Ellen talks about uni wow!!! (specifically arts/law)

[ellellen]

Woo, great to hear from you!

How's your first week treated you overall?

It's been a pretty nice first week!

All of my lecturers seem to be really friendly, knowledgable, and teach in a style that I find easy to understand, so I think I got pretty lucky this semester!!

Also, the moot problem was released on Thursday. We knew before it was released that the possible areas of law it could cover were criminal law, torts, or contracts law. I took criminal law and torts last year, so I was praying that it would be one of those areas. But, of course, to my dismay, the problem covers contract law (which I am taking this semester and have only had 2 lectures on so far) ha ha ha

So I've been so busy the last couple of days, not just finding cases and legislation to use for the moot, but also trying to learn as much of a whole semester's worth of contracts as I can in only a few days!!!! I'm stressing a bit but I think I'm starting to make some good progress.

I'll update this journal again probably after the second round of the moot is over (Wednesday night) and let everyone know how it went!

Btw, that's a very cromulent Simpsons quote in your signature 

[The Special One]

Law is such a drag but some lecturers can make it interesting.

[Glasses]

It's been a pretty nice first week!

All of my lecturers seem to be really friendly, knowledgable, and teach in a style that I find easy to understand, so I think I got pretty lucky this semester!!

Also, the moot problem was released on Thursday. We knew before it was released that the possible areas of law it could cover were criminal law, torts, or contracts law. I took criminal law and torts last year, so I was praying that it would be one of those areas. But, of course, to my dismay, the problem covers contract law (which I am taking this semester and have only had 2 lectures on so far) ha ha ha

So I've been so busy the last couple of days, not just finding cases and legislation to use for the moot, but also trying to learn as much of a whole semester's worth of contracts as I can in only a few days!!!! I'm stressing a bit but I think I'm starting to make some good progress.

I'll update this journal again probably after the second round of the moot is over (Wednesday night) and let everyone know how it went!

Btw, that's a very cromulent Simpsons quote in your signature 

I'm not actually doing the moot, but when my friends told me the problem was about Contracts I felt like crying for them! If it's any comfort, most non-third years doing double degrees (so a heap of people) will be in the same boat! Best of luck with the moot though!!!!

Who do you have for Prop A and Contract A?

[ellellen]

I'm not actually doing the moot, but when my friends told me the problem was about Contracts I felt like crying for them! If it's any comfort, most non-third years doing double degrees (so a heap of people) will be in the same boat! Best of luck with the moot though!!!!

Who do you have for Prop A and Contract A?

Thanks!

I have Daniel for prop a, and Emmanuel for contracts I think they're both pretty great so far!

[ellellen]

I'll update this journal again probably after the second round of the moot is over (Wednesday night) and let everyone know how it went!

oops

15/4/18

Sorry i haven't posted here in a while! I know everyone was absolutely hanging out so much to know how the moot went !!!
Why haven't I posted in ages? I really don't know. The thought of doing an update just seemed very daunting to me for some reason and I procrastinated for literally a month, oops. Hopefully I will do more regular updates from now on, but no promises.

okay so here's some quick updates:
- the moot went fine. my team scored well but we didn't make it through to finals. we were happy about this because the moot was beginning to take over our lives and we didn't super want to devote all of our time to it for another week.

- so far I've had a couple of assessments this semester. I'm enjoying all of my subjects still and the assessments have all been alright except for.... my property law test! This test was designed to examine the first couple of concepts we'd learnt throughout the semester - 3 questions in 75 minutes, worth 30% of our semester mark. The questions on the test were actually exactly the types of questions I'd anticipated, so I was pretty prepared, but I just found that some aspects of the questions were a bit vague in what they actually wanted us to write, and also there wasn't enough time! For all law exams time is usually quite tight and you need to whizz through all the questions. For end of year exams this hasn't ever been a problem for me, because I always have very comprehensive notes, and just tick off a checklist of what I need to include in my answer. But that's at the enD of the year! At this stage in the semester my notes definitely weren't good enough for this test. I spent a lot of time flipping through my notes looking for names of cases and specific bits of info I wanted to include, and wasted so much time. I finished everything, but it was a rush (I was only halfway through the 2nd question when they said "ten minutes left!" whoOPS. And I realised right after the test was over that I'd definitely made a mistake on one of the questions, but hopefully I still get some marks for it!!!!
It's alright; I know that by the end of the semester I'll have much better notes, so just hoping I didn't mess up this test too badly.

- At the moment I'm struggling with figuring out a topic for my history essay! We need to construct a topic about something to do with social and cultural aspects of the Soviet Union, from 1930 onwards. This is sososo broad, and I've really been at a loss to think of one area that I'd really like to write on. I'm going to go talk to the lecturer this week, and hopefully she can help me out, because I have no clue. I miss first and second year history where they would just give you an essay topic to write on. But third year subjects are designed to prepare you for honours, so you need to come up with your own question to answer. Fun!

- I'm also now participating in this thing called the Law Ambassador Program. It's basically like a group project, where you're in a team of 6 and need to come up with ideas for how to improve the university experience for law students. My group is thinking about trying to find a way to give students more info about possible career pathways that a law degree can be useful for. We are still very near the beginning of our brainstorming, so haven't got a very clear idea of what we're going to do yet.

- This week i have several assignments due:
1. Tomorrow I need to lead the discussion in my property law tutorial on the problem question our class is looking at. This is worth 5% of my participation mark for this subject. Unfortunately, 2 other people in the class are also supposed to be leading the discussion tomorrow, so it's going to be like a battle, with all of us trying to earn our 5% by saying certain points for the question before the others can. IMO the participation aspect of this unit is a little poorly designed !!!!!

2. Tuesday I need to submit a reading response for my history readings for this week. The topic of the readings is the USSR's participation in WWII, so it's pretty interesting! I only need to write 250 words so that will be easy to get done. Worth 5%

3. Tuesday i also need to submit a reading response for film studies, based on this week's readings on the genre of film known as "mumblecore". I'm still not super sure what mumblecore is, but I think it's something to do with actors' use of improvisation, and saying "umm" and things like that to make a film's dialogue feel more realistic and like natural conversation. 500 words, worth 10%

4. On Friday we have our Contracts group assignment due. My group has worked really well and pretty much finished ours. I got really lucky with the group I was allocated because everyone has put in a lot of effort and nobody's slacked off at all. I have friends who haven't even started the assignment yet because their groups haven't been able to meet up at all, so I am really happy with my group! Worth 20%

So that's my uni life at the moment. Hopefully I will give another update soon!!!

[ellellen]

24/4/18

I finally picked a topic for my history essay! I'm going to write about the Siege of Leningrad during WWII and focus specifically on the experiences of women and children. This is because there are sooo many primary sources from diaries kept by women during this time, so I have a lot of knowledge to draw from! Also, this essay needs to include reference to at least 15 newspaper articles from the time!!!! 15 articles on top of a reasonable amount of other primary sources AND secondary sources is going to be quite a lot to fit in within 2000 words so I'm a little bit scared! It's not due until June though, so i'm not tooworried yet.

What I'm more worried about is my film essay which is due in 10 days, 2500 words, and I haven't started writing yet I did choose a topic for it today, though, so I know that I'm going to be writing about how web series and streaming services have affected television in recent years. I'm not sure if I'll be able to write 2500 on that but we'll see!

Other than those essays, I don't really have many more assignments before exams, so I really need to start preparing for those soon too.