A Fresher's Guide to Commuting to Uni

For the past year I've been taking my little Fiat Punto (Lionel) for a trip down the M27 and M3 every morning to get to university in Winchester. Some days I even took the scenic route through Romsey where I drove past many trees and fields and the occasional cow. What an exciting life I lead. Some people would have you believe that this is 'wrong' and that to get the full student experience you have to be in halls 'living the dream' of having zero money, getting smashed off your face every night and getting off with strangers, waking up covered in every possible fluid, forgetting how they got there in the process. But this isn't the case. I can honestly say that I had a fantastic time being a Fresher without being in Winchester 24/7 and, more importantly, with an extra few pennies in my pocket.

The best thing to do before you even get to university is to find a group on Facebook or create one yourself so you and these other complete strangers can communicate prior to going on the course. In my case I had to make one but it was probably the best decision I made as it's still used now for all sorts of things; general chat, help revising and interesting little stories that pop up. If you manage to join or create one of these it brings you up to a certain level, at least where you can say you recognise someone and maybe know a little bit about them before you go saying anything stupid or ridiculous.

Despite this, when I started university I still felt like I was at a huge disadvantage to everyone else. I'd made the assumption that because they'd been there a whole 10 days more than I had that they would all know each other and I'd be a Billy No Mates on my own in the corner. The problem with assumptions is that they put an instant downer on things, especially if they're as life-altering as university, but I was quickly proven wrong. Nobody knew anyone other than the basic things they'd discovered through a casual bit of Facebook stalking. Sure, they had friends who were in their halls, but in time you'll meet these, at least in passing, and to be honest, it doesn't even matter because you're not the one who needs those people anyway. So the first bit of all important advice I can give you is don't panic, you're not alone.

I would definitely suggest trying to make at least one Freshers event. This was something I couldn't manage due to unforeseen circumstances involving a toilet, but something that I wanted to at least try to make. After all, you only get one first year at uni and you don't want to be known as the one who didn't even make an effort. This is quite difficult to start with because obviously you know no one and you'd feel intrusive asking to sleep on their floor, but these people are no different to you and they want to be your friend as much as you want to be theirs, so in your first few days get talking to people and this problem should be solved easily.

This is where I take the 'real student' head off briefly. You'll find that knowing nobody in the first few weeks does have it's advantages. During lengthy breaks between lectures and seminars don't bother going home, use the free time to keep up with your reading and get ahead of the game. Not only does this have educational advantages it also saves you money. If you're driving in you don't want to make a 50 mile round trip twice in a matter of hours and you definitely don't want to fight with the ever-rising petrol prices because that's a battle you'll certainly lose if you're not careful.

If you've got a part-time job already you should be able to work loose hours around your uni scheduled, so in theory you could still keep your job. I know this sounds obvious but until it starts to interfere with your studies the extra income can really help. It allows you more freedom outside your student loan income, making purchases such as new clothes or games, whatever you like, much more affordable. Just remember that nothing is more important than your studies, the part-time job is not your career, so if it gets too much to handle ditch it. That's what I've done for my second year.

I'm not going to lie, to make friends whilst commuting you need to make a little bit of extra effort, but the benefits are there for all to see. Find some common ground and partake in activities with them. It sounds trivial and mundane but it can go a long way to cementing friendships. For example I would stick around for hours after uni finished to go to the pub to watch football in the evening, only leaving when the last bus to the park and ride comes along, although there's nothing to say that this bus won't ignore you and drive on by as I found out the hard way.

Back to the important thing now, drinking. After a few weeks you should be on good enough terms with at least a few people to crash on their floor without feeling awkward, so go on nights out with them and take advantage of this, after all, there's nothing to say you can't offer them your floor should they fancy a change of scenery and a night out somewhere else. There's no better way of bonding than drunken chunder over someone's shirt or all over the floor. Honestly, this is how 'real students' live. Join them.

