Did you have yourself a merry little Christmas?

I did.

In fact I would go so far as to say it’s the best Christmas I’ve had in years. Christmas Eve was spent watching Santa Claus: The Movie and Die Hard with the other half and then my dad picked us up Christmas morning and took us round to his and my mum’s for Christmas dinner. We stayed over there and then went to the in-law’s for Boxing Day. We spent the time generally full of food and alcohol but it was brilliant. And now I’m back to the normal routine for a couple of days before New Year’s Eve which we’re spending in the flat just the two of us as it’s our anniversary. Then the whole process starts again.

The PhD is going slowly, mainly due to the fact that we moved house again at the beginning of December. Never move house twice in one year – it’s bad for your mental health! But we’re settled now and the new flat is fab so we won’t be moving again for some time. This afternoon I plan to restart the PhD with a bang so I should be back on track by the new year.

Anyways, just a quick post to say I hope everyone had a merry Christmas. See you in the new year! x

Huzzah!

The draft of Chapter One is finished!

This means that, while I will get some feedback on it soon, I need not touch it again until I’m redrafting and piecing everything together. I’m free of authorship for three whole years! Now I’m moving on to Chapter Two which is going to be looking at postmodernism, franchises and remakes. Exciting stuff I’m sure you’ll agree ;-)

Also on the slate are two conference proposals and some guest lectures at the university. This, of course, means I will once again be ridiculously busy. Quite honestly, it’s a good job I moved in with my boyfriend because if I hadn’t I fear we’d have never seen each other this year!

On a different topic, I watched the first episode of the new BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma last night. It seems to be shaping up quite well and I like the way they cleared up a lot of the complicated backstory in the first few minutes. Johnny Lee Miller also seems to make a very good Mr Knightley although I thought he seemed a bit too chipper at first (I like my Mr Knightleys to be like Mark Strong). He seemed to improve towards the end of the episode though and I look forward to the second.

Going to see Julie & Julia this week with Mum. Really excited for it although maybe not quite as excited as I am for Saw VI which is out later in the month. The other half liked the original but hated II and III and only liked IV a little bit. Thankfully, I persuaded him to watch V the other day and he loved it so he’s agreed to see VI with me!

So far it’s shaping up to be a good October… x

It’s been a while…

… But I’m back!

Had a helluva few months. After moving into the flat I found out I was being made redundant from my part-time job. Everything went on hold while I job-hunted like crazy, fell behind with my PhD work and generally freaked out.

But now I’m pleased to report that I’ve got a new job which I start training for tomorrow and I’m back on track with PhD work. In fact I’m so back on track that I’m due to finish my draft of chapter one by Sunday night – yay! And then it’s a quick conference proposal and then on to chapter two which I’m really looking forward to.

But as I sit here typing while sipping fruit tea and generally turning into a hippy with a penchant for mad tights (I got the most fantastic pair yesterday!) I can’t help but reflect on how badly I’ve been discriminated against by potential employers based on my student status.

All the jobs I’ve applied for are for around 10 hours per week. That’s enough money for me to live on providing I only buy Asda Smart Price goods and it gives me plenty of time to work on my PhD. Now, I would imagine that most people applying for 10 hours per week are in much the same situation as myself. I doubt many ambitious career men and women just want that small amount of work per week. So if you’re advertising a job of that nature you would expect the applicants to be doing something else with the other 158 hours of the week, wouldn’t you? Apparently not. The amount of times I’ve heard over the last few weeks that I’m not flexible enough because of my studies is obscene. It seems employers want the best of both worlds. They only want you in work for 10 hours but the rest of the time they want you sitting at home doing nothing but waiting to be in work again. It’s ridiculous.

And now the CBI want to up tuition fees for students? With no student-friendly jobs out there you might as well kiss goodbye to universities full stop because only the super-rich will end up being able to go.

Employers should stop getting so hung up on flexibility. If you are advertising a 10 hour job then its unfair to expect that it is all that employee does with their life.

Rant over.