Boop

Busy busy busy!

Ish. The audio module is over! Sort of. I have 2 assignments to do but now at least I don't have to sit in classes with no understanding whatsoever.

Last week I got an email through asking me to create a CV and a video to accompany it. And like most people on my course I was a bit apprehensive about having a video of me begging for a job floating around on YouTube. However I have no problem presenting you all with the leftover footage.

Presenting!

The CV Blooper Reel

What I've done

So Monday was just a day sat in the stadium full of admin and no heating whatsoever. Tuesday was an absolute disgrace. I was cautiously optimistic that I was actually absorbing the information and breaking down whatever barrier in my head was stopping me from really understanding audio, Tuesday was just one long horrible day. First we all drove out to the nearest shopping park to get lunch and the people who I went there with drove off and left me there, an hour's walk away from the stadium. Then when I got back it was straight back into audio physics and theory and it was all going fine until the tutor started talking about physical wavelength. I was struggling to get my head around it and everyone else was getting it and making calculations based on it and I couldn't understand how. Out of 80 people, when asked if everyone understood I was the only person who didn't. And I totally missed the next section on harmonics because I was trying not to cry.

I had a sort of dismal revelation at the same time. I really wanted someone to comfort me at the time. I was miserable with it, and I was sat in a room full of people I don't really know that well and I've lost contact with most of my school/college friends, the rest of which are distributed across the country at university somewhere. So I didn't get a hug and I realised I have to man up. Which is crap. I want a hug. I like hugs.

Two days have passed and really focussing, sitting right at the front and asking a question every five minutes and getting dirty looks and very loud huffing noises from the rest of my class has actually allowed me to understand the parts of audio I didn't understand a bit better. I have a tentative grasp on it. We'll see if it holds tomorrow when I have six hours of dynamics, effects and a lecture on microphones (?!) when it gets all complicated again.

I was grumbling to my step-dad about how much I'm struggling with this part of the course, and he's laid out the fact that I set myself ridiculously high standards to work to. In my first assignment I got 70% and was gutted. Turns out that's a First, and I still think that I could have done better. And I'm beating myself up because I don't fully understand what I'm being told about audio, something I have no interest in going into anyway. But I really need to know. It's £5995 a year to be there, it would be stupid (I think) to write off an entire subject.

I don't think I'm doing the university thing properly. I just don't have it in me to go out, go mental and walk around with a traffic cone on my head. I have assignments, I have deadlines. And I want to do well because that's pretty much what I do.

We'll see what tomorrow brings. I'm back at work for the first time in six weeks tomorrow night. I can't wait to get back to lighting bands again. Something that comes naturally!

Oh nooooo...

Hello. My name is Nicole and I am 20-and-three-quarters years old.

And I don't want to go to school (err... university) tomorrow.

I am a lighting person. Give me a stage and I will light it up beautifully. Or I will try to. But tomorrow is the first day of a 4-week module on audio. And I can't stand audio. Even though I've studied it for years, I dont get it. I can have it spoon fed to me and I still can't wrap my mind around it, and it frustrates me no end. I find the whole thing stressful and upsetting.  I had a bit of hope that this time round it would be easier because they're starting from scratch but I had a nine-hour class on audio mixing software last week and I had to sneak off for a cheeky cigarette afterwards, I was that aggravated. And that was just one day.

I'm already miserable with it. My books arrived for this module the other day and just scanning through, with everything all broken down and explained,  made no sense in my head.  It feels like usually my brain is a sponge for information and currently it just feels like a rock.

I haven't been this edgy about going to an educational establishment since the days of 12 word spelling tests.

B ig
E lephants
C an't
A lways
U se
S mall
E xits

Yeah I can spell.

Accio Butterbeer

I went for a wander (a 5-hour coach journey) down to London for an 'inspiration day' with uni and we ended up at the Harry Potter studio tour.  And it was fantastic!  Even as a backstage technical person seeing the scaffolding holding up the other side of the walls in the great hall didn't spoil anything for me.  There's a picture of me and Voldemort circulating Facebook somewhere.

