A Relatively Easy Coursework Season To Survive

So it seems to have become a thing for me to write about Coursework Season everytime it comes around again. Previously I wrote ‘Student Life - Surviving Coursework Season’ about Spring semester 2017 and I also wrote ‘Surviving Coursework Season – In Canada!’ about Fall 2017.

This semester I had a bit of a different approach to managing coursework season. Ultimately it has meant that I’ve manged to avoid the worst of the stress that usually sets in as a result of coursework season, anything that helps me avoid stress has to be good for me.

I always write out all my deadlines on a calendar at the start of the semester so that I know what I have due when. This is a great way to get a good idea of when you need to start working on an assignment. It’s also very satisfying to cross off an assignment with a Sharpie after it’s been submitted.

Because of writing my deadlines on my calendar I realised that March was going to be a pretty heavy month for me. I’ve had something due literally every week this month and most of them have been quite lengthy assignments. It was obvious that I wouldn’t be able to go through them all at my usual pace.

Back in January I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do for Reading Week, knowing March was going to be busy I decided that I was going to get started on my coursework in advance. I also knew back then that I was going to Toronto ComiCon and I did not want to be worrying about having to do work over that weekend which further pushed me to get started in advance. 

In Canada most classes seem to have less weekly reading and more assignments. Back in the UK I was definitely doing more reading but on the other hand I was doing nowhere near the same amount of assignments. I think there’s something that I like about both ways off teaching, but I do know it’s going to be slightly strange for me to adjust back into the UK system for next semester.

So basically that’s how being smugly organised has given me a relatively easy coursework season to survive this semester.

Turn Left Moments

Recently I went to Toronto ComiCon, in my blog post about it I wrote that in “some ways this feels like a ‘Turn Left’ moment for me”. In this post I want to explore further what I meant by that.

In 2008 there was a Doctor Who episode called Turn Left. The episode explored what would have happened if Donna Nobel had turned right instead of left and never met the Doctor, the answer was that things would have worked out a lot worse for everyone. In my opinion it is a seriously underrated episode, very powerful and very emotional.

The basic concept of the episode is essentially that a single moment can change things for a person, that concept has resonated with me for years. Maybe not everyone would agree but I think that there are moments in our lives that change things for us. I sort of think of these as Turn Left moments.

So what are some of these moments for me? Well…

2005 – Watching Rose

·         On Saturday 26th March the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who aired, I watched it, and 13 years later I am still a Whovian. I honestly cannot stress enough what an enormous impact Doctor Who has had on me. Genuinely it has changed my life.

2012 – Starting to Write Fan Fiction

·         I suspect most people might be a little bit embarrassed to admit that they used to write Fan Fiction, I’m not. Writing Fan Fic was the first time I ever really wrote something for myself, and the first time I wrote for fun. Essentially because I was a Fan Fic writer I discovered that not only do I enjoy writing but I’m also pretty good at it. I wouldn’t have chosen the degree I am doing if I hadn’t found that love of writing through my Fan Fic experience.

2012 – Going to Disneyland Paris for the First Time

·         I think a lot of people assume that I have been a massive Disney fan for years and I grew up with the movies I love today. That’s not actually the case. It was a trip to Disneyland Paris in 2012 that really awoke my love of Disney. It is because of that trip that I am Disnerd. This trip also influenced me in another way in that it was responsible for me beginning to get into keeping a scrapbook.

2013 – Grant Gustin is the Flash

·         I bet a lot of people assume I have been a superhero fan for years and years but actually, as with Disney, it is a lot more recently than you’d probably expect. Really it all begun with Grant Gustin being cast as Barry Allen in The Flash. I was already a big fan of Grant from his role on Glee and so when he was cast as the Flash I knew I had to watch the series to see more of him. But getting into the series had another consequence, I got seriously into superheroes!

2016 – I Bought a Tiana Doll

·        Just one doll isn’t going to make that big a difference is it? I was so wrong! One Saturday in February 2016 I bought a Tiana doll, as you probably know Tiana is my favourite Disney Princess. A few months later I decided maybe I should buy dolls of the other Disney Princesses that I really love, but only a few of them. From there it just grew and grew. My love of dolls also developed into making clothes for them and rooms for them to be displayed in. As of March 2018 I currently own 38 dolls!

