NM1101E (Communications, New Media and Society)
I’m going to do my ISM on collaborative writing and blow Dr Gilbert Yeoh’s mind. There. That is my university goal.
- Lecture 1
"We’re a lot smaller but it’s a lot more fun. The projects we have, we write the rules. We were able to help people like Sephora – we built the brand so much so that there were times the consumers and Sephora on social media woke up and said “good morning Sephora, how’s your day?” We were able to help brands build up such a social media persona that it seemed like a living thing."
- Lecture 2, guest lecturer from bluegrapes
Communication: intrinsically tied to our perceptions and the perceptions of others
We are interacting with people through a filter, and this filter is made of our own perceptions and how we perceive people. It’s an engagement of filters: these screens mediate your interaction with each other.
- Lecture 4
NM2220 (Introduction to Media Writing)
Lucasfilm: “The people who write video games for us – they’re very tacky. They can’t write well. We would like people that can write for us.” They hire people who’ve taken NM2220 because of THIS ONE LECTURE ABOUT GAMES AND INTERACTIVE STORIES
- Lecture 1
“you use words that are created out of flowers”
- Lecture 2
I’m Grace Ng, a first-year FASS student. I haven’t decided what to major in yet, but I’m likely to double-major in English Literature and CNM. Hopefully, I’ll end up somewhere in the creative industries after graduation. My main interests are writing and reading, both in print and online. I worked at The Business Times as an intern journalist before starting university, though the last thing I (actually) wrote was a 3000-word short story about dinosaurs. My goal in university is to write a thesis on creative writing in (the context of) digital media; this is in the hopes of blowing the mind of a certain professor I know who claims the Internet is destroying literature. I dabble in theatre, enjoy webcomics, watch superhero movies, am a recent Game of Thrones convert, and follow a few of The Animes. I tend to be reserved initially but have been told I can be hilarious,
- Tutorial 1. We were supposed to write a one-minute introduction. I deleted the last bit.
EN1101E (Introduction to Literary Studies)
"Is this done consciously? Probably not. Does it matter? Probably not. It doesn’t have to be conscious for us to notice it. We could bring Nair back from France, have him stand here and I could say Mr Nair what d’you think? He would say, “never occurred to me”. Who’s right? He’s right? I’m right? Doesn’t matter. What matters is that we’ve seen something to use in our analysis and discussion of the poem […] something you will find interesting. If it ‘s interesting, it’s useful. That’s all we need to know." - Lecture 1, talking about analysing a poem written by Chandran Nair.
what the shit he’s standing on the chair pretending to be a poet “THEBAN EAGLE BE DAMNED”
- Lecture 2, talking about odes, specifically "The Bard" by Thomas Gray I think
You have to write as though you were writing for "GENERATIONS YET UNBORN”
Your problems with your boyfriend girlfriend mother will be of NO CONSEQUENCE
- Lecture 2, still talking about odes
"Poetry is when someone wants to express or describe something using words in ways that often go beyond the sentence. The poet doesn't just use imagery, alliteration, figurative language and so on to convey an idea or an emotion, though s/he most certainly does. Rather, the poet has a different arsenal. I would not go as far as to call it 'extended' (in comparison to a prose writer), but it is certainly different. The poet does whatever s/he can within the constraints of letters on paper or sounds in the air - breaking sentences, coining words, forming shapes, stuttering syllables - to transmit images into the minds of his/her readers or audience with as much accuracy, impact, and beauty (or lack thereof) as possible."
- Tutorial 1, my response to "What is poetry?" written in six minutes or so. In the next tutorial, the tutor started going on about how we didn't namedrop literary techniques that were specific to poetry and use examples to show how the literary techniques came up in poetry, and wrote comments to that effect on most people's work. Except mine, for some reason. She just circled "s/he" out of presumed disapproval, underlined the "I would not [...] different" section vaguely and wrote a small "Good" next to a word. Not very sure whether she was actually satisfied with what I wrote or just forgot to finish writing whatever she wanted to write.
JS1101E (Introduction to Japanese Studies)
“The story I'm going to give you is the best story I can. You are encouraged to pick it apart and create a better story.”
– Lecture 1
“Why are you here? You should be out having sex! That’s what the government wants you to do! They’re not recording me so I can say that.”
- Lecture 1
The head is a different colour than the body because about a century after it was created there was a big earthquake. The head fell off. So he was a headless big Buddha for centuries. The head sat there upside down for centuries.
“Hiroshima is my biggest nightmare by a long shot, but this scares me.”
- Lecture 2, talking about the big Buddha of Nara.
“Literature is an 18th century European concept […] that spreads like a virus” (talking about the problems of literature). Bungaku and literature are not equivalent; bungaku existed before ‘literature’ came to Japan, so they’re different in meaning - Lecture 3
The normal way to come into contact with The Tales of the Heike in the past was to listen to them sung by blind musicians playing the biwa (often translated as lute). Story of the rise and the fall of the Taira family (the fall being to the Minamoto during the war)
[...]
What kind of history do you think The Tales of the Heike is?
Shakespeare was the way that most people at the time understood English history. Perhaps the Heike is basically the same thing?
- Lecture 3
Can you tell which module I find the most interesting? :P
(My favourite is actually the USP writing module, which I've posted a lot about on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, but the lecture notes themselves aren't very interesting.)