Yeah, well the Hammer Horror version was better so SCREW YOU!

As I am now back at college my blog posts will probably be based around what is going there and my attempt to get to uni as well as the work I am doing in my classes, friendships etc  Going to college this year as a fully out Transgender woman my experiences with college and meeting people is noticeably a lot different to what it was last year. Hopefully people will find this interesting.

This week I had to give a presentation for literary studies based around either Mary Shelley and her knowledge of the social climate of the day and how she integrated that in to her novel Frankenstein or her knowledge of the science of the day and how that affected the writing of the novel. When this was given to me it sounded rather interesting, as a big fan of the novel and my interest in Shelley and the social circles she travelled in I had been eagerly learning of her and her life. But this presentation was different, I had been expecting to have to compose a detailed essay on this topic, I picked science, who wouldn’t want to do an essay based Galvinism and experiments conducted upon the dead using electricity? It is just so positively fascinating to me! But despite this being LITERARY studies we had to give a presentation based around a poster showing the information, I could not wrap my head around this, and all around the class their were cries of “when did this become art class?” My sentiments exactly.  I could not and still cannot see what this had to with literary studies or how we could really get to grips with the source topic and give an in depth analysis worthy of such a woman and her greatest work.

But due to my personal life still conflicting with my work I forgot all about it *spoke about in one of my previous posts* and had to stay up late working on it. I did something of a poster on Paint and then wrote about 2-3 pages to read out to the class. I thought this was good enough, as surely the poster is secondary to the material I have written myself, as long as it shows through pictures Mary’s life and influences science wise what more can I do really? Well I was wrong. When I got in to class I saw people had gone to town with glue and other materials that when they brought the posters in it seemed more like arts and craft time at my old nursery. Big bright colourful posters filled the room and all of a sudden any literary merit I felt this assignment had went straight out the window. Ten minute presentations were given that no more delved in to the creation of this work than the Hammer Horror Frankenstein brought it to life on the silver screen. Most of them spent more time focusing on the film adaptions than anything else! Something I had failed to do….

By my turn I was feeling rather nervy about my own presentation and asked to do it with the tutor and a few friends, which he didn’t look terribly pleased about. Something that slightly irked me, when I asked that and said I was nervy the whole class turned to face me, because when someone is genuinely nervous the thing you do is turn and stare them down with everyone else right? Even a few people who hadn’t even prepared a presentation and still now haven’t done it stared at me accusingly! But I gave it and my tutor didn’t seem terribly impressed at my poster, I did pass it but he said that my poster should have been better…. I thought content wise it was pretty good but I do not profess to have terribly fantastic artistic skills so what can I do? If I was good at art I would be in an art class not a literary studies one. I just cannot help but feel a little irked about people with less content but better artistic skills than myself getting higher marks. It just does not seem right.

Well that’s my rant over and done with, looking over it now it seems a bit pompous but I really did work hard on it and feel I got cheated due to my lack of artistic, plus I cant see how it’s a viable assignment for my class.