Financially speaking, commuting to uni is the best thing ever. And I mean ever. Why would you want to spend upwards of £100 a week  over your hard-earned student loan on rent when you can spend £30 a week on petrol or train tickets. If you want to eat that's another stupid amount of cash you won't need to spend, and I haven't even got to the bills and stupid, stupid landlords you'd have to deal with in your second year. Staying at home saves money and what's not to love about that?

I hope that this helps numb some fears commuters may have. It really isn't that difficult because if you get it right you get the best of both worlds. The best advice I can give you is to keep calm and have fun.

HCJ Lecture #1

So far I've found it very hard to follow the HCJ module, but I get the impression that I am not alone in this. Most of Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy wooshes over my head. It's almost as if I can't keep up with the ideas that he's throwing at me. Luckily, a video that Chris has linked us to hopes to shed more light on it:

As far as the amount I've read is concerned, that's currently on the 160 pages mark, but in truth it feels like I'll have to read this 280 page segment five or six times to start to grasp the routes of the modules. I may not blog specifically about that until I feel comfortable enough with it. Socrates died believing he would live on in a richer life, that's what I can safely say.

The lecture helped... 

Here are some of the notes that I took (expanded on as far as I understand it) that I feel are important, so if anyone else feels bamboozled I hope this can help:

Migration - Ancient civilisation started with migration, the Greeks and Persians come from what we now know as the Middle East, but the Greeks migrated West (ancient Greece) and the Persians are those who migrated South-West (Persia). [I think]

Europeans are all Greek - As a statement this may seem a bit outlandish, however, all European civilisation and culture started with the Ancient Greeks. Obviously, migrating west from the Middle East would bring you to what we call Europe and that's exactly what the Greeks did. They set up their civilisation there, thus creating the groundwork for ours.

Greece was the source of culture whereas Rome was the source of Politics and Power - Rome had the powerful, all-conquering army. Power and strength was the heart and soul of the empire, similar to the Spartans in many respects. Greece, on the other hand, valued philosophy and literacy. They realised that words could be weapons before anyone else had. Their love for drama was also clear, and their level of understanding of Science was first-rate - they believed that objects were made out of Atoms (although it was suggested by __________ [sad face, forgotten] that these atoms were made of the elements; earth, wind, water and fire). Their names seem to escape me, but another Philosopher speculated that the sun was a blazing stone in the sky, which wasn't a bad guess for someone with no telescope.

Judeo-Christianity - This was the first sign of belief in just one god, a human. This suggests that everyone is equal, something that has definitely survived the test of time.

The age of the universe - Cosmology fell way short of the mark in predicting this as it guesstimated at 6,000 years, based only on Ancestry. Buddhism came loser, a guess of 12 epocs. An epoc is defined as the amount of time a it would take a monk to climb a mountain, rub the hardest granite with the finest silk until it reached sea level. He would rub it for just one day a year. This may seem whimsical but it's a close estimation as that would take a very long time.

Christianity - Adopted by the Western world in 800 AD, this saw the start of the Dark Ages where the Greek genius was lost. More on that when I know more!

Logic - The one part of ancient Greece (Aristotle, to be precise) that was adopted by the Catholic Church. It is preserved to this day. Proposition is seen as the starting point to logic: "All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, so he is mortal."

Italy - Some Greek knowledge did leak into the West from Arab states through trade as they still applied some of the Greek discoveries.

Printing Presses - These were created in the 19th Century to print Bibles. Einstein says this is the biggest human revolution since writing. He wasn't wrong.

Kenneth Clark - Good point here, Clark demonstrates how civilisations can go backwards by looking at architecture: the Greeks could build self-supporting dome structures but this knowledge was lost in the Dark Ages. St. Paul's Cathedral has a 'fake dome' as it is supported by a spire. The reason why all Christian churches have spires is because they simply did not know how to make a true dome. He also points out that landmarks such as the Vatican, St. Paul's and the Arc de Triumph are all examples of 'Neo-Classicism' and are based on Greek architecture.

My New Calling...

Every Wednesday and Thursday, four hours of my precious young life are taken away and I'm kidnapped by a supermarket, a supermarket with an agenda: to educate their staff! That's right everyone, I'm getting a qualification in Retail!

