This article was supposed to be one paragraph in the "Editorial" section of my user page but it got a bit... big.

Big Mad Mr Media Guru?

If you know Mr T in real life, you might catch him unawares and spot him wearing an ungainly grin upon his face. This is because he did "pretty good" in his A-levels, enabling him to do Interactive Media Production¹ at Bournemouth University. Now he's not 100% sure, but this is probably the second bestest thing to ever happen to him, in terms of Mr T-to-course-content compatibility.

So what exactly will this course entail? Well, it supposedly lets Mr T do just about all the things he wants to and enjoys doing "extra-curricular, like". No! Not selling his body for crack - that's never been proven. According to the gubbins used to entice Mr T into applying in the first place,

"Graduates from the degree usually have little difficulty in finding employment. Approximately 90% find a job within six months of graduation. Most will work in multimedia production. Others make their careers in television, video, audio, web design or production management."

Facilites include:

• a multi-media studio
• digital video recording and editing equipment
• digital audio recording and editing equipment
• post-production facilities
• graphics
• text design

Using all these funky things to his advantage, Mr T hopes to learn skills in web design, video and sound editing and production, managing production budgets, and arty design-style things, as well as "other stuff" too. The only thing that the course doesn't seem to cover is print journalism - which is a shame, as it's something Mr T quite fancies doing. It's probably not "audio-visual" enough, even if words do go in via your eyeholes.

You can find out more about the course here - but not all that much more.

So what now, Mr T?

Yes, what indeed. As you can tell from my third-person-o-waffle above, the course sounds really good. The only thing that concerns me, apart from the fact that I'm going to have try and live on tax-free air and not much else for the next three years, is where the hell I'm going to live. I doubt I'll have got into the Univerity Accomodation, although I've applied for the Student Village which is marginally less popular than the free-internet-access-in-each-room 'posho' Halls of Residence, I didn't send the form off straight away and there's only 900 places for around 2000 students! This means I could be living, Alan Partridge style, in a Hotel², or above a nightclub in a multi-story car park (no joke!) which sounds like the worst place they could possibly find to put student accomodation, except perhaps in a giant net kept in raw sewage. Oh, or I could be shoved in the atic/basement/cupboard of some family so desperate for money and/or the taste of human flesh that they resort to letting ugly students fester in their property. Mmm!

Right now I'm in a state of nervous excitement. So much to sort out, so much to look forward to... so much to leave behind. There's so much I want to be involved with at University, from student magazines and drama groups, to being in bands, to continuing (or at this rate, launching) Consumed, to at least attending a CU and or Church, to having a go at working in a radio station or making films (since Bournemouth has such fantastic facilities)... and so on!

I do feel rather sad at having to leave all my friends behind. Well, not all, as by happy chance (though not for him when he got his results, I suspect) my good mate Smiffy has managed to bluff his way onto a Computing course at Bournemouth, and another friend Caz has got onto the same course as me! So I won't be All Alone (unless they both decide to deny they know me at all...). I hope I can find people with similar musical tastes who want to be in bands, and that I will have drums to play (if not my own), and that there will be some other non-drinkers there to hang out with when the others are off on brainwrong nightbends (drinking and clubbing. *sigh*).

For the time being I'm trying to get prepared... open a Student Bank Account, finding out about some groovy-sounding Guardian Student Vouchers and looking into buying a laptop with some of the money I'm supposedly earning with this "job" of mine. The question is: can I buy a laptop AND eat for the rest of the year?

The future's looking... very interesting.