Monthly Archives: September 2009

Right, first off I should offer my apologies for my mini (or maxi) rant in my last post. I really was annoyed though. For the record – if anyone from the STUDENT LOANS COMPANY or SLC happens to be reading this – I still don’t have the stuff I need to be able to square away my loans and actually get some money. Thanks to to lovely Bank of Mum & Dad, however, I’ve been able to settle myself with a computer in my room to allow me to actually, you know, work. That loan’s being called in as soon as the real one comes through.

But let’s move on as that’s not what you want to read/hear about anyway, is it? You want to hear about LIPA and – specifically – how awesome it is. And boy is it.

I’ve now been living in Liverpool for 16 days, which already feels like months. I know Liverpool pretty well now, although I’m still finding decent little short-cuts and cut-throughs to get me places even quicker. I’ve got my walk to uni down to a steady 15 minutes at a sensible pace and I can find just about every shop I want to or need to in town now, too. I’ve also learned that I’m never going to have a problem finding a Tesco. There’s at least 5 within a 15 minute walk of me, either at LIPA or my apartment.

The course is brilliant – a great mix of general knowledge technical and design stuff and more detailed, specific tasks. It is hard work though. All our days begin at 9.30am – because that’s the time professional theatre workers come in, usually – and if we have all day lectures, as I now do on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, we are timetabled to be there until between 4.30 (usually) and 7pm (on occasion).

In addition to the timetabled stuff I already have 5 assignments from my 6 modules, the first of which is due in just three weeks and happens to be the very, very hardest of them all. It’s called the Slice of LIPA project and it’s part of our design and construction course. We all have to choose a part of LIPA to accurately recreate in a 1:25 scale model.

I’ve chosen this area, the entrance to the Institute’s studio theatre venue in the atrium:

The Sennheiser Studio Theatre at LIPA

I have to say I thought it was a good compromise between tricky detailing and large sections of block colour, but as I began to measure for and – on Tuesday – to make the model, I discovered I was wrong. Apart from anything else I spent nearly 2 hours on Tuesday morning measuring out, cutting and carving all 12 individual paving slabs, after my initial plan to make it work, well, didn’t.

Across the other modules I’ve also been on a tour of the whole theatre, including the grid – the part of a theatre where all the wires holding up the flying scenery are gathered and other technical stuff happens that I either don’t know or is too complicated to get into here (mostly the former, granted). From the grid you can also get to the roof, which is where this photo is from:

The sunset over Liverpool from the LIPA roof

Not bad for a view, eh?

I have also started a stage management module, a lighting and electrics module, a context and professional development combined module and a fundamental skills module. These include climbing ladders, health & safety, soldering, reading scripts, breaking scripts down, knowing what DMX means and a variety of other things.

And on top of all this academicness (which may or may not be a real word), I’ve also been assigned my first show as an ASM (Assistant Stage Manager – get used to the abbreviation because I’m not clarifying it every time I write it on here!). I’m going to be working on the first big show of the year in the Paul McCartney Auditorium, which is to be Wind in the Willows. And when I say big, I mean big with a capital “B”. And, from the model box I saw yesterday, with a capital “I” and “G” too, I suspect.

In fact, I must excuse myself from this missive to go and wade my way through the script again and then tackle the 18 page (yes, EIGHTEEN page) props list. Wish me luck.

This week has been great and I’ve learned a lot and I’ve a lot to blog about, but right now I can’t actually take my focus off the bloody Student Loans Company – or, for that matter, the striking postal workers.

Between them, they are making my life an absolute hell, resolutely working together to mean I have no student finance, until today no student bank account and all together too much stress for the first week at uni.

In order for me to be able to claim my student grants and loans (and pay my tuition fees), LIPA have to log on to the SLC website and register me using my student number. My student number was sent to me in the post before I came, but I unfortunately left it at home. No problem, though, because the day after I arrived, K posted it up to me.

Of course, she posted it in the middle of the postal strike and, over a week later, it still hasn’t reached me. I think laterally and get K instead to go through my home emails and dig up the number that the SLC emailed me. I take that to the finance office at uni, who tell me it’s the wrong number. This is my customer reference number, not the student number – starting in a series of 3 letters – that they need.

Not a problem, I think to myself, and shuffle off to the uni computers to log on to the SLC website (with my customer reference number) and find my student number, which will of course be on there because that’s where all the details of my claim are.

