Writing essays...

There's absolutely no way I'll claim I know the perfect formula for writing essays. No. But my efforts are passable, certainly, and I do very well in testing situations. I know some of you doing English or Literature as a subject are facing the prospect of upcoming end of year exams. I really don't know if any of this will help, it's just a thought I had - my something good for the day, you know? So I thought I'd write out a couple tips I found useful, or that I've been told over the years.

1. Answer the question.

This sounds incredibly patronising, but we've been exposed to a few feedback sheets in Lit class and the markers make it very evident that people lose marks for failing to read the essay question properly. This means that part of the question is not answered in the response, or you just lose your head completely and don't answer the question at all. The key to solving this is having the question in front of you; think of the text you intend to use to respond to the question; highlight key words and ideas in the question, i.e. the concepts such as ideas, and the terms such as assess or evaluate or comment; create a mindmap of sorts whereby you annotate those highlighted parts with brief summaries of each, thereby ensuring you've summarised the intent of your essay. This should only be quick and rushed, nothing fancy at all.

 

For example, a practice question taken from a past WACE exam. This process has been carried out using the text Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

2. Make a plan.

Because you're probably given an hour at most on each individual essay in an exam, this does not need to be fancy either. Just sort the above into usable paragraph planning, just as a little nudge when you get stuck on what to write (ideally, this should just help you get unstuck). There is no need for detail, or to write down quotations - just a short sentence summary to remind you of what your aim is to convey in that paragraph. All in all, both steps should only take about 5 minutes. Instead of writing heaps of essays, just practice this; it really helps you think, and begin to sort out your quotes and ideas mentally in your head, thus becoming faster.

3. Don't write essays when practicing writing essays.

This sounds stupid, but I promise it isn't. You spend a lot of time writing an essay; you devote a lot of time to finding good quotes to prepare for answering the question, and the essay you write, because you have the time, is near perfect in your eyes. You memorise it, and go in the exam and write it. You feel good about it; then you get your paper back, only to find big fat crosses or question marks everywhere. Because in practicing so hard, in spending so much tie preparing for any number of responses you DIDN'T PREPARE FOR THE QUESTION. Instead of writing essays, write plans on individual questions including quotes. Make a really general plan with three or four quotes per point, encapsulating all the reading strategies possible for the text studied; this way you learn a bunch of quotes under headings that are workable for exam time (since basically all questions discuss reading practices in some way, shape or form).

4. Research outside the text.

You get so caught up in preparing for the text itself, that when you come to the most suitable exam question and you find that it contains information on context, or devices, or conventions that you don't understand. Bummer. So, when preparing for your text, compile some information about the time period in which it was written or published. What were the values of the time period? What social movements occurred? Political, economic unrest? Power balance? This helps you provide a more nuanced, thoughtful essay when it comes to dealing with context and prevents you from making generalised statements about the context of the text's production, thus setting you apart from the rest. Having a good understanding of literary terminology will stop you from tripping up in an exam when asked for something like the correlation between structure and the presentation of ideas and values.

5. Look to your betters.

Sometimes, all the preparation in the world isn't enough to boost your mark up. You wonder why you try so hard and still fall down, when your classmate barely puts in the effort and soars. Why? It comes down to expression, essentially. It isn't enough to have good ideas anymore - you have to be able to know how to express them. If you're having trouble with that, ask someone to help you. Ask a proficient classmate if they have any saved practice essays lying around that you might be able to read over, to get a feel for the language. Ask a teacher to read over some of your practice essays with you, to correct some mistakes, and maybe even ask them to rewrite a paragraph to show you where you aren't meeting the standard. Ask a good mate that does well in English to read an essay, or part of an essay, and offer critiques; or, take your ideas and rewrite them, so that you might compare them and see the areas you need to improve. This is not cheating; it is the absorption of alternate ways of expressing ideas, because that is usually where the majority of people fall down.

6. Swallow a dictionary.

No, jokes. But become familiar with alternate ways of expressing things. Come to think about it, this isn't all that different from the previous advice. What I mean is, instead of stating 'she believes that old ideas are bad', you could instead state 'the character in question believes outdated ideologies negatively impact society'. Use a thesaurus to find 'smarter' words if you have to. But please, don't do a Joey from Friends and replace every word with a synonym because it just won't make sense. If it sounds too simplistic, find a better word. Expand your vocabulary. Read more books - classics are really great for expanding your word bank (hint hint). Just read in general; there is a definitive correlation between good marks and those who read more, across all subjects requiring language and communication.

7. Read the text more than once.

Pretty self explanatory. If you read the text multiple times, you gain an understanding of things you may not have picked up before, and its also great to refresh your memory.

8. Finally, don't panic in the exam room.

If you know all the stuff, you've learned the quotes, you know your text inside out, what are you panicking for? It only screws with your head, messes your concentration and leads to bad marks. Don't listen to how worried other people are. It is okay to be confident. Nail it.

That's all from me. Happy studying. Thanks for reading!

