Hey y'all, hows tricks? It's a beautifully crisp January morning, the sky is blue and and the frost is glistening in the early morning sunshine......


Ah heck who am I kidding.... it's June. Yup, that's right folks, in some amazing feat of extreme-procrastination slash laziness slash forgetfulness it would seem that I have successfully (typo - I meant "accidently"), forgotten to post in my PDP blog for.... um... about 6 months now. Marian, I can imagine you're squirming in your seat now in disgust at what would appear to be my blatent disregard for your teachings, if it's any comfort I'd like you to know that PDP hasn't been my only short-coming of 2007... the fact is that I seem to have been infected with severe motivationdisplacementitis, a disease for which I have not yet been prescribed a cure!

>>>WARNING: EXTREME SELF-PITYING TO FOLLOW<<<

Lets start from the very beginning (I hear it's a very good place to start).... *are you singing it in your head? haha* The Spring and Summer terms have flown by in a dizzy haze (you'll have to excuse my efforts to reach the daily adjective quota)... Thought I had the second year pretty much sussed-> I would do the work... I would be great... I would be marked generously followed by a smug hand-shaking session with Jan Weddup... then I would proceed to third year with a cherry on top. Yeah well it didn't hurt to dream.

Fact is, my fundamental flaw (that would be the motivation...itis....thing), the same juicy disease I was unlucky to be inflicted with last year (for those of you lucky to read the gold that was my first year PDP essay - high five!), seems to have returned with a vengance in the 2nd year intent on devourering my degree whole.

Today was the real eye-opener, I went to the training day for next years Welcome Crew (that's right... ask me to write a script and you're stuffed - ask me to subject myself to 60hrs stressful volunteer fresher-herding and I'm there quicker than you can say "personalised Welcome Crew t-shirts!"). Anyway, I was there doing the old icebreakers and group challenges and during one particularly enlightening session... analysing my social style. Now if I'm honest I had done this before but for the sake of writing a half-decent blog with a point I'll pretend this was all new ground, and to be fair I had forgotten a lot of it anyway. So basically the deal is that you make selections out of groups of word based on which words you think best describe you and your behaviour, stuff like "futuristic", "independent", "sociable" and so on, and in the end you are able to work out your particular social style from a choice of "Analytical", "Driver", "Amiable" and "Expressive". Long story short (ish), is that my score came out very predominantly expressive, to which I let out a woop of joy... jumped on the table... and proceeded to sing at the top of my lung about how I was the most creative person/loon in the room *possible slight embellishment*. As anyone who takes a so-called "Mickey Mouse" degree will tell you; creativity is key.

***NEW PARAGRAPH JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT***
So I thought "great, I'm creative... that'll come in handy". But then I saw it, the root of all evil... the score in my "Driver" column! "Drivers" are people who are highly motivated, task-oriented achievers, and my score for that section was only 2. So that explains it, the reason my degree is giving me so much of a headache is because I'm chock-a-block full of ideas but with no desire to actually write any of them down, and although I'm making light of it it's a pretty serious problem for someone with a hefty workload such as ours. On the bright side, if I had to choose, I'd rather be creative than driven. I'm pretty sure of a couple of scriptwriters who I'd bet good money are pretty much "driver" through-and-through, and you know what...? Their scripts suck. Really, I'm not just sayin that, sometimes I read them and I'm bored beyond all comprehension. The problem is is that, without putting to egotistical a point on it, I'm not reaching my full potential here. Not even close. You read the first page of my script and I'll cry if you're not impressed... read the last page and you'll think it's been written by an entirely different, slightly "special" person! Simply because, and here is my confession.... I rushed it. Left it 'til the last minute until the "fear" sets in, not because I like my blood pressure to go off the charts and be struck down with mega panic migraines, but because I seem to have self-imposed writers block until the final days before a deadline approaches. And you know what, incase anyone reads this thinking I've got it pretty good cramming all my years work into about 10 solid days over an entire year, I just want you to know that it is possibly the most exhausting and frustrating existance known to students which does sod all for your self-esteem and sleep patterns... and often I wish my mummy and daddy could've made me a "driver" all those 20 years ago (21 next week for those who want to buy me pressies ;-) )

So, here be the plan batman.... next year.... living with 3 of the most highly strung and overly-motivated people I've ever met. If they can't get me on the straight and narrow... no-one can!

