The Longest Film I’ve Ever Seen

I remember how surreal everything felt as the original lockdown approached last March. One day, I went into Winchester to pick up a new inhaler just before I went home, and what struck me was that between leaving campus and being halfway down the high street, I literally didn’t see a single soul. I suppose it was to be expected, since we were all being told to stay home as much as possible, but I’d obviously never known anything like a pandemic in my lifetime, so it was borderline eerie. When I did eventually encounter human life, it was in the form of queues outside the bank or the pharmacy, where people were being admitted on a strict one-in, one-out basis. Their conversation rang out in the open air, such was the emptiness of town, and there was clear anxiety on every face as they waited for their permitted essentials. It was like something out of a disaster film – and at that point, none of us could have really known that we were only at the start of the longest film any of us had ever seen.

Over a year on, the pandemic continues to dominate the news and our lives. According to the Government, however, the end is in sight, and 21 June will bring our collective return to normality, with all remaining restrictions lifted.

Really? Are we really expected to carry on with our lives exactly as they were before coronavirus?

The restrictions and the lockdowns have been hard for us all, but most of us have just done what we’ve needed to do to get through it, because it’s just been the way things are. And whether we like it or not, it’s still very much the way things are – there might be a decline in cases, and an ever-increasing number of people being vaccinated (I was Pfizered for the second time just under three weeks ago), but coronavirus is still well and truly with us. I myself have spent the last three days isolating in my room, thanks to a positive test for one of my flatmates. With that in mind, I’m not sure how I really feel about simply going about my daily business as if nothing ever happened. We’ll still have to take precautions, obviously, but fully opening society doesn’t quite sit right with me. I can’t help worrying that we’ll get complacent and end up right back at square one. I guess only time will tell how it pans out for us all – but I’m not holding my breath for a happy ending just yet…

Mason

One More Yellow Question

Picture the scene – the game is in its closing stages. Seven players started out, and seven are still in contention to win. I have gradually powered my way through Geography, Art and Literature, Science and Nature, Sport and Leisure, and Entertainment. History, the yellow category, is all that stands between myself and glory. Five slices of the cheese wheel are in place, and I just need the sixth. Unfortunately, it’s the same for everyone else – the last slice eludes them all – and the questions aren’t quite falling my way.

This was the climax of the Trivial Pursuit game I played with Lara, Nora, Ryan, Ben, Alysha and Deacon last weekend – socially-distanced, of course. It was possible thanks to the magic of Zoom, and worked an absolute treat. Ryan had the board and pieces in front of him, we decided on our counters, and he rolled the dice and moved them all on our behalf. We played for first place, then second, then third, all the way down to seventh, and there were plenty of laughs throughout. We all miss being on campus together dearly, so we’ve found that meeting online for quizzes and banter has served us very well indeed.

We have another Zoom call pencilled in for tomorrow lunchtime, and I can’t wait. We’re going to give some new games Alysha has suggested a try, too – we all agreed it would do us good to diversify from quizzes every so often. They’re much less complex than Trivial Pursuit, too, involving little more than old-fashioned pen and paper, so they seem rather refreshing in that respect. I’m sure that whatever is different about the games we’re playing, though, one thing will stay the same – the spirit of competition between all of us.

I came third on that day, by the way. The question that clinched it?

‘Which king abdicated the Spanish throne in 2014?’

King Juan Carlos, in case you were wondering.

Mason

The Teams Experience

WordPress seems to have a new layout, so I thought I’d start this post with a nice drop capital (and some white boxes, although those might only be temporary). As it happens, now seems an appropriate time to try something new. In what has seemed like the blink of an eye, the third and final year of my degree has already arrived, and in light of the unprecedented times we’re living in, it’s already proving to be very different to either of the previous two. As I write this, we have completed one full week of lectures, and have experienced the first taste of what we can expect from teaching, at least until Christmas.

It now relies heavily on rotation, and our timetables have been designed to allow us all to be both present in class and remotely via Microsoft Teams. When we’re there in person, we enter, sit at socially-distanced desks around the room and the session proceeds more or less as normal, with us making sure to wipe down our desks before and after using them.

Ours is a course that benefits greatly from face to face interaction (particularly when critiquing work), so it’s a shame that that has been (understandably) reduced, but within every Teams meeting are smaller ‘breakout groups’, which we can enter with two or three other people to share files. I haven’t had much experience of them yet, but I have found them to be a source of the teething troubles tutors and students have been having with the software. In a session last Wednesday I went into one with three people, only two of whom could show what they’d written – the other file was nowhere to be found, even after it had supposedly been uploaded more than once. In addition to that, we only tentatively added comments to one another’s work because we weren’t sure that our edits would be saved, although we eventually discovered that the documents save themselves automatically whenever changes are made, so we left that group with our confidence boosted for the rest of the semester.