Adapting

I didn't really know what to post today, so I thought I'd branch out into other forms of media. Mix it up a little, you know? So I thought I'd ease into the world of cinema today by talking about book-to-movie screen adaptations. Just so I don't give myself a shock by not talking about something book-related. Today, because I'm so heavily into classics at the moment, I'll talk about the very very few classic adaptations I've seen. Watching classic movies is a really great introduction into the world of classics, particularly for those too intimidated to start out by reading the books; its also a great way to get that cultural knowledge to converse with people who have classics on the mind without spending countless hours in a day getting through the actual book, especially if it's a whopper...

So the first one was probably... the 1995 BBC miniseries of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. Actually, I think this was what got me into classics in the first place. My aunt lent me her DVD version of the miniseries and told me to watch it - it wasn't till about a month later, the week before she was due to visit again, that I had nothing to do and decided to sit down and watch it. I planned on seeing maybe a couple of episodes so I didn't bore myself silly. Yeah, no. I stayed up till 2:30am finishing it off because I just got hooked. It was absolutely brilliant, and I found myself greatly entertained by it all, which was quite shocking to me as I had always viewed classics with a sense of great trepidation. It inspired me to read the book, which brought me on to reading more classics, to becoming determined to get an all-round understanding of literary culture so that I might understand the inside jokes of the literary upper echelon. Its working so far - really fun to make jokes about literature that no one understands.

Anyway. I just really loved this series. I've heard that there was a Keira Knightley version, but I honestly don't think I can bring myself to watch it because this was just it for me. I see the 2005 leads in movie posters and I always think - they just don't measure up to Colin and Jennifer. And man! I certainly didn't view Colin Firth as attractive before I watched Pride and Prejudice, but I do now (the younger version, anyway) - the lake scene? Mm-hmm. Yes. And I loved the happy ending. Honestly, a really faithful and enjoyable adaptation of one of the world's most popular classics.

I admit with no small amount of guilt that I haven't yet seen Les Miserables as a musical - my first experience was watching the 2012 movie adaptation with a friend. Many faithfuls dislike the actors' representations in the film, but as an inexperienced fan, I have to say that I really enjoyed it. Even if some of their voices weren't technically on par, they aren't singers - they're actors, and their job is to act. It's a convenient bonus if their singing voice is passable, and I certainly found them all so - even Russell Crowe, who I actually thought was good. And never mind the fact that it would be hard for them, many not being professional Broadway singers, to sing live on camera and act it convincingly. I believed them all, and cried more than once. It's the imperfections that made it better, honestly - when you're singing a song about heartbreak and sorrow, sure, it is nice to hear the performer hit note after note with perfect technicality, but you lose the emotion. It's convincing to hear the voice break, or the tears, or screaming out the words in anger or passion. It made it real for me, and it was just beautiful. Just my opinion, anyway. And the grand scale of it all was great - the finale, with everyone singing, just made me curl up into a little ball on the floor in my room and cry for half an hour.

I've yet to see the musical live, which is really annoying because apparently they're doing shows in my town at the moment. It sucks being broke. But oh well, maybe when I'm older (and have someone interested to go with - I'm pretty much the only one out of my friends and family who would be willing to watch). But yes - a really really good movie.

 I hit a major classics phase towards the end of last year, when I was going through my Austen kick. I really loved Pride and Prejudice, and I had heard nothing but good things about Sense and Sensibility. At that point in time I don't think I had the book, so I went out and bought the film at my local electronics store - JB Hi-Fi is the best! Seriously, they have everything. Anyway, I really enjoyed it, which I was sort of expecting as it had Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet in it (who are just great all the time). Strangely, I think the relationship I loved the most was the one between Colonel Brandon and Marianne; despite the age gap I actually found it quite sweet. I kinda found Eleanor and Edward Ferrars awkward to watch - they didn't have any chemistry whatsoever to me, which is sad because I really do like Hugh Grant...

So, with that in mind, I went and bought the book. Imagine my surprise when I just couldn't get into it. I'm still really quite disappointed in my failure to get through it - perhaps it is indeed because I watched the movie before the book, so I knew what was going to happen (and wondered why the heck it was taking so long). Oh well. I'll get back into Austen someday - when I do, I'll try again. I know I'll read it eventually. But the movie was really good - I'd totally recommend it to anyone with an interest in classics who doesn't particularly want to go through the experience of reading it. But don't let my bad experiences with Sense and Sensibility ruin it for you!