2018 – Toronto ComiCon?

·         Maybe it’s too early to say right now, but Toronto ComiCon sort of feels like it’s the next of these Turn Left moments in my life. I had such a good time and now I really want to go to more conventions. I also want to get more into cosplaying because it was a lot of fun.

I Had The Best Time At Toronto ComiCon

From Friday to Sunday I was at Toronto ComiCon, I was there for the full three days and I had a fantastic time.

I was not entirely sure what to expect in all honesty, I knew that it was a relatively big convention and that was sort of it. As cliché as it sounds, it sort of felt like coming home. I am a massive geek – we all know that – and getting to spend the weekend with other geeks was a great experience. There’s just such a positive energy and a great vibe from everyone that’s sort of hard to properly describe, but I hadn’t really ever felt anything like that before, these are my people.

I’m sure people are wondering who I got to meet/see. I saw Megan Follows (Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables), John Wesley Shipp (Henry Allen/Jay Garrick from The Flash), and Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi from Star Trek). All of them were great people and I am definitely glad I saw their panels.

I bought quite a lot of stuff whilst I was there, but I was prepared to buy quite a bit. Might do a haul to show what I bought.

Toronto ComiCon reperesents two firsts for me. It was the first really big convention I have ever been to. It was also the first time I have ever really properly cosplayed. I cosplayed Nightwing on Friday, Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) on Saturday, and 90s Superboy on Sunday. Probably out of the three of them I enjoyed being Nightwing the most.

In some ways this feels like a ‘Turn Left’ moment for me. One of those moments where because of one choice things change for me, like going to Disneyland Paris in 2012, Grant Gustin being cast as the Flash in 2013, or buying a Tiana doll in 2016. I sort of feel like things might be about to change for me because of Toronto ComiCon. I really want to go to big conventions again and I want to get into cosplay.

If it’s not obvious from the amount of positive adjectives I’ve been using throughout this post I really enjoyed myself! I had a great weekend. The time flew by and on Sunday afternoon I was sad to be leaving Toronto. I love going to Toronto, it’s a great city, so I am truly glad that I had such a fantastic convention experience in a city that I love so deeply.

About to Turn 21

I can’t quite believe that it’s nearly my birthday again. How has it come around again so quickly?

Of course the biggest thing to happen to me since I turned 20 is going on my Year Abroad to Canada. It has been an incredible experience, I have loved things like going to Toronto and Thanksgiving. Though it turns out that snow gets really boring after a while. I think probably the biggest challenge I have had to face from my Year Abroad was getting everything I needed to enter the country ready in time. Also the actual experience of flying out to Canada on my own was a bit unnerving. However having managed to do that I think it’s given me even more confidence in my resilience.

Around a year ago I wrote a blog post called ‘I am nearly 20!’ Looking back at me saying what I was going to do on my birthday made me smile, I wrote that we were going to be watching Frozen at Disney Soc but what I didn’t know then was that my friends were going to surprise me and bring out a birthday cake for me. Also looking back at that post I definitely realise that I made some really strong friendships last year and I’m looking forward to seeing those people again when I’m back in England later this year (if you’re reading this you know who you are!).

It’s hard not to think about going on exchange when I think about being 20 as it has definitely been the most significant thing that has happened to me over the past year. However I think another important thing that has happened to me is that my dedication to learning has increased. Very early on with being a student I realised that I genuinely love learning but I think that has just increased even more within the last year. I am still unsure of what I want to do with my future but I feel like I want to continue being a scholar for as long as I possibly can.

I don’t really know what being 21 is going to bring for me. However whatever challenges lie ahead I am ready to face with resilience and optimism.

A Wrinkle In Time Review

I saw A Wrinkle In Time last night, I would say that it was an entertaining but uneven movie. Here’s my review, as always beware of potential spoilers.