It was around 8pm on a warm, autumnal evening. I was expecting my break. I'd worked over half my shift and I was getting a little bit dehydrated. Suddenly, my moment of triumph came - the close sign was carefully put on the end of my till in what felt like slow-motion. An epic moment in my time of need. Only, I was wrong to assume that this would be my salvation. I was told to head over to the public cafe (OF ALL PLACES, what's wrong with the staff room?) and was met by a middle-aged woman who was just a little bit over enthusiastic about everything. Her digital pen was the best thing since the filing cabinet in her office, her drive from Basingstoke to Southampton was "thunderous" and the news she was about to tell me would seemingly complete my life. It didn't.

She explained to me that ALL of the kids in school were doing a qualification in retail and that the only way to be "down with them" would be by doing one myself. She asked me for my GCSE results, I can barely remember them, it's been four gruelling years since the rosy days of school finished for me. Instead I offered her my seven A Levels. She was not interested. She wanted my GCSE's and she was going to get them regardless. I reassured her that to even be able to do the A Levels I chose I would need at least 5 A-C's. Nope, not good enough. In the end she settled for just Maths and English, but still not my English A Level. Just the lower qualification, to which she later said would not be relevant next year anyway.

By this point my brain had switched off (probably down to both boredom and the dehydration in equal measures) as she rambled on and on and on about the two different qualifications that I could achieve and how "hard" I would have to work to get them. The one thing that I made VERY clear was that I have too much on my plate already and that I was not prepared to do more work at home for something I don't even want. Ignoring this, she tried to throw me into an apprenticeship in retail, despite the fact that I told her that I was studying for an intensive degree in Journalism. I asked her to explain to me how I could apply retail to this entirely different subject. Her reply? "You can write about shops." Brilliant. Now I need a sodding qualification to even consider writing about... Shops. That's it I'm afraid, I just can't blog about getting a pint of milk any more. It's. Far. Too. Complica... Complic... Complicated.

As riveting as it may be if you're planning to slave your life away in a shop, this qualification simply is not for me. At the risk of sounding snobby, I hope my life has far better things in store for me than that. In fact, if I could hang up my apron tomorrow I almost certainly would, and I suppose a lot of my colleagues would too, but that's not the case, so instead I was enrolled on the new NVQ equivalent of this course as it's apparently "compulsory." Still, I'm not even going to put ten minutes into the crappy handbook I was given, I'd much rather invest my time in selling dolphin snow-globes. I can't see how a qualification in Retail is going to improve my quest to become a Superhero Journalist. It simply isn't worth my time.

Hours later, at half past eight, the woman stopped going on and let me go for my break. Head buzzing, I headed towards the back of the shop to the staff room. One thing you will notice whilst walking through the less-than-luxurious yet exclusive Staff Area, is that the walls are covered with slogans promoting teamwork. It's a little bit like The Office where you have a chubby little man who finds them hilarious. He's wrong, of course. What's so funny about a picture of a mountain with the words 'work together' randomly slammed underneath it? Not once have I heard David Attenborough describe how two mountains team up to help a hill reach it's full potential. Nor have I seen two rivers communicate with one another, not even about fish. This, more than anything else, exhibits what is wrong with working in a shop. They gee you up to attempt the impossible.

Take earning a promotion, for example. As a checkout operator the next step for me would be checkout supervisor, where after a shift at work you are expected to volunteer your own time to finish cleaning the department, unpaid. Glamorous. If this barrier doesn't break you, the next one definitely could: the position of checkout manager. Your job would be to organise the shifts of the entire department, dealing with holidays, illnesses, tramps and anything else that stood in the way of a factory-esque work rate. If that floats your boat you could suck up a tad and maybe, just maybe, become a duty manager. I'm not going to pretend to understand what they do, nor what the store manager does, but I'm sure it doesn't involve the helpful mountains and talking rivers that their posters suggest. None of this is for me.