The most enjoyable one for me would be the 2011 version of Jane Eyre. I first watched Mia Wasikowska in the 2010 Alice in Wonderland movie; imagine my sorta patriotic glee when I found out she was Australian! And young, because there aren't a lot of female Aussie stars closer to my age hitting it big internationally. Nothing against Naomi Watts or Nicole Kidman, both whom I love. So when I discovered she was in this movie, I knew I had to get around to watching it - when I finished the book that turned into an irrepressible urge to go out and buy the movie. I was so excited when I found out Michael Fassbender was in it! I love him.
I found the movie pretty much exactly as I pictured it in my head; the scenery was perfect, and all the characters were pretty much spot-on in my imagination. A lot of people say Mia and Michael had no chemistry, but not me. It was pretty brilliant. I will say, however, that Mia's acting was a little awkward and stilted during some of the intimate scenes - I felt like Michael sort of carried those. But other than that Mia pretty much summed up Jane Eyre. I was a little bit disappointed with the amount they omitted though - I know it wasn't a lot, but as a newfound die-hard Jane Eyre fan I felt they could've skated over some parts a little less than they did. Especially the scene with Mr. Rochester pretending to be the gypsy woman - I didn't see that in the movie or in the deleted scenes! So pissed off, because it was one of my favourites in the book... But the movie was a lot better at demonstrating Mr. Rochester's intentions towards Jane than the book was - it was quite confusing at the time to read that he wanted her to leave Thornfield, then proposes to her. I suppose it's all down to perspective though.

I sat down with my dad the other day and watched the 1980s version of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Forgive me for this, but I did find the acting quite cheesy - especially Gary Oldman and his funny accent. It was painfully obvious that he was a British guy trying to imitate a foreign guy. No offense, buddy, but I've seen better work from you. He was pretty attractive in it though, much more appealing than the Harry Potter series or Batman. Obviously because he was younger, but, still an abolutely fantastic actor. In this particular movie, I really believed in Winona Ryder - I found her British accent passable, if not a little lacking, but her emotional depth was pretty brilliant for a character who doesn't get much development given the amount of screen time she had.


Keanu Reeves was... weird. He sounded like he was just saying the words, not acting. His accent was pretty poor too. Come to think of it, were any of the main actors playing characters of their own nationality? But eh. Thankfully he didn't get too much screen time. This actually sounds like a pretty negative review - not really. I actually really enjoyed it, despite all my complaints. It was entertaining. Definitely a recommendation, especially if you're into Gothic, which this movie really emphasised. I loved the Gothic elements.

So, turns out I'd actually watched more than I thought I did. All pretty good, so I'd recommend them if you wanted a little more substance than random people blowing shit up for kicks. Don't assume that the movies are the definitive versions of the classic books - there's still quite a lot to miss from the experience of holding a good classic book and just reading it.

Next time, then!

Career confusion

I've always prided myself in knowing where I'm headed - knowing what I want, and how to achieve it. I've always been self-assured when it came to figuring out what it is when I want to leave school. But lately... I just don't really know.

It's obvious even in my first post on here that my aim was to get into medicine. But, after I began my psychology sessions I've begun to wonder if doing medicine is what I really want to do. Throughout my life I've been petted and praised for my ability to use my brain, to the extent that that was basically all I felt I amounted to. A brain. Intelligence. And I feel like, maybe I've taken all that and chosen a career that I felt would please those who see me as a brain. I guess I've internalised all the compliments about my grades and my intellectual ability and have done my best to choose the most prestigious pathway my subject selection has allowed me. And for a long time I insisted I was dong it for myself, to make me happy. But I've wondered recently if I wasn't just hiding behind that phrase because I was afraid to admit that I wasn't doing any of it for myself - I was doing it to please others. That being said, it isn't as though I dislike medicine or wouldn't enjoy it if I ever did do it. But I've wondered if maybe I chose it because I thought it was what everyone else wanted.

Lately I've been feeling more and more an inclination towards literature. As much as it is a hobby for me, I truly don't think I would mind if I could make a career out of it. I certainly would like to study it at university. But I'm a little at a loss for what I could do with it. At the moment, I've done my university application, and I've put a secondary English teacher down as one of my preferences. Many people said when they heard I did that that I don't really seem the type to teach, that it wouldn't be as rewarding as I think it would be, that I don't have the right skill set or temperament... And normally, I'd take all this to heart. But I'm reminded of a conversation I once had with my Chemistry teacher. She told me she was once a shy, mousy girl just like me. She was socially awkward, not confident, and many people told her too that she wouldn't be a good teacher. Everyone now knows what a brilliant teacher she is, even if my grades in Chem aren't all that impressive. She's proved to me that you don't have to listen to what other people think. Besides, I haven't finished becoming the person I was meant to be - I feel like I'm supposed to be more confident, assertive, proud of who I am and more secure in myself. Just because I haven't got to that stage doesn't mean I won't. Just because I'm shy and therefore not quite suited to dealing with classrooms full of naughty children doesn't mean I'll always be.

 

So I'm wondering if I'd end up liking that kind of environment. I mean, they probably do teach you some skills to dealing with children on a daily basis. And I do have a fairly long temper - I rarely lose my shit at people, so that's a character trait that I have in my favour. I see the English department quite often at my high school, and each time I'm struck with how much I'd like to be a part of that environment. The world of literature just feels like home to me, and I want more than ever to be able to find something in that pathway that I could use to make a career out of. If anyone has any recommendations for careers in literature, help a girl out?

