TCD Miscellany II

Same deal as this. Here’s my article for the second issue of this year’s TCD Miscellany.

Ah. Back to college. The old grind again. Like we never left.

I was surprised at just how enthusiastic I was during Freshers’ week. I was genuinely looking forward to being back. Mainly because college gives me a reason to get up and get dressed. A reason to shave other than getting rid of the itchiness. A bit of structure to my days. I was beginning to hope and dream again.

I’m gonna go to every lecture! I’m gonna study during the year instead of just cramming before exams! I’m gonna go to the gym all the time! Hell, may as well give Schols a go!

Thing is, lectures start early and are shit. Studying seems unnecessary and shit. The gym would require me bringing in changes of clothes and stuff. And then being sweaty. And it’s also shit. Schols? Where’s the lolz in Scholz?

I was soon reminded of my laziness. I’m also convinced that I have regressed socially. Over the summer I built an image of myself going back to college, seeing everyone I know, being all cool. I saw myself strutting through front square like The Fonz, giving an “eeey!” and a thumbs up to all those cool cats I’m friends with. I’m just a man about town, baby.

The reality was me sheepishly dragging myself through front square and panicking upon seeing one of those people you sort of know, but not enough to comfortably say hello to. If they try do a stop-and-chat, you’re right up shit creek. Nah, just wait until you’re both out drinking some night. That’s when that sort of stuff should be done.

I’m already behind in my classes. I find myself becoming increasingly frustrated at the people who seem to know what’s going on in everything. How dare they be on top of things? Knowing when essays are due, having stuff done for tutorials. They’re often the sort of people that adapt to new acronyms too quickly. For example, people calling History of Political Thought, “HPT” from the first day. It’s just too soon. Stick your HPT up your GEE.

To worsen matters, my lecturers have decided to go all ‘interactive’ this year. Asking questions to the class. What happened to the days when I could sit in silence in a lecture and take in the cleavage on show instead of paying attention? I now have to pay attention lest I get asked a question I haven’t heard, and then get mocked by the failed stand-up comic lecturer. There was a bit of an incident with this recently.

The woman lecturing us had been asking questions the whole time. Ever single question she asked, I sat there slyly grinning at the inappropriate responses my little ol’ brain was thinking up. While talking about the misery JK Rowling suffered while writing her books in Edinburgh cafés, she asked “I mean, if you want to go somewhere to write and be miserable, where would you go?”. Obviously hoping for an “Edinburgh” response. I sat there thinking “Auschwitz Auschwitz Auschwitz”. Alas, I wasn’t asked.

Then we had to all write down an answer to her question “What is Marketing?”. She asked someone at the back. Then another. Then she points to me and asks what I wrote. Christ. I look down at my page and see the three words I’ve written – “What is Marketing?”. Why did I even bother writing the fucking question? I then did the biggest cop out imaginable and garbled out some jibberish about having the same answer as the last. The shame.

I planned to go in and see Jack White when he was in. I’m not a major fan or anything, but it’s pretty cool that he was there. Then I found out it was on a Sunday. This was a problem for the simple reason that I rarely have plans for Sundays, so it unnerves me a little bit when I do. I can barely remember the last time I did something on a Sunday aside from eating dinner.

And then my mam clinched it when she told me what we were having for Sunday dinner. Chicken and ham. Chicken AND ham. That’s two meats. TWO. That’s twice the amount of meats I normally have with dinner. Soz Jack, it’s nothing personal, but it’s gotta be something really special to outdo a double meater.

I’m way out of the loop with nights out too. Where are all these new night clubs coming from? And all these themed nights? I feel like a pensioner baffled and bemused by technology. People ask me if I’m going to things and I don’t know if they’re saying the name of the night’s theme, or the venue. ‘War’, ‘Break for the Border’ – what is this shit?

No, I shan’t be going to Piss Flaps in The Granny Hub on Harcourt Street tonight. I don’t care if you get in for free if you’re wearing soiled wellies and eating a pube. I don’t care if they’re selling Mojitos for two euro and a Tayto crisp. I’m going to go home and have a glass of orange juice and scratch myself. However, if it’s any consolation, I will silently browse through the Facebook photos of your night, so if you could upload them sharpish, I’d be grateful. I’m planning a day of bitter scowling tomorrow so that’d really fit in with my schedule.

