the modules fair today wasn't exactly a fair. sitting in a lecture theatre with students packed in and listening to the module directors come up one after another giving an introduction to the different second year modules isn't my idea of a fair. but choices were made in that hour there as i sat listening, deciding, planning. there was one professor though who stood out, not because he was director of 3 modules - politics and policy, politics in the uk and french politics, but because he was visually handicapped. and at the risk of sounding rude and extremely ignorant here, but one of the first things he said to us was something about an incident that happened when he was marking one of his students essays, and the first and most immediate thought that struck my head was how does he do it? mark them that is. we agreed that he either had a secretary who manually reads out the essays to him, or he has his students send him online copies and he runs them through a computer programme that provides an audio reading of the essay. i pity the secretary if it was a ten thousand words essay. yet i was utterly impressed with this man, his strength and his confidence. i mean he's taking three modules after all and that's three times as much of working hours! he hasn't allowed his disability to get to him and he's making full use of his life and it's unquestioningly respectable. it would be daunting to have lectures and seminars with him, especially since he has specified that for 2 of the modules, each seminar group will be made up of 3 people only. but yes, it would be interesting working with him. if only i had that bit of interest in at least one of the three modules. haha

i've more or less settled for international security. the first term next year is dedicated to the study of war! who wouldn't want that :) my heart's swayed towards arabic for beginners as my second optional module but there's the whole issue about taking another module from outside the department and there's the whole red tape (the irony seeing its the politics faculty) to get through. if all fails, politics of developing areas doesn't seem too bad either. it's still a ballot system so hopefully i get my first choice.

this plastered a smile on my face as it fell out from the pages of my notebook. hopefully this smile metamorphoses into a driving force to get me down to my last 2 essays and revision. an 80 pence book fine awaits my stubborn refusal to be recalled. haha

This entry was posted by ranon, on Thursday 1 May 2008. You can leave your response.