But no. They don’t have the student number on their websites. They also don’t answer the phone when you call, instead leaving a very polite message saying we’re busy and then disconnecting.

So I have no student number and therefore the SLC don’t believe I’m at uni and therefore they won’t pay my money.

What this means is that the £900 grant I should already have had paid to me to kick start me off of benefits – which I’d been on up to now – isn’t being paid into my account. It also means that the £1000+ first semester’s student loan that was due into my account on Monday won’t go it. It also means that if I don’t get the letter and the number through from the SLC before the end of next week (end of September) I’m also going to find myself liable for paying the full £3,200 tuition fees for the years.

You may now, I hope, begin to appreciate why the joys of this week’s learning have paled somewhat into the background while I have to spend the whole weekend trying to work out how the **** I’m supposed to get my student number before Thursday.

I’m not a happy bunny.

For the record, though – the course is awesome. I’m off to measure up a piece of wall and convert it to 1:25 scale.

This is going to be a quick one as I’ve been up since 8 and in uni since 9 and am now flagging slightly.

Today was the first official day of classes for me at LIPA and I’m already assigned to work as an ASM on Wind in the Willows in November. As of right now I don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing for the show because we’ve yet to be taught that bit. It’s really exciting to be involed in a show so early on and in one that’s going to be such a biggie in the Paul McCartney Auditorium. More details, obviously, as I get them, which may be soon or may – being a lowly ASM – be a while.

Today we’ve had a “Production Breakfast” that didn’t have any food (believe me, students aren’t fans of false advertising) to meet the 3rd year students who will be our heads of department on the shows we’ve been visiting, as well as a full TPDT meeting that takes place for all years of the Technical and Design courses at lunchtime on a Monday for anyone to call for help with any of their projects.

This afternoon was Essential Stage Management – a course that will doubtless be invaluable as it runs alongside our first placements within the SM teams – which was basically just an intro for this week and will become more detailed. We do, however, have our first deadline for a piece of written work, although strangely it won’t actually be the soonest deadline. Go figure.

All day, though, my thoughts have been with Jess, who is still struggling. LLTGL have been working really hard on Twitter and the web all day to raise as much awareness as possible, including their Chair Emily hitting GMTV this morning to plead people to help. There’s now a large number of celebrities supporting her and tweeting about her, but every single person who signs on the organ donor register could potentially save her life.

If you’ve not signed up yet, do so now, here, and if you have then make it your mission to talk to at least one person every day this week about organ donation, Jess and how to sign up. If you are on Twitter, don’t forget to add #savejess to any and all of your tweets this week so we can get #savejess into the trending topics list and raise the profile even higher.

I don’t much like blogging from my phone – it’s a bit tiny to write lengthy missives on (given my propensity for verbosity), but right now I don’t want to wait another day until I can access a computer.

A very good friend of mine and amazing fundraiser and supporter of LLTGL is very, very seriously ill. Like I was, she is waiting for a double lung transplant and has held on despite terrible health for a remarkable 4 years on the waiting list. When you consider that you’re only supposed to be listed when you have a life expectancy of less than 2 years, that shows you how amazingly she’s doing.

Sadly, things aren’t looking great. She was rushed into hospital at the end of the week struggling to breathe and is now reliant on her non-invasive ventilator to keep breathing. Her lungs are quite literally unable to cope with the demands placed on them by constant infection and the ravages of CF that she fights daily.

All of her friends are trying to do everything we can to help, but there’s so little we can do.

One thing at our disposal is the power of words and friendship. As Jess’s friends we are all talking to all of our friends to encourage people to sign the organ donor register and to tell everyone they can to do the same.

If you’re on Twitter, post the above link along with #savejess or tweet about her @Jess_19 and tell people about her.

If you’re on Myspace, Bebo or Facebook, put Jess and the link in your status updates, even link to this page to show people what you’re shouting about.

So much of Jess’s fate now rests with the doctors and medical teams looking after her and her ability to keep fighting. But it also rests on the courageous decision of one single person to give her life after theirs has passed.

Please, please, please do whatever you can to help give Jess the same chance of a better life that I’ve had and am currently making so much of.

Thank you.