So yeah, that's me. I haven't heard from the medical department at the university I've applied to (one of the only ones in my state that is equipped for students to study medicine), but if I get in, I'll definitely give it a go. Who knows - I might just discover that it is what I wanted to do all along. I might decide I want to be a geneticist, or work with diseases or cancer. I might be a literature teacher, or an academic, or a lawyer, or maybe even a history teacher. I don't know. But I have time to figure everything out.

Thanks for reading!

Schoolyard politics

So I have this friend. For hypothetical purposes, let's call her CJ. Now, I met CJ in grade seven, my first time in high school. She and her best friend (let's call her Anna) were super nice to me, which was great, seeing as I was the most painfully shy, awkward looking thing ever. Insert photo of said awkward phase;-

Errgh. Anyway, I became fast friends with them, Anna more so than CJ - CJ was pretty fucking weird to me, not gonna lie. But we all had loads of fun, all the way through year seven and eight. We were absolute best friends, tight as hell, and I think it made quite a few people in our little friendship group quite jealous, as many of them had been friends with CJ and Anna long before I rocked up (I attended a K-12 school). We did absolutely everything together, and we had our own codenames and secret jokes and stuff like that. I learned to love CJ's weirdness, and we became really close. But in year nine Anna just... stopped hanging out with us. It hit CJ really hard - they'd been best friends since kindy. I was a little pissed off, but...

Around the same time I met CJ and Anna, or a little before that actually, I became friends with a girl called Mimi. She was - and to this day, still is - the weirdest fucking person I'd ever met in my life. She was absolutely obsessed with anime, had wild crazy mood swings, was temperamental like no one I'd ever known, and was probably the most messed up person emotionally I'd ever met. That first year was the most difficult when it came to being her friend - she was pretty much an emotional wreck. But, I stood by her through it all and helped her through it, and she's a helluva lot better now, and I am super grateful that I was there for her during a bad time in her life.

Long story short, CJ and Mimi became close (CJ didn't really like Mimi before year eight). They bonded over a joint love of videogames and anime, which branched out into K-pop and all things Asian. I definitely don't have anything against Asian culture, but K-pop is not for me - and it really isn't for lack of trying. I felt myself being edged out of the group because of our profound differences in personal taste, and suddenly I understood why Anna stopped hanging out with us. Me and CJ bonded to the point where she was just, I don't know, pushed out of our little group. She dealt with it by making other friends, by spending time with other people and letting it go. But when I felt her and Mimi doing the same thing to me I couldn't handle it. I told them how it made me feel in year nine, and I think it really surprised them. Mimi was completely fabulous about it - she used my little confession as a way to bond more. She basically rocked up a couple days later, and demanded I write a list of things that interested me so she could go watch/read/do them so we'd have more to talk about. She went out and did those things - no one has ever made such an effort like that for me before. To this day, I am eternally grateful that she's my best friend.

CJ... didn't take it well. I was expecting Mimi to fly off the handle at me and declare we'd never be friends again. I was expecting CJ to quietly accept my feelings and take it into consideration. Obviously I didn't know them half as well as I thought, because I got the opposite, sort of. CJ was quiet and Mimi was loud, but the reverse expectations ended up being true. The day I confessed CJ had a tendency to push the outsider out of the group she contacted me via text that afternoon and told me she didn't want to be friends anymore. I contacted Mimi to find out what the hell was going on, and she confirmed CJ's intentions by screenshotting a picture of the text conversation they were having together. How fucking juvenile. I was so mad. Unbelievably mad. It lasted for a couple of days which I spend letting CJ KNOW just how fucking angry she made me by use of a choice few death glares aimed directly at her. Mimi was a bit of a wreck. She wasn't really able to face the fact that her first solid friendship group was falling apart in front of her. CJ started ignoring her too because of her association with me, and that pissed me off more than what she was doing to me. Eventually, she came crawling back to me, and, being the doormat I was, I let her back. But it damaged our relationship irreparably.

We've been friends since. However, the dynamic has changed a fair bit. CJ has this way of being completely domineering over her friend's life - she'll choose someone, and attach herself to them like a leech, and in doing so, sort of prevent them from spending any time with anyone else. She'd be incredibly jealous of everyone who talked to me, and just generally monopolised all my time. I always had to be emotionally available for her, but unfortunately I don't think the same privileges were given to me by her. Anyway, that sort of continued until around year 11, when school became a lot more serious. Mimi and I are academics; we go to school because we see it as a place to learn, to gain skills for the workforce in future. CJ sees it as a place to socialise. Now, I'm certainly not saying that if you don't do well in school you are inferior - I'd never ever think that of a person, because if you are trying then you are winning. But CJ is the kind of person to go to school and do nothing because she thinks classwork is beneath her. Me and Mimi never really saw eye to eye with her on the subject of school, but we let it go because when we were younger it wasn't all that important. But when it hit year eleven, schoolwork was the most important thing in all our lives - we went to school to learn now. CJ figured out that her wasting time in previous years had cost her dearly, and she was a little bitter over our academic successes, having both given a fuck when it wasn't too late to. She became sort of hostile every time we mentioned our classes (which we shared a lot of, so that added to our bonding), and frequently implied that we were teachers' pets and suck-ups. We both found it pretty offensive.

