Hello
again!
I know it’s
been absolute ages, but after finishing exams I thought I’d have time to update
the blog… guess I was wrong.
Like I did
for last semester, I will be publishing a series of posts about my final
semester at Bath as an undergraduate (I cannot believe my four years are over
already!). Again, they will be split by theme and you’ll get a nice little
summary of all the fun (and stressful) stuff that I got up to over the past six
or seven odd months. Enjoy!
MY MODULES
I quite
enjoyed my second semester modules. Concerning the language side of things,
they were quite similar to the first semester, only changing the style of text
for the “grammar” parts of the units. As expected, I really enjoyed translation
and Enrico’s speaking lessons were really interesting although at 9am on a
Thursday I have to admit I missed a few and had to catch up with the Friday
ones… In regards to German, I gave it up as I didn’t really have enough time to
attend the lessons (and thank God I did because I was struggling to do
everything, especially towards the last few weeks). So no more German, but I
did go to Berlin during intersemester break with Megan and clumsily put my
skills into practice. You can read all about that HERE .
My second
semester content modules were pretty interesting.
·
‘Language,
Power & Society’ offered really varied content on language linked to issues
of identity, gender, hierarchy, international institutions… Each lecture was on
a different topic by a different lecturer so we had quite a lot to take in but
the variety made it quite useful as everybody had a topic they felt more
passionate about. I particularly enjoyed learning about the imperialism of the
English language (how it has become the “superlanguage” in today’s day and age)
and had to give a presentation on the promotion of Welsh in Wales, something I
never thought I’d be learning about… I also had the chance to write an exam on
how Canarian Spanish differs from standard Spanish. That was pretty cool as I
never thought I’d be writing about my mother tongue during my degree!
·
‘Les
avant-gardes du 20eme siècle’. This was an interesting one. There were only six of us in the class. And
it clashed with fencing training (so, another excuse not to train… Apparently constant
rehearsals wasn’t a good enough reason). Because of the strikes and the snow (I
will get more into detail later), the content was a bit all over the place but
essentially we learnt about Dada and Surrealism. I focused on Marcel Duchamp
and René Magritte for my assignments, which seemed like a great idea at the
start but ended up being very
challenging topics… I still enjoyed it though; I do love art!
·
‘Applied
Translation Studies’ (for Italian). Here’s to my first proper theory module on
translation and let me tell you, oh boy was it dense. We had to read about
loads of theories of translation in order to apply them to the texts we were given
and write commentaries on our translations. Strangely, I turned out to be
better at the commentary than the translation itself… Although some theories
were quite hard to grasp, I really enjoyed the module and learning about how
different people explain and try to structure the process of translating. If
you are taking the MLES degree at Bath and like languages, I’d definitely
recommend this module!
As I briefly
mentioned, there were a load of UCU strikes this past semester, which impacted
us massively. You can read more about
it here: https://www.thesubath.com/campaigns/ucustrike/ At a glance, senior management
issued a new pension scheme proposal nation-wide which would’ve involved cuts
in pay and pensions for many professors and so teachers and staff went on
strike nationally. In Bath, they called from 2 to 5 days of strike a week for 4
or 5 weeks, which in my case meant that we lost a lot of contact hours and thus
had no access to the content of the modules. This was quite frustrating given
as language students most of our work relies on regular language seminars and
constant feedback. However, I completely backed our teachers and, on the whole,
there was a widespread feel of empathy and support towards them. Students
joined the strikes and demonstrations too. Frustratingly though, it mainly
impacted PoLIS (language and politics faculty), barely affecting any other
faculties at university and the days
that we did have class, it so happened that the Beast from the East made its
appearance from the 1st to the 4th of March and then
again about two weeks later, which meant cancelled lessons…
Snow days caused
havoc: university closed, no lessons (yet again), no food at the supermarkets,
buses weren’t running,… We were in the middle of Made in Dagenham rehearsals
running quite short on time before the show and those had to be cancelled or
shifted around too for safety reasons. You’d think a country as cold as England
would be ready for snow… Although to be fair, the first day that snow was
expected, it barely stuck so when it did start falling hard it was quite a
shock. Personally, I just hibernated at home until the snow melted down. I
attempted to make my way to Oldfield for rehearsals and seriously slipped in my
attempt so by the time I got to Kingsmead Square I gave up on my quest and came
back home… Bath was beautiful in the snow, but my room was absolutely freezing. The old windows let literal
snow come in through the cracks and my storage heater heating was virtually
non-existent, so I had to make do with loads of layers and an emergency
convector heater from ASDA… I did survive though! What doesn’t kill you makes
you stronger, right?
As teachers
tried to update Moodle for us to keep up with work, we sent out complaint
emails all around, supported the picket lines and overall panicked about
assessments. It became quite frustrating (but necessary) to go to University to
do some independent work and try to keep on top of the workload. Unfortunately,
with due dates shifted, untaught content and looming deadlines, this became
really hard to do. In retrospect, I think I handled it pretty well in
comparison to other people, but it was hard to keep track of what work had to
be done without regular lessons. Fortunately, the hours in the library and
tandem sessions sort of helped. A new assistant teacher for Italian, Marta,
came for a few months and Megan and I met her regularly in 4W to speak some
Italian and help each other out as due to the strikes she had loads of free
time. She came from Siena which was amazing and we got along really well. She
even came to watch some of my BUSMS shows and we met up for dinner in town a
few times, so that was amazing! Hopefully we’ll pay her a visit sometime in the
future!
On the
other hand, once the strike was fortunately called off after negotiations, we
had a general meeting with the head of department and other people from the
teaching boards to discuss how to mitigate the impact of the strikes. After a
lot of complaining and deliberating, they decided to push back due dates for
assignments, meaning that I fortunately had a bit of extra time to finish my
essays before handing them in.
Towards the
end of the semester it all became a bit stressful due to exams and making up
for the lost time. I decided not to go back home for Easter. I was feeling
super tired and ended up having some blood tests done and finding out I had to
supplement iron and B12 (I’ve become pescatarian and I am trying to reduce the
animal products I consume, which also means I have to be mindful to supplement
accordingly). But despite feeling under the weather I forced myself to go up to
the library every day during the first week of the break (a library which was
eerily empty) and work for hours straight to finish my assignments (that I’d
pushed back because of Made in Dagenham rehearsals and show week). I was quite
proud of myself when I managed to finish all of it before treating myself to a
short solo trip to Athens (more on that HERE).
A similar
situation occurred towards the end of the semester, when oral exams piled up
with Encore rehearsals and working on assignments, meaning that I pretty much
spent the last two weeks of revision and exam time in the finalist study room
in 1WN with the pals (Library is a no-go during exam season if you desperately
need a power socket). It was a nice solution because I could come and go as I
pleased and I always had a socket and
a space. Quite depressing due to the lack of sunlight in such good weather, but
a few lunch and study breaks by the lake with Megan and Simon helped out and
somehow I managed to finish all my assignments and exams on time plus sit my assessment and interview day
for the Interpreting and Translating MA in Bath – but more on that soon!
This was a
long post, but hopefully it made for an interesting read. Stay tuned for more
on musicals, fencing and general socialising!
Zoe x
Snapchat: zoeamma
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.