...and then I guess it'll be back to Tesco, yahoo!

Over and out my lovelies, kudos for sticking through the self loathing!

Sian x

What can only be described as guilt...

Yesterday, rather self-riteously, I declared war on the world of blogging. Call me arrogant and stubborn if you will (not to my face if you can help it), but I was determined to expose this PDP blogging exercise for the charade I truly believed it was.

Today, however, I have had a change of heart. Please take a few moments to recover from the shock...
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done? Good.
Anyway, the truth is that is the past 24 hours my damned insatiable curiosity has had the better of me. I couldn't help but have a sneaky peak at the blogs of my fellow Scriptwriting elite and I am going to have to admit that they are pretty good. This is when it occured to me... perhaps PDP really does have a purpose.
If you were to ask any member of the "regime" what this was, you would probably get your head lopped off for being so bold as to question their methods of (ahem) teaching. This is all about "reflecting" and "enhancing" and "expressing" and... you know what? I HATE hippy, dancing-around-the-actual-point, make-you-feel-like-a-moron-because-you-don't-get-it, management-speak. Not hate like I hate brussel sprouts. Not even hate like I hate Westlife*. I'm talking spider-hating hate now guys (and that's a pretty terrifying phobia of mine to say the least!).

So I'm going to lay it all out on the table for my legion of faithful readers (that's a metaphorical table for those of you who are socially inept)... I'm no longer here because I have to be.

Gasp!

I have decided that what started only yesterday as a God-forsaken chore that I would protest until my deathbed could be turned into something I'm actually quite fond of. Heck, it's probably my favourite thing in life second, perhaps third, to Take That and Baileys! It is COMPETITION. There are few activities that please me as much as the whole-hearted attempt to prove to someone that I am better than them at something! (It's a character flaw, I'm sure you have one too).

AND TO MY CHALLENGE: I will make my blog the BEST of all the PDP blogs (starting from the next post of course - this is just exposition). I say "will" because I'm a pessimist and pessimists love the irony of pretending to be optimists. Plus, you know, I'm pretty awesome and likely to pull it out of the bag (again, a metaphorical bag).

With a new goal to aim for there is no doubt you will find me a more enthusiastic (and hopefully less rambling) blogger henceforth. And the other PDP bloggers? Well, watch out!

TTFN
Sian x x x

(please allow me to apologise for the excessive use of brackets within this post)

* Apologies to all Pestlife enthusiasts, but they really are crap. Watch Take That squash them in February when their singles go head-to-head!

I don't know why you're here, after all YOU typed this address into your browser... so I take no responsibilty for your inevitable disappointment. Either you're Marian Mayer (Hi Marian) and are checking up on me, in which case can you at least be happy that I've written something? Or you could be one of the random strangers who has nothing better to do with their life than to read the ramblings of someone you've never met, in which case you have my heartfelt sympathy (seriously now, go rent a movie.... or Take That live @ Manchester - it's awesome).

Eventually this will be a blog that "reflects my learning". If you give a damn (and you must if you're still reading this tosh.... aww, that's kinda sweet!), I'm a second year Scriptwriting student at Bournemouth University, and what I can only describe as "the regime" have ordered (at gunpoint), that we write a blog.... You know what, I can't even explain why we're doing this so I'm going to quit whilst I'm ahead.

Anyway, you can look forward to so insightful comments on my degree (and probably my crazy social life if you're lucky) and all that jazz when I can find the time, and this will be my first comment... I don't have the time!!!! Well, I do have a little time but Christmas is coming, I've got an awfully large bottle of Baileys (with caramel) next to me and actual coursework to do when motivation strikes... so 'til next time, cheerio!