course…Anyway, my grades were good and I was given a scholarship to study at ANU (where I have been the past 3 weeks)…Guess who I met at a wanky pseudo-intellectual dinner party the other night? The professor who cancelled the course! So I promptly powerbombed him through the table, said ‘Good day, sir!’ and went back to my room to sulk. Mostly a true story.
Classes get cancelled all the time here. They also have the worst times and your hard pressed to find a schedule that doesn’t contradict another class.
As for the fine. Fuck it! You think BK ever paid a fine in his life? Hell no, and look where he is today.