Adding to it was the maturation of Mimi. All the time I knew her, she was a gung-ho tomboy, hellbent on videogaming and watching anime and reading manga and always promised me I'd never see her wear makeup or do her hair or wear dresses and we'd never go out shopping because she hated it. Boy, she was wrong. I noticed it in year eleven, but it probably started a lot earlier. Slowly she'd gotten a little girlier, going out and buying make-up, changing her style gradually until - before I even fully realised it - I had a complete style icon on my hands. I honestly don't know how I didn't notice it sooner. And soon enough, we had more than just class work in common. We could go out and do stuff together, and it was suddenly so much easier to relate with one another now we had grown up a little. But CJ was still kinda stuck in the past a bit, and I guess she got threatened by it all.

She started being really quite passive aggressive with Mimi, and often took to ignoring her, which made us all a bit mad, to be honest. During year 12 their friendship just fell apart. I was the only common denominator in both their lives, and the only thing holding them together in that sort of semi-friendship state. To this day they don't really like to talk to each other or even about each other.

What hurt the most was when I was diagnosed with depression. It was very jarring for me, and for my friends since I never let on that I was having problems. Everyone was really there for me while I was sitting through the first couple weeks - except CJ. Mimi was fabulous about it all, always checking up on me and encouraging me to talk to her. But CJ... I guess she was threatened by the fact that she was no longer the centre of attention. See, she'd been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder a while back and I have to admit, I don't think its as bad as she always claims it is. I do think she sort of exaggerated a bit in order to portray herself as the most fucked-up of us all, like having problems was a competition. So when I was diagnosed with this thing she was sort of weird about it. If it came up in conversation she'd find a way to bring it back to her and her problems. She wouldn't really ask me how I was feeling, or anything about my life, or really care. I actually don't think she knows the seriousness of it or the issues that led to my breakdown in the first place. I found out from my friend Kylie the other day that she had been going around talking to others about my diagnosis, saying that I should stop making such a big deal out of it and get some help - never mind the fact that I didn't really bring it up too often and I was getting help in the form of therapy and medication, while she was doing fuck-all to sort out her own issues. I trust Kylie's word, and she admitted that she was uncomfortable with the whole conversation she had with CJ because I hadn't told her about everything myself. It just really hurts that I've spent so many years investing myself emotionally into our friendship, being there for her when she needed it, and to have that all sort of thrown back in my face when I needed her. It taught me a valuable lesson about her, one I should've learned a long time ago - I can't trust her.

I don't really know if I'll get her to read this. But if she ever does, I'm not sorry. I needed to get that out there somewhere. I'll probably make Mimi read it though.

Sorry to anyone who thought something interesting would happen in this post - yep, it's just me bitching. I needed to get it all out. Thanks for reading this far.

Next time, then!

Classic books...

As a sort of coping device lately I've turned to reading. Surprise, surprise to anyone who knows me. But I haven't been able to rustle up the give-a-fuck to read YA or even adult novels - I wanted some period stuff, some literature with good philosophical musings on the nature of humanity or on the criticism of society, stuff like that. So, in light of my Literature class's profound lack of anything resembling traditionally classic text this year, this is where I headed.

I've got to admit it isn't the first time I've decided to read the classics as a hobby. Last year I read a whole bunch of them - I read Pride and Prejudice, Les Miserables, Frankenstein, some Shakespeares (Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing). Actually, looking back, it wasn't all that much. Admittedly though, I got bored. Not with the classics in general, but with one in particular - Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. I loved the movie - the one with Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson - so I was completely surprised that this one almost sent me to sleep. I love books, but this one I just couldn't get into, and it makes me sad because a) this particular Jane Austen is often hailed as her best, and b) I loved Pride and Prejudice so, so, so much. So guess what? I tried again this year, almost (if not more than) a whole year later, in which I've had time to grow, develop as a person and discover a plethora of new things about myself. And what do you know - I only got about a third of the way in and I was. so. bored. I felt myself slipping out of that 'cultural and literary enlightenment' vibe and I freaked, so I put it away - to my great consternation, because I find it really hard to just give up on a book, particularly one with so much promise - and switched to Dracula by Bram Stoker. I'm finding it a little slow, but I've only just passed the 100-page mark and I can feel the tension and Gothic elements ramping right up which is making me super excited.