A Wrinkle In Time tells the story of Meg teaming up with a trio of dimension travelling celestial beings to attempt to find her father who has become lost in space. Along the way there’s life lessons about self-acceptance and a battle against ‘the darkness’. This movie definitely has some good moments but ultimately it just feels a little bit lacklustre. I’ve never read the book that the film is based on so I can’t comment on how accurate an adaptation the movie was. However there were definitely some scenes that I think probably worked a lot stronger in prose than on screen.

Oprah absolutely stole every scene she was in. Whenever she spoke you completely paid attention to her. Her character, Mrs Which, actually reminded me a lot of Guinan from Star Trek, I mean that as a very positive thing. Personally I love the idea that both Oprah and Whoopi Goldberg are celestial being protecting the balance of the universe.

There were also very strong performances from Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling as Mrs Whatsit and Mrs Who respectively. Considering how out there both of these characters are I think Witherspoon and Kaling did a strong job at convincingly bringing them to live.

I feel like if A Wrinkle In Time had maybe been in production for a couple of extra months then probably a lot of the problems would have been overcome. The plot is definitely quite uneven and there’s a feeling that the characters are sort of just going from moment to moment. There needed to be more establishing information for the characters. For example there’s a scene toward the end of the movie where Meg has to accept her faults, it’s a good scene but ultimately a lot of the emotional impact of the moment is lost as the audience hadn’t really been shown what her faults were earlier on.

The tone also feels quite off, at times A Wrinkle In Time feels like it wants to be a proper sci-fi film but then other elements fall a lot more firmly into the realm of fantasy. Sci-fi and fantasy can sometimes be combined very successfully and not all sci-fi needs to rely on hard science fact (just look at Doctor Who!) but here it felt just too uneven to work. At times the film tries to be weird, with trippy psychedelic visuals but again that falls flat. There are some very impressive shots and good cinematography but it never goes quite far enough. I feel like that gets to the main problem of A Wrinkle In Time, it just never goes quite far enough. If they’d dared to just be a bit bolder in one of these elements then I think the rest would have fallen into place.

Overall Disney’s latest live action film is a sci-fi fantasy adventure that has some good elements but just didn’t quite deliver. I don’t regret going to see A Wrinkle In Time at the cinema but I won’t be buying the DVD, however if it shows up on TV or Netflix I might watch it again.

My Haul – A Good Start to March

In the first few days of this month I have found some interesting items, so I thought I would do a Haul of them.

Snoopy is at McDonalds! I have collected Snoopy figures for years and years and years. So I was excited to see McDonalds in North America are doing a Snoopy Happy Meal whilst I am here in Canada. So far I have Snoopy as a baseball player, an astronaut, and a detective, none of which I have seen versions of in the UK! I really want to get the pirate Snoopy.

I’ve mentioned before I collect Pez dispensers. In Dollarama I tracked down Jasmine who is one of the most elusive Disney Princess Pez.

Disney Happy Places series 2 hit the shelves of Walmart and I bought the Rapunzel starter pack. For the amount you get (not all items are shown) the starter pack is good value compared the blind boxes, it also includes larger items like cabinets. My favourite items in the pack are the lamp, sewing machine and mechanical pencil sharpener.

Another Dollarama find was a TsumTsum blind bag. I got a Toy Story alien! It comes with a little rocket to display it in and the rocket has the claw attached.

In my February Haul I mentioned I had found Young Justice comics in Dollarama for $3 each. In a different branch of Dollarama I found another three volumes. I love the cover art of Kid Flash on the volume in the middle.

Finally, in my Black Panther review I talked about how I thought Shuri was awesome. In Walmart I found the Shuri action figure and I knew I had to get. I think this is a good figure of her and I particularly like how her gauntlets are removable.

All of these items have been found in the first few days of this months and so I think it has been a good start to March.

Black Panther Review

I know I’m a little late to see it, but yesterday evening I watched Black Panther. Even before the movie had been released there was already a lot being said online about Black Panther, certainly what this film represents in terms of race has been heavily talked about. Given how much discourse is already out there I’m keeping my review a little more focused to avoid repeating what has already been written. As usual with my reviews I aim to be spoiler free but there could be some parts that might be considered spoilers.

