Question: How long does it take to turn a bright-eyed, enthusiastic, mature-student Bangor history undergraduate into an overwhelmed, dazed and confused wreck?
Answer: About two weeks, but about the same period to bounce back!
In Freshers’ Week I recall being given so much information that I couldn’t recall anything reliably. Subsequently, I learned to survive by becoming part of a group of seven friends, mostly mature students living in towns and villages between Penygroes and Mold. The whole semester I managed to have one of the group to follow to the appropriate seminar room or lecture theatre as I could never remember which room to go to.
I wrestled with complex mathematical calculations of how on earth you could do 200 hours reading for each module, plus lectures, seminars, essays and exams. I was either going to have to give up eating (good idea in my case) or sleep. The next complication is the area-based student nightmare of finding a parking space convenient for the University. You either develop your parking skills for small spaces or settle for a space on Anglesey and walk.
Many things puzzled me in that first semester. Why are lecture theatres either like saunas or cold-stores? How do you get books out of the library for your essays before every title on your list has been taken? Where is a book with the catchy location RC178.A1 C63 2002 to be found and is The Stack some Bangor University pop group?
As the semester wore on those dreaded deadline essays take over your life. We’d all been terrified by the stories of summary executions for the culprits of the heinous crime of plagiarism and of floggings for those who use Wikipedia. In this terrifying atmosphere our word processors agonisingly slowly racked up the word-count to those magical 2000 words. Then suddenly, you’ve somehow reached 2400 and are cutting frantically.
The University email system intrigues me. The bizarrely named Horde turned out to be nothing to do with nomadic Mongol tribes but an email client about as friendly as Simon Cowell at a Jedward tribute dinner. It’s no wonder that students prefer to use their Hotmail accounts. Blackboard, the Uni’s central facility for PowerPoints, manuals and other module information, however, is a really helpful and easy to use resource. Sadly, not all the lecturers think so, with the sad result several don’t use it. In that context, I can’t believe how often I’m asked for my user name and password in the Uni’s computer system. You’d think that once you are in a secure area, once would do. But it won’t. I’ve put in mine hundreds and hundreds of times. Also, should I worry that every time I log in on my laptop to the Bangor web site, my computer screams at me that the Uni has an invalid security certificate?
I got to about week six before I realised that I had to set my pace and my tasks. I know, in the words of Basil Fawlty, that’s a statement of the bleedin’ obvious but that led to much midnight oil to catch up. I couldn’t have managed without the gang, especially Neil, who gave me copies of notes which meant I got essays in on time.
Exams, however, were a different matter. On Saturday 9th January, two days before the start of the exam fortnight, I was busy reading about Treweryn and Penyberth when I became of someone calling. I went outside to investigate and discovered my wife Christine had fallen and, as it turned out, broken her leg in several places. She was getting furious with Rhosyn, our lovely Welsh Collie, who kept bringing her a ball to throw. Clearly, she needed to see some Lassie films! I called an ambulance that couldn’t get near our house on the snow (we’re 1028 feet on a mountain-side and we were snowed in) so Christine had a dramatic trip in an air ambulance to Ysbyty Gwynedd. It played havoc with my exam schedule and I missed three exams but my tutor and the other lecturers could not have been more sympathetic and helpful.
She’s home now and I have dusted off old cooking skills as well as clothes washing, ironing and cleaning skills as Christine can’t weight bear for three months. Again, the Uni has helped with a car-park pass so I can zoom in and out of lectures and seminars without searching for a parking spot and friends are recording lectures I can’t make.
I attended Serendipity 2 with some trepidation after my disappointing experience last time when I was ignored by students who thought I was too old to be an undergrad. This time it was a delightful event – less crowded, more friendly and easier to speak with people. I stopped to chat at the Chaplaincy stand and one of the Chaplains introduced me to the Catholic Chaplain who amazed me by asking after Christine and told me they knew of her accident and had been praying.
That event summed-up my Bangor experience. I’ve found the people at Bangor University to be a supportive family through my wobbles – my six close friends, my personal tutor, the lecturers, and several other History students. Now, solve the car-parking problem long-term and I’ll be a happy Bangor bunny (until the next essay deadline).
This article flowed in an hour to 892 words. Why can’t essays be that easy?
So I’ve completed my first week of lectures: four one-hour lectures and a two-hour Welsh language class. That class took place on Wednesday moring despite my timetable saying Wednesday afternoon. I got an email Monday night to tell me of the change which clashed with seminars of course! To my surprise, the magic computer sorted the clash quickly and I’m in a Welsh class of three students – great way to learn a language but nowhere to hide!