Anyway - what classics have I read so far in my little phase? So, the first one I picked up was Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. I particularly liked the edition I picked up of it, and I did a whole background check on Goodreads to check what it was about and how good the general public believed it to be. Let me tell you, do not believe the general public. The average rating on Goodreads is fairly unimpressive given the fact that the novel has been hailed as 'the perfect work of fiction' by many a past literary critic. But I've got to admit, my personal review would be pretty damn close to that assessment. I loved it. It was beautiful, and tragic, and quite disturbing at the end. Not a lot of people like the titular character, but I confess I really did - she's flawed, she's frustrating, but she's human, and aren't we all flawed and frustrating? She makes so many stupid mistakes - her worst I believe was marrying the man she did. How stupid is he? I really didn't like him, and quite often sympathised with Emma for the restlessness she felt in living a mundane, middle-class life. I know the feeling of restlessness all too well - definitely not for the same reasons as her, but still. The end was tragic. I cried, but I also found it really well written. Probably not appropriate for the depressed, but it did in a weird way bring back some of that old happiness. I hadn't been able to pick up a book and read in a long time, so to do that and really enjoy it sort of kicked me back into gear a bit. Anyway - read the book. It's brilliant. 5/5.

I read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott next, although I had read it when I was younger. Well, sort of. Turns out I had read an abridged edition which basically cut out the last half of the book. I found this out when I had read the book as a young girl, and then proceeded to watch the 1994 film with Winona Ryder, Kirsten Dunst, Claire Danes and Christian Bale (mmm... Christian Bale), only to find that my favourite character died. Why? Why??! So I read the book again this year, and, just like the movie did, the book made me cry. I loved it. It was a beautiful story, and touched on the influence of religious thinking, domesticity and true love, and it was a brilliant introduction to the theme of coming-of-age in classic novels. I really did love this novel, but the ending just haunts me. So sad. 4/5.

I then read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Again, I had tried to read this when I was younger, in grade 5 - we had a mini library in the corner of our classroom with one of the Penguin black editions of the book there. I opened it and tried my hardest to get into it, but I just... couldn't. It was a little boring for me, and I couldn't stand reading about her growing up in such a meandering, linear fashion. But I had heard nothing but good things about it from older readers, and my Lit teacher mentioned it once or twice, and I found the most beautiful edition of it. I decided to read it, and man, I almost wish I had sat through it when I was younger so I had had more time to love it. It was just... everything. I loved it so much. I found I understood it more when I grew older - the tragic story of Jane's early life just didn't have the same impact on me as it did when I was young. I cried when Helen died. When she went to Thornfield I just knew something epic was going to happen. And it did - ah, Mr Rochester. He's supposed to be ugly, but because I always knew of the existence of the 2011 movie I see nothing but Michael Fassbender (yeah... I like him). He was great, and I really enjoyed the interactions between him and Jane. I squeeed when he proposed to her. I freaked out when he revealed his psycho wife. I loved the journey she took after, and I hated her cousin St. John. I really loved the ending - after he'd lost all his power over her, she came back to him and they married as equals. So progressive for the time period. I loved the Gothic elements of the novel too - it brought a creepy, supernatural element to the story that I completely wasn't expecting, given it's label as a coming-of-age romance story. It just added yet another facet to a deep and layered novel. When I finished it, I fell into a book coma of despair for a good half hour, contemplating what my life would be like now that I had finished the book. I loved it so much it made me want to re-read it, which I'm never able to do with a book (flashback to Jake watching a movie he liked over and over and over and over until I could quote it verbatim and eventually ended up resenting it, thus turning me off repeats forever). But I had plenty of other novels on my TBR pile, so I put it away somewhat wistfully. Shame on you if you don't like it, and shame on you if you haven't read it. Go read. 10/10.

A novel I approached with great trepidation was Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Again, I had tried to read this novel when I was younger (in fact, I tried to read it in to same year I was in grade five, in that little mini library of books in the corner). I ended up having to re-read pages over and over to get some sort of gist of what the hell they were talking about. I did not get it. I've tried really hard not to let other people's impressions of this novel get in the way of my attempts to re-read this in future, as I knew I was always going to try again. I know many people hated this novel. When I read this, the first thing that struck me was the fact that my assumptions of this book were all wrong. For so long it has been touted as a great love story between Cathy and Heathcliff - has anyone read this book? If whatever the hell is between them is love, then it's poison at best. This is no love story. It is dark, and depressing, and fifty shades of fucked-up. I hated all the characters - you usually find a character to sympathise with and follow along with and appreciate. Nope. Nada. Zilch. I hated them all. They're all awful, awful people with their various selfish imperfections and disturbing natures. It was a completely tragic novel, with barely a happy ending scraped up. But despite all this, all this, I actually really loved it. In spite of the fact that all the characters are horrible, the storyline is horrible and the ending barely passes as pleasant it is written very well, and the awfulness of this story is what makes it so powerful and brilliant and sad. After a while I actually started to like the evilness of the characters, and crave it more in their confrontations. I loved the creepy supernatural effect implied at the end. It was a haunting, beautiful and messed up novel that I highly recommend to anyone going through a Gothic or depressive literature phase, or even one looking for in depth character studies on the flawed sphere of human nature. 5/5.