A qualification in Retail is about as useful to me as a sari. I'm never going to use one or even need one. So what is the point of me throwing my time away when I could be sat here reading more Bertrand Russell, instead of whittling my time away moaning on this blog.

Bricks Bricks Bricks - Journalist Law Lecture #1

Wow, it's a week of first's, which is just a tincy-wincy bit obvious as this is my FIRST week of uni-ma-versity. Before I delve into any details about my lecture, I want to discuss what my life as a commuter is like. There's probably one word that sums it up more than anything: tiring. Here's an example from today:

I went to sleep around 3am for a number of reasons, namely that I was updating this thing until 2, then I just couldn't sleep. I finally drifted off and after what felt like seconds my alarm was screeching at me from my phone. I want you to imagine how peaceful and calm the sea sounds as it's lapping onto a stunning, glowing, golden beach. Then I want you to understand that my alarm sounds NOTHING like that. In fact, it sounds exactly like a danger alarm in a nuclear reactor. 40 minutes later I'm up, showered and ready to hop in my car (as a first car I felt it deserved a name, so he's called Lionel). The route I take to university is a back road that takes you through teeny Romsey and then some even smaller villages. It's lovely, picturesque and... Lethal. Half way down the road there was a police diversion, ambulances with more sirens wailing and some very distraught people. I eventually got to the park and ride, again just missing the bus. Eventually another one turned up, by this point it was 9:30. When I got to uni I had 15 minutes to grab a bite to eat and find my lecture room.

If you were to ask me what one major thing I learned today, my answer would be simple. Today I learnt that people eat bricks. Human beings, humanoids, intelligent apes, whatever you call us, we eat bricks. House bricks, to be precise. It would be ludicrous to suggest that anyone would eat breeze blocks, I mean, have you seen how unappetising they look? All grey, brittle and clay-like. Give me regular bricks any day; they're a wonderfully rich reddy-orange and they only come in single portions. This obviously shows that they have potential to be served in Michelin Star restaurant, so why not beat them to it and make your own delicious dishes? My one complaint? They're a bit dusty. So, Marjorie Dawes, I've decided that I do not want to eat any more dust.

There are two sections of the human rights act that share an equal importance in journalistic law, and not one has any waivering right over the other: Section 8 and Section 10. They're very simple in premise; as I discovered in McNae's, Section 8 covers one's right to privacy, whereas Section 10 fits loosely around freedom of expression. Put into practise though and they are both very complex commodities and they can be argued against each other until one person is a rotting skeleton. This is where the rambling about the brick comes in - the person has some sort of fantangled medical condition, and though I do not know the ins and outs of it, I can assume that it makes bricks look like the best thing since, well, sliced bricks. Anyway, if the poor soul decides that they don't want their story published, they can argue against its publication citing Section 8 of the human rights act. However, a journalist may disagree and say that everyone wants to know about brick-eating people and will argue such using Section 10 - the right to publish stories that are in the public interest. A judge must therefore weigh up the two arguments and decide which one is more relevant.

Civil courts tend to deal with the boring guff of the legal system, be it parking tickets, speeding fines or divorces. However, they can provide some of the 'scandalous' stories you'd find in publications such as 'Heat', 'Now' and 'Celebrity Fuck Ups.' In my opinion, even in these rivetting cases, the news about Katie Price marrying and divorcing a donkey on the same day is still no more news-worthy than anyone else being as stupid. To be honest I feel that this part of the media lives off dumb bimbos such as Katie Price and Kerry Katrona. In Bolivia these two would be executed with pencils for being so consistently pathetic. Of course, comment is cheap, so I can say as much of this as I like. It's all true and all my honest opinion, so unless you want Section 10 slammed up your rectum, ladies, I wouldn't try to argue against it.

Criminal courts, on the other hand, are where the all the action takes place. The farmer that went on a chainsaw rampage? He'll go there. Who wouldn't want to sit in on that case? Actually, I can say that I would avoid it and here's why: shorthand is a bugger to master as it is, so I imagine that it can only be worse when you can't understand the accent and dialect of the defendant.