Certain people I’ve spoken to have been sceptical of the tutors’ ability to get on top of Teams, but I think they’ll find it easier to get to grips with as the weeks go on. They can only prepare for so much beforehand, after all. On Tuesday last week, in my very first class of the year, three of them had difficulty seeing and hearing each other as they introduced one of my modules, and struggled to adjust to a few of its features, which they’d anticipated in their training over the summer – but everything came together in the end, just as I knew it would. These minor hurdles will be overcome, and the new methods will be second nature to us all. I for one already feel very comfortable, and ready to tackle whatever the next three months bring, just as I always have been.

Mason

When The Well Was Dry

Over the last few days, it’d been looking increasingly likely that June 2020 might become the first month in Third Time Enabled’s short history not to offer any new posts. I don’t know if I can fully attribute the lack of material to the ongoing lockdown situation, but I simply haven’t had anything worthwhile to say for myself. It might partly be because that’s just how life is sometimes. It’s full of fluctuations – there can be plenty or nothing at all to say. Lots of new ideas to share, or none whatsoever. The lack of predictability keeps us on our toes – we never know quite what will or won’t work out. Just think of all the things I’ve said I’ll do on this blog before – how many of them have I actually managed to follow through?

Circumstance can be to blame then, but I probably am too. I’m doing a Creative Writing degree I love wholeheartedly, and yet I haven’t been proactive enough in creating outside of it. Maybe that’s down to simple procrastination, or self-doubt about the quality of my work. Whatever the case, I haven’t been able to take the plunge. Thankfully, though, sheer desperation has driven me to take action, and I’ve been working on two posts simultaneously for a little while now. Since I’ve had little to say about my own life here, I decided to write something new to showcase, and in this instance, poetry seemed appropriate. I’ve been trying to come up with some using a method I’ve used before – progress has stalled, but there’s been progress nevertheless. The same goes for a film review I started two weeks ago. There’s been much typing and deleting, and while I have managed to put some thoughts to paper, I don’t feel particularly close to finishing it. All I can say is that I’ll keep taking the initiative and pushing myself to write – hopefully you’ll have more to see here soon enough, and I’ll have more to add to my personal portfolio.

In addition to that, I’ll be having the first discussion about my final degree project with my tutor tomorrow…

Mason

Deadline Deadlock

The peculiar circumstances we find ourselves living under at the moment have meant that every student at Winchester has been given two separate extensions on their assignments. As I write this now, my nearest deadline is two weeks away, and some of the others are five weeks in the distance. These great voids of time give us a lot of breathing space, for which we’re very grateful, but we’re also swiftly finding that it poses a problem of its own – that of my old nemesis, procrastination. Think about the fact I have a fortnight until my next assignment is due. Then think about how under the lockdown, with very little to do, I could use any of the hours between now and then to get it done. Do you see my problem? There isn’t exactly a huge incentive to press ahead.

I’m certainly not rushing, but even so, I’d say I’m making good progress. I normally say that it’s better to complete work by doing a little bit here and there, and that’s the strategy I’m employing here, so I should be fine as long as I don’t completely take my eye off the ball! The dissertation wheels have now officially started turning too, and yesterday – as far as I’m aware – everyone on each Creative Writing course received an email revealing the identity of their supervisor. I’m pleased that I’ve been assigned someone who has really helped me to achieve good marks before now – and the fact they’re someone I already know in the first place is also reassuring. It looks like this news will bode well for the work that lies ahead. I’m sure not many other people will say this about their dissertations, but with an idea I’m passionate about and support I think will be excellent, I’m actually looking forward to getting started!

Mason

The Isolation Station

A fortnight ago, as the world became increasingly swamped by the coronavirus pandemic, the university abruptly halted all of its face to face teaching, with two weeks of the semester still to go. I understand why, of course, but I still felt a certain emptiness as a result of not being able to see the term through to its end. Several strange and uncertain months now lie ahead before my third year begins, but I’m entering that period working on some of my current assignments on a rather empty campus. I’ve also chosen all of my modules for next year and written my dissertation proposal – there’ll be more on both of those later, no doubt – but I also have even more free time on my hands, as do a lot of us.

Before I came home from Winchester last Wednesday, I didn’t leave my flat or the campus unless it was absolutely necessary, and that policy has obviously continued back in Somerset too. My total screen time has been even higher than it usually is. I’ve watched, chatted, written and played, and as you may have gathered recently, I’ve listened to a lot of music too. I’m still working my way through the list of albums I mentioned before, but I also got bored enough one day to create an isolation-themed playlist on Spotify. To keep the musical thread going in this blog, I thought I’d include a link. My friends seem to like it, and Lara suggested I share it, if only for what I hope will be your listening pleasure. Click here to get started – alternatively, go to Spotify and search for The Isolation Station. We’re living in strange times, so if this playlist puts even the slightest smile on your face, it will have been a worthwhile use of my time. Dig in – there’s plenty to listen to!

Mason