I love new stuff, though if it's new friends it'll be a rather intense and nervous experience, but other new stuffs are generally okay. So this new semester has started. Wanted to wait for the week to end but my fingers are itchy to type stuff, so I shall just start talking about this new semester now.

My school (Communication, Arts, and Social Sciences) gave everyone lollipops, stickers, and quotes to welcome everyone back. That's CASS for you :D I was contemplating whether to paste the "I'm from CASS" sticker on my laptop, but ended up pasting it on my notebook. I guess I'm proud to be from CASS, but that pride isn't as much as being a DTVMer :)

Speaking of which, now I like my course more. This year, we will be doing stuff like web design, design thinking (which looks quite fun from photos Mr Esman showed us), interactive media writing (including games), documentaries, and total journalism. Not expecting much from the game-writing, since we're mainly TV people, but I hope it'll be fun. There's also my dip-plus, which becomes more interesting this semester.

Web Publishing and Design (WPD):
Mr Esman is taking us for this 5-hour module. They seem to squeeze really a lot of things into this one module, including design thinking, web publishing, pitching, dreamweaver, flash, and some touch-and-go stuff. Guess this module is going to keep us busy, seeing that there are stuff to be done every week. But HTML is kind of my thing, in the sense that I find it pretty fun, so I'm quite excited for what's to come.

Writing for the New and Interactive Media (WNM):
Ms Mary is taking this module. I'm not much of a new media kind of person, but this module seems to be a pretty diverse one. Seems like we may be learning a bit of every other thing? Apps, games, e-books, or such, not sure. The first lesson was pretty fun. Played some games revolving around new media facts and created an interactive story. My group created 'The Black Knight Rises', which is simply about an overcooked Ginger BreadBlackman. We managed to turn this children story into a hero's adventure :D

Documentary Making (DM):
It's taken by Ms Mary again. I'm not really hoping for documentaries to suddenly become interesting, but it should be fine if the lessons and projects are interesting. We could survive World Issues, so we can survive this. Another busy module. First lesson already received two CA briefs - one for this module and one for the production version of this module. And she said that we're going to start the interview stage of the project tomorrow :O

As expected from my lecturer, she managed to spin her lesson into something interesting. Did an activity in which we were suppose to manipulate information unethically and destroy this ex-yakuza's life. We're not suppose to do this in real life. This is just an activity.

Also watched this documentary called 'The Cove', about this Japanese village which cruelly and secretly slaughter tons and tons of dolphins. And this documentary really made us feel so much. Got to know about dolphins, how they're helping humans, trying to reach out to us, trying to communicate, being self-aware and intelligent, yet getting attacked and killed by ignorant people. It was also about how the governments and organisations with powers aren't doing anything about it, how a group of passionate people are crying for the dolphins, trying their best and risking their lives to save the dolphins. It's a very thought-provoking and persuasive documentary. Actually made one of my classmate cry till her face turn red :/

Building Effective Work Relationships (WkRel) - PCAP 2:
My dip-plus. Psychology. Second module in the course. My class remained the same, but we got one new classmate. Changed lecturer, and I feel that this lecturer really helps my class to kind of get to know one another better. It's mostly a discussion kind of class, but strangely it isn't boring and we managed to last for 3 hours like that. Discussed about last semester and also about Happiness. Analysed what make people happy and we were kind of challenged to do good deeds before the next lesson and journal it down. This semester's content seems much more applicable and interesting than last semester's. Learning about therapies and NLP. Yes, this is what I came to this course for. Of course, the certificate will be a bonus.

So, in conclusion, school had been pretty fun. Feels quite not used to hanging out with friends in class again :S But I guess the room just kind of drain away the energy.

On a side note, I've been told that one of my tutee made improvements in her English and actually passed. I'm not sure whether it's thanks to me, to her, or to luck. Let's hope it's not luck :)