Oh well. It’s Christmas soon. And we all know what that means!

The inevitable disappointment of New Year’s.

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TCD Miscellany

Story.

This post is a little shameless promotion, aimed especially at Trinity College students.

I’m urging you all to go pick up a copy of TCD Miscellany. It’s free and you should find it outside the SU shop, and possibly elsewhere.

I’m the back-page columnist, which is why I’m urging y’all to go pick it up. It’s a very good read right through though.

For people who can’t go pick up the magazine, check out the website where you can read it online.

As for my article, I have permission to throw it up here for your pleasure, so here you go.

“So How Was Your Summer?

Ah sure. You know yourself. Grand.

I look forward to Summer all year long. But after a few weeks of arsing around, you realise it’s actually pretty shit. When you’re off galavanting and doing things with your life it’s good, but that doesn’t happen to me that often.

What’s worse is the pressure to go and do something. Because you just know that in a few months time, people are going to be asking you the question that titles this “article”. Sometimes I find myself doing things solely so I can have a good answer for that.

Can’t I just vegetate in my own filth please?

Similarly, whenever I do something remotely interesting, there’s that little voice at the back of my mind telling me that this’ll make a fuckin’ whopper facebook status. People’ll comment it, “like” it – the whole shebang.

It can be depressing at times. A particular moment springs to mind here. It was a Friday evening, 5pm. The start of the weekend, and I’m a free man. I could do anything I want to. Anything. But there I find myself – unshowered, unshaved. Having not eaten at all that day. Not even dressed yet. On the toilet. Laptop at my feet. Playing ‘Connect 4’ online against someone who’s probably far younger than I am. Listening to old school wrestling music to remind me of my childhood. Times like those really make your day y’know? The times you realise you are totally fulfilling your potential.

And then people go asking you what you’ve done with your day. And I have to lie or at least sugar-coat the truth.

“Oh you know, just chilled really. Took it handy.”

I guess it’d be a tad unsociable to tell them you woke up at 4pm, had half a Moro for breakfast (left over from yesterday), masturbated, went on facebook, lost track of time looking at photos of people you don’t know, then considered masturbating again but got distracted by them asking you on MSN how your day has gone.

I become so utterly useless during the summer that I consider the most mundane of things to be an achievement. Cutting my nails for example. I cut my nails in the morning and that’s it for the day. I’m done. Drained. I deserve a treat. Fetch me a crisp sandwich! The traditional Summer cuisine. Works for every meal.

My summer wasn’t all play though. There was some drama thrown in there. Oh yes. You better believe it.

There was an incident with the lunch I was making one day. I decided to go a bit mad and do some proper cooking. Naturally, I went for beans on toast.

I threw some beans in a cup, and bunged ‘em into the microwave. Stuck the toast in the toaster. Less than a minute later I hear a sort of splashing noise.

Oh Christ.

The worst has happened.

All hope is lost.

It’s a disaster of Chernobyl proportions.

I forgot to cover the beans while microwaving them.

I open the microwave and see bean juice scattered everywhere. Pandemonium ensues.

What do I do first, eat or clean? The age old question.

If I eat first, the bean juice’ll harden and be a cunt to clean. If I clean, the beans’ll go cold.

Then the toast pops up.

I had to make a mad dash for the fridge to ensure I got that butter before it went past the point whereby it wouldn’t melt into the toast properly.

I’m not sure anyone else could so catastrophically prepare a meal of beans on toast. It’s up there with Homer Simpson setting the cereal on fire.

Most of you would think I couldn’t possibly cram more drama into the three months of Summer.

You’d be wrong. Catastrophically wrong.

On, not one, not two, but three separate occasions, a daddy long-legs found its way into my bedroom. I’ve learned that a spider coming into the room is an event that nobody will ever, ever become comfortable with. Every time I see a spider in the room I go into full-on panic mode, as if I’ve just had a gun pointed in my face.

Kill him! No, kill it! Don’t personify what you intend to kill.

I leap up, and then begin the frantic search for a murder weapon. My mind then works out the trade-off between my desperation to kill the spider while it’s still in sight, and my unwillingness to use a birthday card to do the deed. But then, genius strikes. The Argos catalogue. The book given to us by the gods for all our spider-killings needs. It’s probably out of date by now anyway.

