Last Friday however, the limp on my foot decided to flare up again, which meant that I was limping all weekend and all the way up until and including yesterday which made walking to college extremely hard.
Imagine putting a large pebble in your shoe and then walking around. Now imagine that you have a large bruise on the heel of your right foot that's incredibly painful to walk on. Now walk on it.
That's what it's like when the lump on my foot isn't dormant.
The last time this happened however, I decided to teach myself some pain management and even though it felt like agony to do so, I decided to try and walk on it now and then so that I'd get used to the pain and it'd make my pain threshold a little higher. I found that by doing this, the lump actually went back to its dormant state within ten days which I was very relieved about. When it came back this time, I knew that I should do the same and because I have, it's now almost completely pain free after less than a week.
Back to college yesterday though and as I said it was very painful walking up there. I met Jamie on the way though and said hi to him. I only stopped for a minute or two because he was with some of his classmates who were waiting for him while he talked to me.
After that I headed to class, where Rob and Dylan were waiting. I said hi to them.
"How was your summer holidays?", Rob asked me.
"Shit.", I replied. "I mean, I know the polite answer is "Ok", but you know, I'm not gonna lie."
A few minutes later and Brian emerged from the staff room and I said hi to him. He let us into the classroom and the first thing that I noticed were iMac G5's. Lots of G5's. It was like Christmas come early.
I sat down at my computer. I had completely forgotten that we were getting new computers this year so it was a complete surprise to walk into the classroom to them. They were so new infact, that there was still some packaging on some of them.
I logged in and took a look around OS X Tiger. The dock made me smile. Every program I could want was on there, including the entire Adobe Creative Suite, Final Cut Pro and Firefox.
I was impressed.
Unfortunately however, we didn't actually get to use the computers. The time spent in the classroom was basically Brian telling us about what the year had in store for us and how he is now our course tutor instead of Bronek. Infact, we don't even have Bronek this year. I'm quite disappointed about that actually because I'm guessing that means that we won't be doing much video work, as that's his speciality.
Apparantly this year also sees the introduction of new ID cards which not only let you into locked doors but also actually clock you in. So, when you swipe your card over the reader, it actually gets sent to a computer and it logs the time when you entered the building. And, if you're more than ten minutes late, you now have to go down to student services, fill out a form, explain why you were late and give a copy of the form to your tutor.
Bureaucracy.
Apparantly it's because whoever monitors the college has decided that punctuality was something the college was lacking. Now, all classrooms are fitted with a clock on the wall. If you're more than ten minutes late, you will not be allowed into the class. I'm not sure if I agree with that really. I hope there is leeway in it.
Unfortunately, I couldn't enroll due to a number of reasons. I have to do it next week instead.
At 2:45pm, everyone was free to go. I don't think there was any real point in coming in really.
The only real important information that I needed to know is that unfortunately, my days in college have changed. I liked my days last term. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Now, they're Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That's incredibly crap. It means I have a shorter weekend! However, since I'm trying to find some sort of bright side to this, I guess you could also say that I now get a day off after every day I'm in college.
I'm looking forward to starting properly on Monday. Our first brief is just four weeks long. That's not a lot of time. The deadline is October 13th. Also, according to Brian, he is going to be very strict about deadlines this year and I'm glad of that. I got really annoyed at the fact that I finished all of my work on time, yet pretty much everyone else didn't and got three or four weeks extra to work on it. That's very unfair. He says that if there's a deadline, then that really is the deadline and he won't be accepting work after it.
Oh, and one other thing is that Ray isn't rejoining the course apparantly. There is a chance that Tom isn't either. At the start of last year, there were 16 people on this course. At the start of this year, there are now just nine.
There's so much to cover this year. I'm worried it's going to be tough. This first project we have to do doesn't sound like it encompasses any of the skills I know I have either which is worrying me. We'll be getting more information on it on Monday.
Time for bed.