The easiest way to differentiate between the two, whilst using big legal terminology, would be that criminal courts deal with 'inditable' cases that carry a sentence, whereas civil courts deal with 'non-iditable' cases such as small fines and libel claims.

What I do find humorous is that the retired, Tory, turnip-nosed do-gooders who you find volunteering in magistrates courts up and across the length and breadth of the UK, must see cases that involve mass-murderers before they reach the Crown courts. This will be a situation where a referral is all that is needed, but I'm sure that won't stop them quaking in their plastic shoes and cheap trouser suits. They probably put double-sided tape on their wigs to keep them on as the cold-blooded pig farmer stares at them with his cold, unforgiving eyes that contain the scorched souls of the people and pigs who met their ends at the teeth of his chainsaw.

Winchester hosts the court that is second only to the Old Bailey in terms of importance in this country. If the Bailey is full, cases will take place here. This is where shit gets real; the judges wear gowns and wigs, and the barristers battle it out for supremecy. It's like Helms Deep all over the gain, except with uglier trolls.

There are two standards within the industry: the standards of truth and the standards of proof. In basic terms, the standards of truth suggest that a journalist should always be sceptical and not believe the first thing they here. In contrast, the standards of proof are much more complicated. In civil courts there has to be a 'balance of the probability.' This is to stop Mr. Thug N. Idiot storming in with his knuckles dragging along the floor and declaring that his 16 year old wife and mother of three has probably been putting herself about with the boys in the year above her. There has to be some form of evidence to support the probability of this happening. For example, if she stinks of a cheap aftershave one of the 'boys' uses then there is a higher probability that she did it.

In criminal cases a conviction can only be made if it is seen as 'beyond reasonable doubt.' There are three key things that the police look to whilst making a conviction and they must have at least one of them in support: confession, forensic evidence and eye witnesses. As far as confessions are concerned, the police must still be wary as if they over-do their questioning the defendant may make a false confession. This happened to a 15 year old boy who, for some unknown reason, confessed to raping and killing an 80 year old women. He didn't do it. The true murderer and rapist (I'm allowed to say this because the man was convicted) was found years later.

So, I'm still tired, still yawning and wishing I was still in bed, but at least I can now find myself a brick to replenish my energy. Tasty.

Beep Beep Beep, the Common Sense Alarm is in Overdrive

If there’s one thing that rattles me it’s when people ignore what I call ‘Common Sense Warnings’. Now, this is where something is absurdly stupid and makes every alarm bell in your brain scream in no uncertain terms “do not perform this action.” These alarms can arise for a number of reasons: there is a high danger level, it will humiliate you for the rest of your life, or you could spend eternity married to a goat. Occasionally the result of this is a mixture of these unfortunate happenings and when this does occur who do you blame? Everyone but yourself. Even when it was you who decided to swim in shark infested waters in your favourite seal costume, even when you got the bright idea to mix hang-gliding with target practise (where you were the target), or when it suddenly seemed hilarious to get horrendously drunk only to wake up bent over a wheelie-bin surrounded by horny, Polish tramps. Clearly, all of these were the brainwaves of Tony from down the pub, who strangely enough is always on his third bottle of wine by six o’clock and sat on the same piss-stained stool. With no friends.

Take the example of the Japanese tourist who was having a wonderful family adventure at the Niagara Falls. We all know the stereotype: a camera, shorts that don’t match the rest of their clothing, small glasses and flip-flops, only on this particular day it was raining so she had an umbrella too. The subject was having a glorious time taking in the utterly beautiful surroundings until she wanted a closer look. I’m lucky enough to have experienced the sheer velocity of the Falls and I can vouch that a mixture of it’s powerful, thundering water and the mysterious aura of the mist can draw you closer to the edge of the railings for a glance over, but most people stop at this point because the body slams into Code:Red - Danger Factor. But no, not this tourist. A mere 20 meters down stream from the 51m drop into almost certain death, she decided to climb over the barrier to get a better photo with her Coolpix camera. Within seconds a gust of wind had caught her open umbrella, dragging her into the rushing river that drops 600,000 gallons of water over the Falls a second. The result was more Mary Droppings than Mary Poppins. Needless to say she didn’t float gracefully into the white water rapids below.