It was after this I attempted to read Sense and Sensibility. Nope. Didn't happen. So I immediately switched over to Dracula. We'll see how that turns out.

What am I aiming to read after Dracula? Well, I'm hoping to read Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy; Emma, Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park by Jane Austen; Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence; Therese Raquin by Emile Zola; The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde; and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. Oh, and I completely forgot! Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. I'll probably do a joint review similar to this one when I've finished enough on this little list. Anyone interested - keep an eye out, or go ahead and subscribe if you've read this far. Thanks.

Clothbound Classics by Penguin/ Word Cloud Classics by Canterbury Classics

Anyway, better study. Thanks for reading!

My new reality...

Hello to anyone who is reading this. I know its been an awfully long time since I last updated. I didn't really have the time, and I kinda let it get away with me. And, to be honest, I didn't really feel like updating. I have to be honest - I haven't been able to get around to doing much of anything in the past year. I've just been so... apathetic about everything recently. I'd stopped caring about how I looked, how I was doing at school. I couldn't sleep, and basically my entire life consisted of me going through my everyday routine without really living. Until maybe a month ago now. I spent a lot of time in the shower, often just crying. I felt so miserable all the time, about myself, about my life, and I felt so guilty for feeling so miserable because my life is, to the random onlooker, perfect. I mean, to anyone I'm reasonably attractive, intelligent, confident and clearly headed for some future career of repute. I have a great family, brilliant friends and anything (within reason) that middle-class money could buy. I attended a great school, and all the teachers I had thought highly of me, and I of them. So why did I feel so low?

It happened on a Wednesday. I don't remember the date, but I remember the day. I didn't have a particularly horrible school day - by all accounts, it was actually rather mundane. I spent a lot of time in my room by myself that afternoon, just not wanting to be around everyone. I went to have a shower just before dinner, and soon enough I found myself crying while Lana del Rey played on my iPhone outside the shower stall. And then I just couldn't stop. I usually always stop. But it just got worse, and that's when I knew I had to come clean about how I was feeling to my parents. I had to stop pretending that I was okay when inside, I didn't really feel okay anymore. So I got out, got dressed, and broke down on the couch with my mum just comforting me. She was really freaked out - so was my dad. They didn't really get what I meant when I said I didn't feel good anymore. They asked me if I felt sick, and I said no, I just don't feel good inside about anything anymore. I wasn't excited anymore. I wasn't happy anymore, and I wasn't okay with pretending anymore.

I stayed home from school the next day, and my mum took me to the doctor's. The doctor was great about it - she's my brother's doctor and she's always known our family really well, so when I came in feeling and looking that fucking miserable she just knew it was all wrong. She referred me to a psychologist that worked just across the street, and I was able to get an appointment for the following Monday. I took the rest of the day, and Friday too. Those two days I was just so mentally exhausted I couldn't even contemplate getting out of bed. I was so tired of pretending I could just get on with my life, that I just... didn't. I emailed all my teachers, and they were really kind and understanding about it all. I think it shocked the hell out of them, because I always seem so calm, clear-headed and grounded that I was probably the last one on their list of graduates that were scheduled to have a meltdown before WACE exams. My year coordinator was particularly good about it all; he notified the teachers that I didn't particularly want to tell the specifics of my absence about. He arranged for me to do assessments when I 'felt better', and he offered to push all my assessments back to accommodate my fragile state of mind - I definitely didn't take him up on the offer, or I'd have felt like I was taking advantage from the school. If it weren't for the strict rules at my school, I'd let everyone know who it was that helped my through my final weeks at school. He really moved heaven and earth for me. Thanks, sir. You're the best.

Anyway, that Monday I went to the psychologist (as she is bound by confidentiality agreements, I feel bound to offer her the same courtesy, so I won't share her name or her business) and we had my first session. It was... confronting. I've always been different from my family - they hate to say what they're really feeling, and so we just don't really talk about it. I never really noticed to what extent I had been forcing myself to adapt to them until I had that therapy appointment. It felt completely wrong to tell her my feelings and not have them attacked. My family has this thing where they just stonewall every time they hear something they don't like. I spent a long time having feelings I felt were wrong because my parents refused to validate them. If I felt sad or angry about something, I'd get no understanding or comfort from them; instead they'd take the opposition against me and basically make out that I was wrong to be feeling the things I felt. If I had a problem with them specifically they'd completely deny my claims as 'false' or 'lying', and they'd spend the rest of the day engaging in passive-aggressive behaviour or just completely ignoring me. After a while, I just stopped going to them when I had a problem or a feeling because the expectation I had was that they'd just make me feel bad about it.

