On Friday morning I was having a chat with Ally about how little time we have left of term, but was still thankful that I had enough time to do a bit of writing before our last possible meeting with my Dissertation Tutor, David McQueen. At this point Ally pointed out to me that the last date we could have a meeting with our tutor was the 15th! (today). What that meant was that I had to rush home and finish off the tweaks I had been constantly doing to my first chapter as well as arrange a meeting for Monday or Tuesday. I sent him an email with my revised first chapter and a plea for a meeting. He got back to me that afternoon asking if Monday at 4 was OK? I said yes and cracked on with the daunting task of writing 3000 words in 3 days.
On Monday morning, After a weekend of not doing much, apart from writing and the odd break to watch some sport or play some xbox (and a quick drink on Saturday night ;) ) I had finally finished, (and realised I had written almost 5000 words!!!) I sent my second draft in by email and went into uni to grade a project that I had been editing.
Eventually, the meeting came. The first time I went to his office he hadn't finished marking, so we postponed the meeting by a half hour. Second time around we sat down to it. For the first 10 minutes it was one way traffic on his behalf, only interrupted by me trying to fondle with my iPod and asking him if I could record the meeting. He had already said so much that he had to recap for the recording. The general gist of it was:
"Its a shame because your first chapter is very good and this one is only really a draft, if you had come to me 3 weeks earlier with this you could have tightened it into something a lot better, its a shame as you only have 2 days left...."
I was confused at this point because I thought the last days of meetings was the 15th and not the 16th like he had said, so I questioned this to which he replied:
"The last day for imps and scriptwriters is the 16th."At this point I realised that some wires had been crossed. He thought I was an imp or a scriptwriter who's deadline was the 16th, and that's why he was stressing. I was worried because it was the last time we could talk about the dissertation face to face, but was more than comfortable because our deadline is on the 27th of April!!!
"Oh!"he says realising that he has been stressing himself out and slating me for the past 10 minutes,
"That's ok then."After all of this furore, we settled down to a more civilised chat, were he explained the things that I had to do to make a better second chapter, and I asked for a bit of advice for my third, and this time its all recorded (my note taking is abysmal!) so once I get my major edit out of the way it should be all systems go for the dissertation! YAY!
Still got that one issue of a 4,500 word production analysis to go with my Major, but 5000 words in one weekend bodes well I think.
Peace. x
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