I'm a student again!

Yesterday I got two things in the mail : a thin envelope from QTAC* and a big package from UQ. I feel like I'm 17 again!

I've been offered a place in the Bachelor of Arts course at the University of Queensland. Very exciting. And my excitment is only very slightly diminshed by the fact that I already have a BA from UQ. What could be better than a second BA?

I'm amused by the small changes that have happened in enrolment procedures in the last 13.5 years. The course code is still the same : 707001. The hecs/help guide looks similar. Still the usual demands to get the enrolment paperwork in on time (a challenge for me). The handbook which used to cost $13 is now on a free cd. Still running the same seminars on planning your BA which I didn't go to in 1993 and won't go to now.

The main difference is in the subject offerings. I can no longer take several courses in medieval literature or do a whole subject on one particular writer. Cost cutting. There are more generalist subjects on offer - overview type stuff. Boring.

But there is one type of subject that was not in the UQ BA of a decade ago. The type of subject that attracts students by pandering to their egos. Undergraduate creative writing. Traditionally in the BA, a student would learn to read. And then they would be encouraged (forced) to read some more. And then they would learn to write about what they have read in an intelligent, thoughtful kind of a way. Should undergrads be allowed to do creative writing? Or more to the point, should an academic be forced to read their attempts?

Anyway, this semester I will be enrolling in WRIT2100 - a poetry writing subject (with a little bit of analysis thrown in to make it more bearable for the lecturer.) I feel I have now lost any credibility I might have had in fighting for a traditional arts course.

* Qld Tertiary Admissions Centre