That day she diagnosed me with reactive depression. She thought I had degenerated to this point as a defensive reaction to events that happened last year. See, last year, in September my dad left my mum. He sat us down one Sunday morning - or was it Saturday? - and told us that he wasn't happy anymore, and that he was leaving mum for a while to figure things out. There was no discussion - within two hours he had packed his bags and he was just gone. Just... gone. He was gone for a month. My mum really leaned on me that entire time, and so did my little brother, and it placed a lot of stress on me to keep what was left of the family unit together. They cried a lot. I confess I didn't - the truth was that, despite all the sadness in the house, I was actually kinda glad he'd left. I felt happier - there was less pressure to succeed, and less tension in the house (because when dad had a bad day at work, we'd all pay for it in the form of passive-aggression and unpleasant, but never violent or awful, mood swings - I will state now that my dad is not, and has never been, abusive in any way, just unpleasant to deal with at times). I felt like I could breathe a little easier. Then after my seventeenth birthday, a little over a month later, he announced he would be moving back in. Again no discussion - just moved back in, and of course my mum and brother let him back with open arms, and by dinner time that day everything was back to the way it had been before he left. I was so fucking angry at everyone for the way it was dealt with. I was pissed off with my mum for letting him treat her like a doormat, and then just stepping aside and allowing him back without so much as a 'fuck you'. I was furious at my dad for his behaviour - how could he ever expect to take the moral high ground again after what he did? He went right back to bossing us around and ruling by intimidation, and my tenuous freedom was over. I was so angry, but sad too, because I knew I would never be brave enough to confront him about it - he'd get so defensive and make me into the bad guy somehow.

I held onto that for a year, though my problems had existed for a long time. I'd always been overly dependent on the opinions of others, and I let them shape my life, I regret to say. My relationship with my parents was unhealthy - I was never happy with what they'd say to me, but I'd still depend on it like nothing else. Especially my dad. His opinion meant the world to me. He was like my God, and it fucking crushed me when that little bubble burst and I found out that he was just a man, and a flawed one at that. He made me all these promises that he broke when he said he was moving back in. So yeah, it made everything building up that much worse. 

But, after one appointment, I confronted my parents about everything I really felt. They didn't like it - they got defensive and weird like I expected, but they also tried their best to be understanding given that their lack of it had led to depressive episodes in the past. I cleared the air with them. Our relationship is a lot more functional now, and I'm doing my best to be more assertive towards them and tell them when I have a problem with their behaviour, because somewhere along the way I think we all forgot that they weren't gods - just parents.

After another couple of appointments it became obvious that something wasn't right. I reluctantly revealed that I had had frequent suicidal thoughts only stopped from acting on due to that unhealthy need to please others and be there for them. The day I told the psychologist that was the first, and only time to date, that I cut myself. I took the razor I use to shave my legs and I just sliced into my knee in a fit of rage and despair, and for a while it made me feel better. It frightened me, and I promised I wouldn't do it again. I still have the scars now, and I'm not sure if they'll go away ever. That day, she told me my depression was a little worse than just reactive. She believed that (also given that I had a family history of depression) I was more clinically depressed, and ordered I go on medication immediately. This frightened me a little bit, especially seeing as she told me she never gave out this order lightly - in fact, she'd only ever done it a couple of times. So I went back to the doctor, and she gave me a prescription for a drug she believed would make me happier. The aim was to correct the chemical imbalance in my brain in order to help the therapy work properly, because I wasn't getting anything out of it before the medication. I started taking the meds. Man, the side effects were crazy! I take them at night, because they make me feel really drowsy. I mean, high-as-a-kite drowsy, like that feeling you get just after waking up from an operation in the hospital and you aren't sure if you really exist or not. But it has definitely worked - I'm more motivated, I'm happier, and it's far easier to bounce back from perceived failures than it was before.

So, that's me. Its been hard, living with this, but its far better now that I've stopped lying to myself and to everyone around me. My friends, bar one, are doing their best to support me and help me through this. I'm more assertive than I was, and I feel more comfortable in my own skin. I'm sleeping better, I'm more alert, and I suffer from depressive episodes and suicidal thoughts far less and with far less intensity. I'm finally comfortable labelling myself with depression, and I'm almost comfortable with who I am as a person. I'm getting there, finally.

To all those who feel down, or if this story sounds familiar to you, or if you want to share your own experiences with depression (whether or not you have been affected personally), feel free to message me. I know what its like to feel alone in this, but you're not. There is a whole network of people going through what you are, and if you don't feel ready to talk to an adult, you can always talk to someone closer to your own age. Please don't lie to yourself. If you've been feeling down for over a month, you may have depression. I encourage you to talk with someone, anyone, please. 

I did it!

I finally finished the dress! I was originally basing it off a long sleeve dress, but ultimately decided that it was wayyyy too much green to put on the doll. The dress itself is a sort of a hybridised version of Sansa's (first) wedding dress and that sort of olive green dress she wears after her marriage to Tyrion. Now I'm done, I need to inject some colour into the other doll because it is so heavily white-based. Probably going to make a dark blue hood for her to break up the monotony of the hair and skirt. Then, when I can be bothered, I'll make shoes for both. However, that's not a priority; I'm going to get crocheting with my nanna's doll soon, maybe after having a little break?

Well, that's me. Hope everyone out there reading this is having a good day. Next time, then!