The Obligatory Back To School Post

I'm suffering from a highly acute case of Monday blues, back to school Monday night blues because Monday is my free day, so I start my week on a Tuesday! The good thing is that I can procrastinate my Monday blues to Tuesday, but the bad thing is that I've a four day week. I've five modules, four on EU modules on four different days, thank you very much FASS.

I'm now almost officially an honours year student, to make that officially a full one, I need Ruby to faster get my SEP credits transferred without anymore hitches. *cross fingers* Looking at the list of modules I'll be taking this semester, I'm proud to say at the very little bit excited. Seminar style modules are now 3 hours long, which means no tutorials, no need to ballot, no need to come back to school on another godforsaken day. But that also means that I'm going to sit in class until my butt pain. The 3 hour German classes I previously took was a practice, and in those classes, time went by very slowly, and by the one and a half hour mark I was dying to stop myself from fidgeting in my seat. This semester I've three of those classes. Wish me luck! And I've another three hour lecture for my cross fac module, wish me more luck.

Okay, a little run through on my modules this semester.


Introduction to Cybercrime
I suck at cross faculty modules, so I pick them as with what is easy and what other people are doing, and so this was a module that stood out. Another plus is that there is no examinations for this module. Previous semesters saw me doing only three to four exams each semester thanks to my German modules being non-examinable, hence I'm quite used to not having too many exams, so I needed a non-examinable module. I'm contemplating on S/Uing it, but because I paid so much bid points for it, I don't have much left, and next semester I might end up with a difficult module which I need to S/U, so I'm not so sure if I should S/U this module. I'm not aiming for too high a score, perhaps a B would be sufficient.

It's cool that I'm doing a cross faculty module with someone I know if not I'd hate going for classes and absolutely abhor stepping into the science faculty. The only downside to doing this module is that it's at 6-9pm which means that I've a 6 hour break in between my classes on Wednesdays. I'm thinking if I should put my tutorial there to narrow it to a four hour break and/or put my duty slots there to cut another three hours away, or I should just go ahead with the six hour break and perhaps hit Vivocity for a mid class movie session. hahaha~ I've until Friday to think about this.

Europe of the Dictators
This is the module I have been waiting for for years, six semesters to be exact. Finally! I can't wait to frolick with Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler and Franco. I think this is really one hot module because there are 90 students in this cohort. I wonder how we are all going to fit into that tiny AS1 seminar room suited to hold 60 students. Another reason why I can't wait for this module to commence is to finally meet Dr Kelly in person. I've been hearing a lot of good things about him, and was so kind to help me validate my SEP credits because of some problem with the change in manpower, the person who was in charge when it was my time used to be Prof Clancey, blah blah, and Dr Kelly's specialty is European History, just the kind of stuff I enjoy.

I know whether or not someone was going to take this module with me, I still have to take this module because it's been my calling since six semesters ago. But because this is also the kind of module I know people would take, I'm not surprised to see quite a number of familiar faces in this class. I really hope I get to learn some serious stuff for this module~ Another amazing thing is that the textbook Dr Kelly chose for this module is a book by one of my favourite historians, Stephen J Lee. This gives me an excuse to purchase the book!

Historiography and Historial Method
This is like the only module out of all that I'm going into class quite reluctantly. Seriously, if there were enough EU modules going around, I wouldn't want to do this module, it just sounds so dry and boring and difficult, even though I really hope it won't be the case. But really, historiography isn't my cup if tea. In the field of history, I like learning about stories, stories of great men, stories of great triumphs and/or downfalls. I have pictures of grandeur in my head and histo just plants an image of a shaggy haired historian in my head, something like Eric Hobsbawn. *shudders* As much as I enjoy his writings, I think he looks really ugly, there's no way I want to turn out to look anything remotely like him.

Another thing about this class is the idea of being stuck in a class filled with history majors and they are all so zai, and I'll look so bad comparatively.

Special Paper in Modern European History
The title is misleading because the scope Prof Murfett chose is Britain, contemporary Britain. Yes, two things wrong about it, anything from 1945 is not called modern history because modern history is 1978-1945, another thing is that I don't consider Britain as part of Europe, Europe to me is always continental Europe. But well, after doing Victorian Great Britain during my SEP, this module is quite a good continuation of my study of the Great Britain, or the United Kingdom, or whatever you want to call that little piece of island off the coast of continental Europe.

And it's great to do a module with Prof Murfett once again. He's one good teacher, and a funny bloke, even though his allegiences in football is quite disturbing, but anyway, I'm quite looking forward to the module already.

Last week we had a briefing session for the module, and I unfortunately had the dishonour of arriving to class late, like half and hour late, and I was laughed at. boo~ I cannot be late for the module again. I need to be up early, at least early enough to reach and have enough time to get a cup of coffee from Coffee Club Xpress. grr... I hate 9am classes, and this semester I have two of them. super sian...

European Foreign Policy
This is the other 9am class. Actually I'm quite apprehensive about this module because it's a PS module, and I haven't been doing that many PS modules. The other module that's linked to this module, EU and ASEAN, was the module which I hadn't complete during the semester I left for SEP. I really need to put in a lot of effort to be on par with those muggerish, competitive PS student. grr...

This is also another module I am taking alone, but luckily a scan through the list shows a couple of familiar names so I hope it won't be too bad on me. Yup, bring on the coffee and I think I'm sort of, kind of, somewhat ready for school already.

I also can't wait for next semester's modules, they are quite interesting, and cross my fingers that I get to do ISM then it'd be really fun next semester.