And as I scoop the frail little spider corpse into the bin, in what has to be the most undignified funeral the world had ever seen, remorse sets in. Did I really have to kill the spider? He could have had a family. He might just have been looking for food to bring back to the nest or whatever it is spiders live in. Then again, he might have walked on my pillow during the night. Fuck it, good decision.

So that was my Summer. Oh, I also went interrailing. The problem here is that when people hear I interrailed, they get very excited and ask me what it was like, expecting an exciting, potentially life-changing answer. All I can usually muster is a mumbled “Ah yeah, it was good…”.

There it is folks. “It was good.” Isn’t that the exciting answer you were hoping for? Are you all atwitter now? Three words, one syllable each.

IT.

WAS.

GOOD.

Don’t get me wrong, it actually was good – amazing infact, I just feel like a total fraud for not having a more exciting response.

But yeah, Summer’s alright innit?”

Now, can anyone tell me how I actually pronounce “miscellany”?

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It’s A New Dawn, It’s A New Day

Right so.

I can be a bit of a Nazi when it comes to spelling and grammar. Or speeling and grammer, if that’s what sort of cretin you are.

Mainly just for important stuff. When people should be concerned about it. Not personal texts or emails or anything like that.

Now, last year, the Students’  Union for my college were considered a bit of a let-down. Being a first year, I had nothing to compare to, so can’t really comment.

But it did bother me seeing glaring mistake in emails or articles by the SU officers. Is it much to ask them to proof-read their drivel? I’d have happily taken a glance over it for them.

This year, I voted for the new officers of the SU. All but one of the people I gave my number one vote to, got the job.

I was looking forward to seeing what the new SU could do. I hoped their promises of “righting the wrongs” etc. weren’t empty.

The other day they sent out their first email. I was actually looking forward to reading it.

The subject was : “Welcome from the new Students’  Union”.

Yes!

They didn’t fall at the very first hurdle. That apostrophe in that sentence is one many people get wrong so I was glad at least they got that right.

First sentence : “We hope you are having a great Summer”.

Gee, thanks guys. It’s even better now I’m starting to believe I’m not going to receive an email from grammatical retards every week.

Second sentence : “We are the new officers in the Students’ Union and wanted to say hello and take this opportunity to intorduce ourselves”.

Oh for the cunting love of Christ.

The second fucking sentence.

Intorduce yourself to my pedantic fucking hole.

I didn’t read the rest of the email.

I glanced and saw different fonts, different sizes and all that shit.

I’d rather they emailed a picture of their own turds.

Maybe I am being a bit silly. It’s just a typo.

I just consider it important to read over stuff at least once before you send it to thousands of people. Thousands.

Or at least read over the first two fucking sentences.

Now, if anyone’s trying to place where I got the title from, here y’are. If you’re from Trinity SU, try this instead.

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Exam Time

Posting has been even less frequent than usual, and for that I apologise. I’m in the middle of my exams right now. Well I’m two thirds in actually. 4 done. Another tomorrow (an exam on a Saturday for fuck’s sake) and then I finish with French on Monday. My exams have all been packed in tightly together (boo-urns) but this means I finish earlier than most (score!).

After that, I’m finished my first year of college. I hope to do a lengthy review of the whole year, in terms of Trinity itself, the BESS course I’m doing, and general observations.

Gotta try get some sort of study done so this brief post will end here. Normal (slightly more frequent) blogging to resume next week.

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My Overactive Imagination

Sorry I haven’t posted in so long, I’ve been busy trying to keep up with college work. 

Anyway, I’ve come to notice lately how active my imagination is during lectures, listening to things lecturers says and twisting them into weird images in my head.

For example, my business lecturer discussing the consumer’s choice between a PC and an Apple. Obviously he means choosing between Windows and Mac, but for your pleasure I have used my excellent MS Paint skills to give you a rendering of the image my mind instantly conjured up :

I really need a PC, but I’m seriously fucking starving. Gimme the apple. Insurance? How much? Nah fuck it, I’ll take the risk.

Later on, that lecturer was discussing an article by two guys, Moldoveanu and Martin were their names, so after a while he began to abbreviate by just saying “M&M”. I couldn’t help but imagine the white rapper Eminem rapping about the battle between capital and talent.