I really enjoyed Black Panther. I think it could possibly become one of my all-time favourite superhero movies – though I would need to see it again before deciding that for certain. I always enjoy superhero movies that have sub-plots that operate on another level beyond just the action, that’s part of why I love Captain America: The Winter Soldier. There was also the right amount of humour in Black Panther, I know some people are critical of the amount of humour in Marvel movies but I think this time there was the right balance.

Another thing that makes Black Panther unique in the superhero genre is that it is a very aesthetically pleasing movie. The scenery is beautiful. The design of the city is impressive. Clearly a lot of time and effort went into designing Wakanda and that clearly showed on screen.

Nakia, Okoye, Shuri, Ramonda, and Ayo – Black Panther had come seriously cool female characters in it. I would go as far as to say that in terms of representation of women this is the best Marvel so far. I also noticed that Wakanda seems to be a pretty much gender equal society. It really is encouraging to see how far Marvel have come in terms of female characters.

I think the best character from Black Panther has to be Shuri. I’ve seen a lot of people saying how cool she is and I definitely agree with that. Shuri is smart, funny, badass and just really likeable – whenever she was onscreen she stole the scene. Maybe I am a little biased as I do tend to like quick-witted, intelligent, capable princesses but I really thought Shuri was great. I would say Shuri perhaps feels like the Princess Leia of the 2010s – two of the hair styles she has were definitely inspired by Leia! I hope we get to see Shuri return in many future Marvel movies.

One complaint I would say is that perhaps at times Black Panther was a little too reliant upon the events of Captain America: Civil War. I’d imagine if you go into Black Panther without having seen that first then you might be a little bit lost. Personally I prefer superhero movies to be standalone, but that said the connections between the two did not feel like they were arbitrarily forced in.

Also in the post-credits scene my absolute favourite Marvel character makes a cameo appearance!

It’s Been a Good Week to Be a Disnerd

Usually I don’t do news roundup posts, this is just not the type of blog. But there’s been some rather exciting Disney news over the past week that I wanted to do a post sharing my reaction.

© Disney

Tuesday – Disneyland Paris is Getting Bigger

After I’d had breakfast on Tuesday morning I checked my Twitter and saw an announcement from Disney. Disneyland Paris (my Disney theme park) is getting a major new expansion for the Disney Studios Park. The new stuff looks so amazing: there’s a new Toy Story ride, and then a Star Wars land, a Marvel land and a Frozen land! There’s not really been much in the way of specific details announced just yet but the concept art looks stunning. I honestly was not expecting Disneyland Paris to be getting anything like this or anything on this scale in the near future. The thought that the world of Frozen is coming to Disneyland Paris is just super exciting to me.

Wednesday – Wreck it Ralph 2 and Happy Meals

The trailer for Wreck It Ralph 2 dropped on Wednesday. I think it looks promising and there were definitely some moments in the trailer that made me laugh. Disney and Pixar are masters at showing just enough in a trailer and not giving away too much of the plot and this continues that pattern. (Although I was slightly disappointed we didn’t get a glimpse at any of the cameoing characters but I wasn’t really expecting that just yet.)

For a Disney collector there was also an interesting announcement, Disney have renewed their licencing deal with McDonalds, which previously ended back in 2006. The old Happy Meal toys were really nice (such as Pocahontas and Meeko pictured above), I’m interested to see what is coming next. Hopefully they can do a Disney Princess collection to release Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, Elsa and Anna!

Thursday – Elsa

Nothing has been 100% confirmed but it has been hinted that Elsa might be getting a girlfriend in Frozen 2! #GiveElsaAGirlfriend has been a pretty popular hashtag but honestly I never thought it would actually get listened to. Viewers have already got to know Elsa from the first movie and the short films so if it turned out that she was a lesbian then Disney would have a character who was not defined by their sexuality. I really hope Disney actually have the guts to make such a popular character gay because that would be absolutely incredible LGBT representation. If this does turn out to be true I think I just got even more obsessed with Frozen!

Friday – Black Panther

I’m going to see Black Panther – the latest Marvel movie – this evening. I was a little unsure at first but I have decided that I want to see it. There will probably be a review on my blog at somepoint.