The Top 20 things I’ve learned this week, in no particular order:

1) Liverpool has lots of pubs and lot of shops.
2) Drinking as a student is really cheap
3) Cheap drinks are remarkably dangerous.
4) Having a friend who works in a £1-a-shot tequila bar is good
5) Asking her to choose your shot of tequila isn’t
6) Chilli tequila is bad.
7) Banksy graffitti’d Liverpool and – remakrably – didn’t get in as much trouble as the bloke I saw doing it in the town centre the other night.
8) There’s a statue of Billy Fury by the docks.
9) The locals for some reason think he’s called Billy Furry.
10) I don’t look very good in a dress.
11) Cold showers are quite rubbish after 6 straight days of them.
12) LIPA is the coolest school in the whole entire world ever and I have no idea why anyone would go anywhere else.
13) School-leavers this year think “retro” is something from the late 90’s.
14) 3rd Years think that Steps, Five and Cotton Eye Joe are all from the 80’s.
15) All my friends live together 20 minutes away from where I live by myself.
16) My timetable is really, really harsh.
17) It’s not as bad as it would have been if I was a designer.
18) Postal workers suck.
19) Pot Noodles taste much worse than Super Noodles.

and finally and probably most importantly:

20) I’m going to LOVE IT here.

I’ve managed to grab half an hour before my day starts today to rap out a bit of a blog about getting here and what it’s all like.

The first think I have to say is that I’m sitting at a computer in LIPA’s Learning Resource Centre (essentially the library and computer room) and there’s a big plaque on the wall listing the sponsors of the room. Amoung a few well-known corporate clients, it also lists Jane Fonda, Billy Joel, David Hockney and Elton John. Reading those names on the wall of the place I’m going to be studying theatre for the next 3 years gave me such a boost this morning – this place matters.

The first few days have been crazy. I left home – as you may have seen on my Twitter feed – at almost 6am on Monday morning to get up here for my enrollment at 10. We managed to do the trip in almost precisely 3 hours, which was pretty awesome at that time in the morning, and got my keys for the flat straight away, which gave us time to unload all the stuff from the car (all 7 boxes, 1 suitcase and 1 holdall) before I had to be at uni.

I got enrolled and then filtered into the Paul McCartney Auditorium (how cool!) for intorductory talks about the place and what’s expected of all the freshers. In the afternoon, after grabbing a quick bite of lunch and then waving Dad off, I met with my course group, the TPDT guys (Theatre Performance Design and Theatre Performance Technology – essentially the same course but with slightly different focus between designing and practical tech-ing). The tutors intorduced themselves and outlined the course, then we had a couple of hours to kill before a group social in the evening, which turned out to be great fun.

Tuesday was in at 10am again for more talks and safety briefings, then a fairly free afternoon which I spent shopping for bits and pieces I’d not managed to get before hand or had left at home. In the evening I popped over to a friend’s house and we chilled and drank vodka and cokes (made with the roughest vodka in the world – the joyous life of studenthood) before her flatmate and I hit the town for a couple of hours to make the most of £1.50 Jaegerbombs (Jaegermeister and Red Bull for the uninitiated) before calling it a night around 1am.

Wednesday was, blessedly, a day off, although I woke up at 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep so I ended up walking down to the Albert Dock at 7am, which was actually beautiful. Got back to the flat around 8.30 and proceeded to sleep til 2pm. Nice.

I pootled in town in the afternoon and grabbed an iPod dock – my room currently has no TV, no internet, no computer or anything, so I needed something to break the silence of the room that didn’t involve me walking around with my headphones in 24/7.

Last night was Blind Date in the LIPA Bar, which was sadly compered and played out by third years who spent the whole evening drunkenly making in-jokes about their mates, leaving most of the freshers feel pretty confused and stupid – not the best was for the Student Board to welcome the newbies in the middle of freshers week, it has to be said.

And now, once I finish this I’m off to grab a chocolate bar from Julie and Julie in the canteen downstairs (they’re great – the ladies, not the chocolate bars) to give me enough energy for the next 4 hours of the TPDT Treasure Hunt! How cool!

Once I’ve sorted myself with a laptop and internet connection at the flat, these blogs will hopefully get a little a) shorter and b) more regular, but until then you’ll have to make do with the Twitter feed on the left of the page and random updates on here as and when I get chance to jump on a comp here.