(no subject)

[beccaelizabeth]

Morning all.
Well, all that are having a morning. Anyone not having a morning when you read this can save up a 'good morning' for later.

I have been thinking about Really Annoying Cancelled Course. Also emailing places.

My CCN tutor says its a shame and I could maybe do it next year (they aren't connected, they just thought it was a good idea of a course). Also that it's no problem to go do the other 10 credit course and I won't have missed much from the first lesson and the teacher will email it to me. Cool.

UEA I just emailed to say I can't do More if I can't do Intro (I'm sure this'll be true for lots of people and they effectively just cancelled both, but it didn't say in the letter.) They haven't emailed me back yet.

I think the most annoying part about all this - and I woke up quite stabbily annoyed, though that was partly due to the dream where the guy I was trying to grab was all slippy with mud and turned out to have no hands to get hold of, which was quite annoying once it stopped being scary - ANYway, most annoying part... I don't really want a degree.

Which is kind of a problem in motivation, when I've got at least four more *rudeword* years to go before I get a degree.

I'm not fussed about getting a bit of paper. My career goals don't require it. Nobody checks if you've got letters after your name if you can write a good script. Or novel. Or short story.

And don't get me wrong, I'm getting good interesting stuff out of this studying. Stuff that will make my stories richer. If and when I ever get back around to writing them again. I've been having some difficulty with that part. I seem to have a head full of college and never get around to story. Which is increasingly unacceptable.

So my solution was to study scripts (and maybe novels and short stories) on a creative writing course, so I do college + writing and actually feel like I'm getting closer to a goal.

Now that part has gone away so by the time I woke up this morning the general feeling I had that I don't want to jump through hoops, study what I'm told to, and get some bit of paper with letters on it, has increased to the point where I'm positively stabby with frustration.

I started this education thing because I was a hermit with mental health problems and being in a room with other humans was really difficult. I used to hide behind my chair. I'm being literal. It didn't work very well. But I started doing education things, and first I passed the course the mental health place ran, and then I went and studied pretty pictures in the dark for Art History, and then I... didn't properly study Cultural Studies because a lot of things piled up and I hid instead but I had a do over next year, and then I quite liked Cultural Studies, and after that I studied Sociology, and then I'd done the Access course. Four years for a one year course, but that was okay. So it's Access to Higher Education, so onwards to Higher Education. Only UEA didn't have any part time courses except English - according to them when I contacted them, which turned out not to be true. But I wanted to study films and things and Cultural Studies stuff too. So I went to do English with Cultural Studies at City College, which had the bonus effect of meaning I knew the teachers and the building already. But there were only one set of units to do, some of them ones I didn't want to do much. So then there was the Doctor Who course at the UEA, part of the evening class part time study nobody had told me about, and I went and did that. And that was great, and as a bonus I got used to the UEA and decided I like the library and went even in weeks I didn't have a lesson and read a whole bunch of books. Also I used the bus a lot. And I talked out loud quite fluently once I got on topic. And I talked to other people after class. And then in the holidays I went to stuff in pubs where I talked to other people with no lessons happening. And it's great, and almost all the stuff that was a problem when I was a hermit has got so much better, and I feel like I could graduate now, from a mental health point of view.

Which is actually kind of scary cause not-being-disabled would require, like, work, and other stuff I don't know how to do yet. That 'work based learning' unit at college is actually looking pretty good from that point of view. Not that I could do it this year, but, you know, it's like work, only not.

Also I'd still be disabled, but maybe not incapacity-benefit disabled. Bit confusing.

ANYway... in all of that 'what was important to me about studying' there wasn't a lot about my grades. Because, honestly, I only find them interesting for a few minutes. I like the new high score ones, or like with the Doctor Who course where the essay really worked, but I don't find nice percentage numbers motivating in themselves.

And I don't find the work motivating in itself. Analysing stories is good useful interesting work... for some people some times, but not for me. I mean, it's interesting, but the useful and necessary to me always is about using that data to make a new story.

So that should be simple. Go make new story.

Why am I not making new story?
*sigh*

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

The Open University does creative writing courses. That would not help your anti-hermit aims, but it might help your writing aims. Alternatively, you could look for a local writers' circle. Or you could use fandom - there are coms where people commit to write a certain amount per week and give each other support to achieve their goals. Or you could just do it here on your own LJ. Make yourself write at least a 1,000 words of fiction per week and post it on the same day each week.