Finally, my sociology lecturer was using a painting of the Last Supper in one of his slides. UnFortunately he had titled it as “The Last Super”.

The Last Super. The Last Sssssuper! The Last Super-dee-duper!

I haven’t asked others about this yet, but I’m fairly certain I was the only person in that lecture hall that began to imagine the Last Supper as a drunken, flirty gathering of a group of camp effeminate men.

Oh Jesus, this wine is FABULOUS! Made from your own blood you say? Oooh I say, what’s the chocolate cake made from then? Whoopsies I did a rudie joke!

Judas, go easy on the wine dear, you’re all over our Lord! 

Thomas sweetie, get this plate away from me, I’m not eating any more. Gotta watch my figure, ‘cos nobody else will eh?

Peter hun, stick the music on, I don’t care what you pick, I just want to DANCE!

So yeah, college is going well.

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My attempts to study

That title is a little misleading, for I haven’t even made an attempt to study.

My Christmas exams for college start on Monday, and I haven’t done any studying yet. This weekend was supposed to be a cramming weekend. I foolishly went out last night, and that left me a little worse for wear this morning.

“Sure, that’s grand. I’ll feel fine after breakfast. Then I’ll hit the books.”

I told myself several variations of this throughout the day. It is now almost midnight and I’m beginning to think that I won’t actually get any studying done today. Tomorrow I’m going to the library to actually do something.

No excuses.

I’ve four exams - French, Maths, Economics and Organisation and Management.

I’m also hoping to do a big college-related post once these exams are over. I haven’t talked about it much on here.

Also, this blog will be getting a new theme. Not a custom one, not only could I not afford that at the moment, but usually they have a shitload of errors and it’s headwrecking getting some idiot designer/coder to sort it out, so I end up having a go myself and getting all frustrated.

When I look at the current theme, it disgusts me a little. Definitely time for a change. I’ll spend a lot of time searching through the thousands of free themes out there, but if anyone sees any nice ones in the meantime, feel free to let me know. What sort of colour scheme to go for? How many columns? This’ll be fun!

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I were on the radio

So there’s a “Trinity FM” society in college, which I joined, along with a friend of mine, let’s call him Joseph, for that is his name.

Four (I think) of the big colleges in Ireland share a radio frequency, so basically, every month, Trinity FM has a week slot on the radio. An email went around recently asking people to submit applications to do their own show.

Of course, Joseph and I procrastinated and ended up submitting our application two days later than the deadline. We also never attended the training things to show us how to use the equipment. And neither of us had done anything like this before.

We were given the opening hour slot, 9-10am on Tuesday morning (Monday being a bank holiday). Someone else had this originally, but had to cancel.

Naturally we did nothing until Monday night, when Joseph came around to my house to try prepare something for the show. We ate pizza, picked a few songs for the playlist, went to tesco, and had crisp sandwiches, and were left with a sheet of “planning” that was just a load of doodles. It was so pathetic looking that it was funny.

The following morning comes, and we’re on the bus trying to convince ourselves we’ll be fine.

“We’ll be grand, we’ll have plenty to talk about, sure it’ll just be like us hanging out normally, except broadcast over all of Dublin. Feck it, nobody’ll be listening anyway”

We got in early and were quickly taught how to use equipment, it wasn’t too complicated.

We decided to be open about how unprepared we were, and generally take the piss out of ourselves. It actually went really well! Conversation flowed very naturally, and we had a really good laugh. Also, the songs we played were damn good. I was really happy with the playlist.

The few reactions we got were all very positive, and I felt really pleased with how it went. After the show I was actually disappointed that I hadn’t told anyone about it beforehand (I figured that with no planning, we could end up failing miserably).

The radio frequency is 97.3, for anyone who wants to listen to other student radio shows.

Hopefully we’ll do another show next time that I’ll mention on here in advance. We wanted to get a recording of the show, but didn’t manage it, but if one turns up (from the station or whatever) I’ll upload it here.

Here’s the playlist of the show.

