And the best thing? It's all positive news.
So, my first real piece of news is to do with Mother's day, last Sunday. I had bought my Mum a card the day before and I knew that I wanted to go and give it to her personally, since I wouldn't be seeing her otherwise. In addition, I wanted to buy her some flowers.
I text Gary, asking if he knew whether my Mum would be in his because I was planning on coming down and surprising her with flowers, but not to tell her that I was. He text back, saying she was so I got ready, only then my Mum text me as well, pretty much straight after, asking if I was coming down. Way to keep a secret Gary! Gary himself was away in London.
I decided not to reply to my Mum's text though, in the hopes that maybe he had said something that sounded like I was coming down, but nothing definite and by not replying to her text, it meant that I could still surprise her.
Once in town, I walked to the florist's. I don't even know anything about flowers so I just asked the owner for a little help and she gave me some suggestions. I picked some, got them wrapped and stuff and then walked to Gary's.
On my way there, I noticed something I've never noticed before, since it's not often I carry flowers around - Girls look. I found it pretty amusing. I got so many looks from girls. Well, I didn't, but the flowers did! I knew girls liked flowers, but still, it was fun seeing them look my way.
In order to get into Gary's apartment complex, you need a key and I knew that I'd have to call up to where my Mum was and that would spoil the surprise. Luckily however, there were two people coming out of the door, just as I arrived so I managed to slip inside.
The lift in the complex is strange. Gary's apartment is on the first floor so of course, I pressed button 1 in the lift. The doors closed and I waited for them to open again on the first floor. I waited like two minutes, only to realise that the lift wasn't even moving! Confused, I pressed floor 2 instead and the lift finally moved. I got out on floor 2 and walked back down the stairs to get to floor 1, only I ended up back on the ground floor! Very confusing. The lift thinks that the first floor means ground floor for some reason and second floor is first floor. What's the point in that?
I found Gary's apartment and knocked, making sure to hide the flowers from the peephole if she looked. When she opened it, I showed her the flowers and she looked shocked, but in a good way. She said they were lovely and thanked me for them a few times. I like giving presents and stuff.
She asked me to put them in a vase so I did and then she put them in the living room. You can see a pic of them here.
She said that a little later, she was meeting up with Paul, one of her friends, but before that, did I want to go for a meal so I said yes. She got ready and we went for a meal together. It was nice. She said that she was really happy that I had come and seen her and she was really happy with the flowers. She said that she had enjoyed going out with me for the meal too.
After the meal, we then went to meet Paul in a pub and he bought me a drink. I didn't stay long; not exactly my ideal place to have a drink in when I'm probably the only one under 45!
I gave my Mum a hug and left after she thanked me for the flowers again.
It was a really nice day.
Wednesday, it was my University interview at Bolton, which was easily the best interview I've had so far.
A girl called Lorraine took my Mum and I. She works for Gary apparantly. It only took about an hour to get there and we arrived early. The first thing all three of us noticed though was the fact that the University looked, well, pretty damn shit. It looked like a run down college.
Worse still was the fact that there wasn't even a reception or none that we could find. Just somewhere to actually wait. Instead, we went to the canteen. I already knew that this was most certainly not the place for me.
In all of the other interviews I've been to, someone - usually the tutor themselves has met me at reception, welcomed me and escorted me to where the interview would take place. Not this time. I had to knock on the door of an office and ask for directions to the class.
Luckily, I managed to find the place ok and there were two other people waiting there. My interview was supposedly at 11:40am and it was 11:35am so I was confident that I would be next. I was very, very mistaken.
The tutor's name was Jack, although I only knew that because I heard another tutor call him it. He didn't bother to introduce himself.
He said that they were running quite late with the interviews so what he was going to do was get us all in at the same time and tell us a bit about the course as a group, rather than individually.
He invited us into what looked like an office. A messy office. Scattered about were dirty cups and glasses and plenty of paperwork all over the place. Towards the front of the office, there were two red couches, which is where we sat. We ended up being in there for like, an hour and he didn't really sell the course that much for me. He was saying what they did on the course and I was thinking "I've heard better from other places".