Somalian Pirates have been in the news a lot over the past few years and not because they are pleasant individuals who plan parties for the disabled and buy orphanages to transform into PlayZone’s. Generally speaking they are in the headlines because they have ambushed cargo ships and painted the walls with blood. Obviously this is a great advert for Somalian tourism because so many middle class nitwits and retirees sail into pirate territory with the attitude that it would never happen to them, that nobody could possibly want to take their luxury yacht by force and lock two delightfully British people who speak with their wallets in a tiny cell and starve them. It goes without saying that this isn’t the case as delightfully British couple and middle class retired nitwits who speak with their wallets Paul and Rachel Chandler discovered the hard way - by having their luxury yacht taken by force and then by being locked in a tiny cell and starved for over a year. Luckily they lived to tell the tale and were eventually released but I would love to know whose idea it was to sail through such dangerous waters, or even hear a snippet of their conversation: “Oh darling, Somalia sounds tropical! Let’s cruise past there.” If you really want to sail to the Seychelles, go round the long way, it’s much safer. And make sure you have your common sense alarm turned on whilst planning said trip.

The host of the popular NBC show To Catch a Predator, Chris Hansen, lives by the hidden camera so it was only apt that his marriage died by the hidden camera. In the show (in which Hansen anchors) paedophiles are lured to the house of an actor who portrays a young teenager lurking on seedy internet chat-rooms acting as a bait for the sex-starved, moustachioed sex offenders with colonies of ants living under their armpits. They arrive at a decoy house where they are greeted by the ‘child’ (who looks over 20, let alone 14) who welcomes them to their home and offers them a drink. Hansen then appears with his famous line “would you like to take a seat?” By this point the offender must be feeling immortal at the thought of a threesome, until it’s revealed to them that this is in fact an undercover sting operation and the moment they leave the house they will be arrested. 

Similar to the offenders, Hansen has been caught red-handed on hidden cameras cheating on his wife with someone 21 years younger than him. Which, admittedly would be a lot more awful if he wasn’t 51. Regardless of this, Hansen is a man very much in the public eye so with that in mind he should be considering more secluded locations than hotels and restaurants to conduct his affairs in. Add to the mixture that he is the host of a hidden camera show and he should be all the more careful because there’s bound to be someone wanting to turn the tables on him. There are currently unconfirmed reports that he asked his secret date if she would like to take a seat... On his face.

Our final subject for examination is the victim of a Polar Bear attack victim Horatio Chapple, or rather the British Schools Exploring Society (BSES), who organised the trip to the Arctic Circle when it was common knowledge that the white bundles of fluff were starving as Global Warming has left them with less seals to scoff. Chapple’s tent was ripped into by the hungry teddy bear as he was sleeping, leaving him in pieces and four of his school friends injured as they tried to fend off the bear. As tragic as this is, there is nobody to blame but BSES who ignored the widely used safety measure of creating a look out post to spot danger. Coming from a country that is as health and safety conscious as Britain and with a name that announces their Britishness, surely BSES would have had other measures in place in case a look out point could not be established. Surely they would have working rifles and flares. Apparently not. The rifle didn’t work instantly and had to be cocked and fiddled with a few times and the flare gun was useless, not even emitting so much as a spark.

Five public school boys are hardly cage fighter material so they didn’t stand a chance against a billion tonne bear hunting a Big Mac. Granted, Horatio and his fellow students are much more used to bumping into wild Deer grazing on their lavish estates than the monstrous children’s toys with razor sharp teeth, but if anything this shows that no matter where you go for an education, nowhere can teach you how to be bear-proof.

So the moral here is very clear: If something sounds stupid, it probably is and no, you probably shouldn’t do it. However, if you can live with stories about you eating soggy biscuits or weeing on electric fences circling around your current set of friends and your future friends, oh and not to mention your family and their families, then go right ahead. You don’t have to take my advice.