1. Be Prepared - Shellac
2. Good Woman - Cat Power
3. Waiting Room - Fugazi
4. Sexy Boy - Shawn Michaels (this was for the lulz)
5. I’m Housin’ - Rage Against The Machine
6. Flume (new version) - Bon Iver
7. Kids Will Be Skeletons - Mogwai

We had more songs on the playlist, but ended up talking more than we thought we’d be able to, so had to cut some off - a very good sign in my book.

I spoke to the guy who was following us with his own show.

“Done anything like this before mate?” (I was expecting him to say no)

“Yeah. I used to work for the BBC”

“Oh.”

Overall though, I’m really happy I did the show (we toyed with the idea of just not showing up - it was early and we were hideously unprepared), and I’m looking forward to doing something like that again.

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The Things You Find…

When you’re cleaning your room. Doing a bit of a clean-up at the moment and have two things to show you all.

The first was actually given to me by my old class tutor last month. She’d managed to keep it for over a year.

In fifth year we were asked to write a small note saying why we think we deserve student of the year. At the time I considered my application quite hilarious, and obviously so did my tutor, if she kept it so long to give back to me after I’d finished school.

Here’s a picture of it anyway, before I type out the text :

Here’s what it says :

Dearest Ms Quirke  - teacher, tutor and most of all - friend.
What makes a student of the year?
Is it test results? Is it performance in class? Is it kindness amongst peers? Is it the undeniable air of manliness he emits? Is it those eyes like two cystal clear pools of blue? Is it a sophisticated sense of humour, full of wit and satire? Is it that thing he has that just makes you smile? Is it his walk, his talk, his velveteen voice? His weird application for student of the year? Whatever is it, I got it.
Mark.

The day after I gave this to her, we had a free class. The teacher from next door came in to tell us to stop being so loud, saw me and said “I know some of you have velveteen voices, but do keep it down a bit”.

This next thing is something I found today, and it was from the second week of sixth year.

That second week we had a tutorial class (tutorial is to be said in the same way “Notorious” is said in that song by Notorious B.I.G - tutooorial!). We were all told to take out a piece of paper and write down how many hours of study we did, and then how many hours of socialising we did. Obviously one of those exercises to guilt us into studying.

Here was my effort :

Hours of Study : 0
Hours of Socialising : I was too wasted to remember them all.

Stuff like this makes you miss secondary school - it’s weird that I’m never going back.

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I’m a BESS boy!

Firstly, if you didn’t read the Sunday post yesterday, go read it now, I didn’t write all that crap for nothing.

Offers for college just came out, and thankfully, I’ve managed to get my first choice, Business, Economics and Social Studies (BESS) in Trinity. Let’s take a look at what I said about Trinity and BESS a few months ago, shall we? Click here.

Trinners for winners, BESS for the best! (I’d like to thank Ciarán for that little saying, I’m sure I’ll fit in really well using it).

The course requirements went down by ten points this year, at 470, so with my 510 I comfortably got in, with 40 points to spare. Yeow!

That course has a bit of a reputation for the whole “D4″ thing, but that’s bollocks to me. Great course in Ireland’s most recognised college, I’m happy! Also, D4 girls are loike sooo hawwwt (I’m never going to try doing that again).

I hope everyone is happy with their college offers, let me know what you’re doing! I’d particularly like to hear from any fellow Trinity-goers, or any other future/current/past BESS heads. Fancy a pint in the Pav?

What happens from here? Grants and books etc? Feckin’ effort. Exams? Study? Pressure?

Fuck this, I’m going travelling.

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Leaving Cert Results - Epic Win

Just home from collecting my Leaving Cert results, and I’m feeling good!

I did better than expected. My hands were shaking when I was opening the envelope, and I was shaking even more when i saw my results! Without further ado, here they are.

Irish - Higher Level - B3

English - Higher Level - A1 (boo yeah!)

Maths - Higher Level - C3

History - Higher Level - A2

Geography - Higher Level - A2

French - Higher Level - B1

Physics - Higher Level - C1

Total Points : 510 (from a possible 600)

Oh hell yeah! Anything over 500 is considered a huge achievement, so I’m absolutely delighted. Last year the points for my course were 480, so it looks promising, but nothing is guaranteed.

I’m still in shock, I really didn’t expect to do so well.

I had my photo taken for the local newspaper too, so I may well be in that next week.

Any other leaving certers reading, let me know how you got on!

Right so, I’m off to get disgustingly drunk!

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