Finally, Finally finished my annotated bibliography for Press & Society! It has been tormenting me for like two weeks now. I also finally came up with a title and topic for the essay. The title is Read All About It? Analyzing Press Coverage of the AFL in Sydney and well I think the topic is pretty self-explanatory. I am going to be doing a media discourse analysis comparing AFL coverage in Sydney and Melbourne and then examining why coverage is lacking in Sydney.

I am now finished 50% of my assessment for Press & Society, the other 50% is the essay itself.

Now all I have to do to finish off this round of assessment is complete my annotated bibliography for New Media and Society then I can take a break from university assessment for about 10 days before starting my final essay for sociology which will be How is the experience in Australia today of either young women or young men becoming adult today different from that of their grandmothers or grandfathers?

My aim for this semester is finish all my work without needing extensions which I am entitled to under my IEP but I feel so much more accomplished if I don't need to use them.

Tonight I plan on collapsing on my bed, watching some X-files and maybe writing a little fanfiction or making the 30 Rock quote icon set I've been thinking about all week.

I just used the university wireless network to download season three of Once and Again in its entirety.

Good thing it got something done because I haven't written so much as a single word of either of the annotated bibliographies I'm supposed to be writing.

Or come up with titles/theses for the two term papers I'm doing the annotated bibliographies for. At least I know what I'm writing about; the one for Press and Society is on sports journalism in Australia and wether current sports journalism practices are still relevant in Australia and the other for New Media and Society is on the way women participate in fandom with a case study on Sports Night fandom.

I do have three hours to annotate the two books (which I have read) I have to return though so time is still on my side.

Also, totally unrelated but in need of pointing out: XF2 TRAILER!!!

I'll be babbling about it as soon as I'm done here, so probably sometime early tomorrow morning by the time I get home.

Which was initially because I was completely wiped after the first half of the first assignment period at uni (In which I read three 40 page journal articles and wrote a 1,500 word piece of assessment based on them for sociology and performed data synethesis and analysis of three 45 minute long interviews I designed and administered then wrote and delievered a 20 miniute presentation based on my findings for media studies) and didn't want to write or read anything, journal entries or otherwise.

I basically sat around the house, played The Sims 2 (I just got the vacation expansion pack) and watched a hell of a lot of TV (which I will discuss below.)

It turned out pretty awesomely for me because I was able to steer clear of all the drama that has been going down in livejournal over the last week (i.e. the "strike") and instead rediscover some old fandoms and discover new ones. Mainly through actually watching TV something I don't do a lot of lately.

I watched all nine episodes of Private Practice, which I have watched once before but mostly as I was going to sleep at night (I'm one of those people WHO CANNOT FALL ASLEEP without noise) so I missed a lot of things. I love this show, I think I actually prefer it to Grey's Anatomy, mainly because it is less focused on the medicine so I don't get enraged everytime they Shonda and Co. manage to make simple mistakes. I also prefer the characters on this show (the George/Izzie thing on Grey's and Izzie's character in general post Denny are driving me up the wall,) I have like three ships, Cooper/Violet, Addison/Pete and Sam/Naomi and I of course love that it is Addison focused, because Addie wins.

( Private Practice 1.01-1.09 - Random Musings )

I'm going through a X-Files renaissance at the moment, watching season one again from the very beginning really paying attention as opposed to using it as comforting background noise. The X-files was my first fandom 15 years ago (I watched it with my mum.) I wrote my first piece of fanfiction in 1993 (when I was 11 1/2,) it was a 500 (or so) word MSR that involved thier first kiss (and I'm fairly sure was horiffically bad,) I carried it around on a floppy disk (I feel old just writing the words floppy disk) and eventually posted it to alt.tv.xfiles when I finally got the internet in high school (I searched and I can't find it, it probably is still there somewhere.)

The first season is so brilliant. Some of the best episodes of the whole series are season one episodes. Beyond The Sea is still, at least to me one of the best episodes of any TV show ever.

I am so hyped for the movie now, it comes out the week after my birthday, w00t.