I also tried Butterbeer.  That did ruin it for me. It was nasty stuff. My poor insides will never be the same.

And I got wondering.  The studio was used to film parts of Harry Potter and there are homes all around.  It's no big secret area and yet there were never people storming the gates. Then I realised it is just like the industrial estate where I go to uni. All kinds of mad stuff happens in the arena with all kinds of people and the people in the town/village next to the estate have no idea. A bunch of students come crawling out of the estate and down to the town on a lunchtime. Very sinister.

Diddums.

I was skulking around the nether and I found an old post I wrote on my other blog which I thought I had deleted.

This post is six years old but still as relevant as ever.

"To whom it may concern,

I will love you at some point. I will. And you’ll love me too. We’ll be happy.

I can’t wait to meet you.

I’ll love you.
Nicole."

Short but sweet.

Bless, 14-year-old me, you had a few rare moments of insight.

Then they took you away.

Happy new year!

I didn't bother posting a new year's resolution this year because last year's is still applicable. And also I spent new year sat in with college friends watching Mean Girls and freaking myself out with statements like "What if you're new year's resolution was to break your new year's resolution?"

Think about it. Trippy, no? Almost stoner talk, that.

I'm checking in to document a strange change I have noticed in the past few weeks. I don't really recognise myself anymore. I dress well, my makeup is done before I leave the house, my nails aren't chewed, my hair is pink, I'm addicted to Sherlock, I like a One Direction song (a mortal sin), I've taken up sketching and drawing everything, I go to the gym four times a week, I'm used to early mornings and I feel genuinely content and happy for the first time in nearly two years.

This is madness!

I don't recognise this girl. She seems okay, she's shiny new and not very sure of what the hell is happening.

Oh well.

University is the best thing that has every happened to me. People ask how the degree is going and I can only tell them with a big grin that I have never felt more like I'm in the right place and the right time then right now. And my timing is fairly awful. Only yesterday I found out that an assignment I thought was due in for next Tuesday isn't in till the middle of February. Relief! I have no idea what to do with myself now.

My current module is all about event design, and it gives me a lot of creative license. I haven't done much design since college and I really enjoyed it then so this is just peachy. The week after next we are going to Harry Potter World in London for an inspiration day before developing our own event concept. I'm equal parts excited to share my idea and apprehensive about sharing what I think is an absolute GOLDMINE of an idea. But then I would say that... ;-)

Also I get to ride a broomstick. What's not to love?

Boom.

So it turns out I wasn't able to get any pictures of the pyrotehnics lesson because having anything electrical (e.g. my phone) near explosives is a REALLY TERRIBLE IDEA.

But it has been an interesting week so far.

On Monday I spent the day swinging ten feet from the ground in the warehouse learning to work at height without dying whilst massive explosions were going off in the arena next door.

On Tuesday I had a class on industry roles with Justin Hawkins' pony. And the class kept squabbling over which role in the live events industry was more important which led to a picture of me sacked out on the floor in despair.

 

 

And then to Wednesday!! Into the arena, pyrotechnics training. I was grumbling to one of the managers at one of the music venues I work at that it would be SO MUCH BETTER if he'd let me blow stuff up on stage but after having to sit through videos showing the worst-case scenerio I no longer want to. Also the venue is pretty much rum-soaked so I suspect it would go up like a Christmas pudding.

 

My area is mostly lighting and visual effects and pyrotechnics is something I'd quite like to go into further. Researching is a bit tricky because unfortunately (in this case) you can't google how to assemble explosives without an alarm going off somewhere.

 

At the end of the day we had to present our own pyrotechnics show but again, no phones so I don't have a video of that but after that the person teaching us put a small show together for us to watch and film and I caught that on video.

 

 

And today I'm having a well-earned day off (still at work tonight though, boooooo) before a whole day of health and safety tomorrow. Yay.