After we had been told about the course, he then asked us to wait outside, while he interviewed one of us. I was shocked. He wanted to do the interview IN the office. The office doesn't even have a fucking table to lay work out on!
By now, it was 12:40pm and I was well aware of the fact that my Mum and Lorraine had been sitting in the canteen for an hour, waiting for me. I had told them that I'd only be 20 minutes, but how wrong I was.
Thankfully, I was the second person to be interviewed. The first thing I noticed upon reentering the office was another tutor was in the room and she was eating her lunch at the desk. Fair enough, it's lunch time and people have to eat, but to conduct an interview in a messy office without so much as a table is pathetic.
Jack left the room for a moment and asked me to lay my work out. I looked around. Where! The only place available was on the couches. It was laughable.
When he came back, I guided him through my work, throwing in comments about who my influences are and whatnot. He asked if I was working from a script, joking, because I was saying all of the right things. That felt good. What kind of annoyed me a little bit is that it felt like quite a rushed interview. Instead of taking the time to look through my work, it felt as if he was just flicking through it, not really paying any attention to it.
After that, I then showed him my website on a CD. Again, he didn't seem very interested, but said that my work was quite advanced.
He then said something that was well, perhaps one of the biggest compliments I've recieved. He actually said that from what he had seen, he would be happy for me to go straight onto the second year of the course immediatly! He said that I would probably be better off on the second year, straight away. That was pretty damn cool.
In addition, both he and the other tutor then wanted to offer me an unconditional offer. For those that don't know, an unconditional offer basically means "We don't care about anything else - we want you no matter what". How cool is that?
Unfortunately, they didn't end up offering me an unconditional offer because they said my college might get annoyed. They said that if they offer unconditionals to people that it then means that person can just skip the rest of their course and the college wouldn't be happy about that. I felt it was a little unfair really to not give me one based on that, but still, I didn't care. I was very pleased with how much I had impressed them and they were very keen to have me on the course. I was laughing inside of course, because I knew there was no chance in hell that I was going to be giving them �3000 a year to study there when they can't even offer me a table to put my work on.
Still, what a huge compliment to be offered an unconditional offer AND a place on the second year of the course!
I actually declined the second year offer though. As I said to them, I would rather go on the first year of the course because it'd mean that I'd get to produce more work and more importantly, I'd have a better chance of making friends.
I shook both of their hands and they said they hoped to see me in September.
Not likely.
I went back to the canteen (even that didn't impress me, it was crap!) and told my Mum/Lorraine the good news. My Mum was very very thrilled, while Lorraine just kind of looked like she was thinking "...know it all". Maybe I was wrong though. But either way, we soon left, vowing never to return again!
They say that students should always present themselves well at interviews and show the Universities that they're worth having. It works both ways though. Unis need to show students that it's worth them coming there and Bolton University certainly did not! It was pathetic, compared to other Universties I've been to. Very very disappointing. I'm thinking of writing a letter to them telling them they need to improve.
My next and final interview is next week. It's at Northumbria University in Newcastle. It's a big University so I'm guessing it's going to be on par with the likes of Chester and Teeside. I'm looking forward to finally getting the interviews out of the way, although thankfully, for the most part, they've been a breeze.
My final piece of news is something that has yet to happen, but I'm really looking forward to it. I just hope it does happen. I'm meeting a girl. Her name is Hannah and I think she's pretty damn hot. Not only that, but SHE thinks I'M hot. haha! I don't get told that I'm hot. It's weird. She said she really really likes me and I really really like her so who knows what will come of this. I can easily see her being my girlfriend.
So, all in all, I've had some pretty good days over the last two weeks! It's been fun. Hopefully, they're going to continue next week too when I meet Hannah.
Also, my Mum invited me out tonight for a meal with her and Gary so I accepted. We're going somewhere new tonight too so I'm looking forward to it.
What a nice entry!