( House 4.11 Frozen and House 4.12 Don't Ever Change )

Ludachristmas is the best episode of 30 Rock to date, it was so good I wanted to take it out behind the middle school and get it pregnant, Secrets and lies was pretty good too.

Well that pretty much brings me up to yesterday (when I started writing this entry) and I think this is probably lone enough not so I'll leave it there but you can expect some spamming from me over the next few days as I ease back into things:-)

One last thing, new layout! stare_me_outstare_me_outstare_me_outstare_me_outstare_me_outstare_me_outstare_me_outstare_me_out

Firstly, I have wireless so I'm writing this update from my laptop and I was able to update to OS X 10.5.2 from 10.5.0 so I'll be able to access the wireless network at university now, yay! I also have Skype on my laptop so I can talk to my parents for nothing.

Secondly I wrote 1,401 words of sociology assessment today and for once in my life got something finished on time.

Thirdly I'm finished my audience interviews/synthesis of data for my Press and Society presentation on Tuesday now all I have to do is write it up/create a powerpoint presentation.

Fourthly and on the slightly less positive side I went for a bike ride yesterday and now my legs/butt are killing me. I haven't riden in about 3.5 years since I was living on campus at UWS and some prick stole my last bike and my muscles are going to take a while to get used to the idea of riding again.

Fifthly, WOULD THIS HEAT PLEASE GO AWAY, I AM SO SICK OF BEING HOT AND SWEATY AND GENERALLY FEELING ICKY.

Lastly, if you are wondering where I have been lately I think points two and three explain it pretty well.

I'm finally really settling into my new version of "regular" life after moving and having worked odd hours for several weeks, having worked at all was rather odd actually. The last time I had a paid job was 2003, the year I turnned 21, the magic age at which students in Australia who do not complete their highschooling can apply to university, which is pretty much where I have been ever since.

My job has finished for the year (I don't know if I actually mentioned what I was doing, I was working for the university I attend first helping out with enrolling first year students and reenrolling 2nd and 3rd year students and then staffing O Week, it is a very varied role involving everything from data entry to hospitality work and employers love to see it on resumes) but I got offered another job at the universty working for CONTACT (Student Services Centre) doing data entry, office admin, reception work and customer service. It is only four hours/week but has a lot of perks, the least of which is that I don't have to report it to Centrelink.

This is great because a) the people I'll be working with are good company and the workplace is almost entirely drama free and b) I desperately need the work experience, my jobs to date have been in childcare and I have had one job as a lab tech. Not exactly the most relavent work history for someone planning on eventually (Pretty much three years from today without honours or four years from today with honours and guess who wants to do honours?) graduating with a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Sociology (Policy Studies) and Media Studies now is it?

University has started again for the year and I only have classes two days/week this year. The university decided to make my life as difficult as possible by cancelling one of my subjects 48 hours before classes were due to begin meaning that I had to restructure my timetable, which ended up being way less difficult than it could have been and do a formal Variation of Enrollment first thing on the first Monday of semester which took three damn hours and relsuted in me missing my first lecture of the year.

However I'm actually kinda glad that that happened because I think I'm going to like Press and Society even more than I would have liked Radio Theory and History and Press and Society is a unit more geared torwards getting a job at the end of my degree as opposed to Radio Theory and History which was a subject I chose purely to indulge my personal interest in the area.

So after all is said and done my timetable looks like this: -

Monday
11am-12pm: Press and Society lecture
1pm-3pm: Introduction to Sociology: Self and Community lecture
3pm-4pm: Introduction to Sociology: Self and Community tutorial

Tuesday
9am-12pm: New Media and Society seminar
3pm-5pm: Press and Society tutorial

Which looks like not much class time and it isn't but the amount of reading and out of class work I have to do is insane, my sociology professor expects us to read four chapters of a textbook by next Monday, my Press and Society lecturer gave us seven different readings including two book chapters and my New Media and Society professor gave us a reasonable amount of reading but about 400 assessment tasks. So I am going to be busy.

Well that basically outlines why I haven't been around:-)

I have way more to say but it is going to have to wait because it is 11:30pm, I have to finish my readings before be and be up at 6am.