I have just found this on Informer Online. It's a review of the movie "Wall-E": Who needs words to be a hero? written by yours truly.

Isn't it great to see that your work does get published on the website for our university newpspaper? Even if it's a year too late? You see, I wrote this review, and posted it on Conny's Corner on 17th December 2008! I know that sometimes stories don't make it into papers right away for various reasons, like tight space or bad subbing. But waiting one year is a new extreme, I would say.

I had urged our lecturer who's responsible for IO and Online Journalism, to put features up on the website, that were written for the latest Informer print version, which came out 3 weeks ago. We need our features to be published for an assessment, but, as usual with this university, nothing is done about it. I just don't think it reflects well on us, that we say in the print version "For the full story, visit us online" and then the story isn't there. Do you think that's good journalistic practice?

Well, along with some stories written for the latest Informer, some articles that have been waiting in a folder for a year finally got to see the light of day. Apparently, who ever put these things online, didn't bother to check which stories went into the print version, but just put everything that looked unpublished on the web. Thanks for that.

Next to the Wall-E review, there's also a story about a photography competition that I wrote for Conny's Corner last December on IO now. It's great our students finally find out about this competition, however, the book that resulted from the competition hit the shelves this autumn. Is it just me, or could this be seen as taking the piss?

And I'm still waiting for my Berlin Wall story - which you can already read here, as I posted it in time for the 20th anniversary celebrations - to be published on IO, so that I can hand it in for assessment. Maybe I should check back next November. Chances are, it might have made it online by then.

Yesterday afternoon: I open the front door, and find a letter on the floor, beneath the letter box. An official letter from the University of Cumbria.

Turns out, that after three weeks of being a Third Year student, I finally got to know whether I actually passed my second year or not!

We finished our second year of the Travel Journalism course in the first week of May. Everbody else got their results in July and August. But apparently, a certain Media Law lecturer had first of all got the results in too late and put the results in the wrong system, so it took this university five months and 2 weeks to process our results! Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that's acceptable at all. After all, we students get marks deducted if we hand assessments in a day late. So leaving it until after we signed up for another year, to officially tell us whether we passed the last year, seems just a tiny bit hypocritical!

I did pass the Second Year.
With 454 overall points last year, I got 56,75% - which in uni-speak is a Lower Second Class. However, if you count in my 516 points in Year 1 (thanks to the 85% I got on one of my tourism modules), which equals 64,5% or an Upper Second Class, I've just about got an overall Upper Second Class degree so far! The magic threshold from Lower to Upper Second is 60% - if you do your maths, I come out at 60,625% ! Which is why I need to pass most of my assignments with 60%+ to maintain that degree!

For those of you who are not familiar with the British marking system:
35 - 39%: Condoned Fail
40 - 49%: Third Class (D)
50 - 59%: Lower Second Class (C)
60 - 69%: Upper Second Class (B)
70%+ : First Class (A)
80%+ : First Class (AA)

My course leader was nice enough to email me a screenshot of my results (minus the Media Law one) in August, so I knew I had passed. But it still took the university almost two months, to actually confirm this!