The Jane Genie

Waking up at 6:30am yesterday morning really wasn't as bad as I would otherwise make it out to be. It was (finally) my last university open day, this time at Northampton, the hometown of Matt Smith. After my sausage bap and our coffees in Debenhams, we went to catch the bus following the instructions in the prospectus, which stated that the No. 21 bus runs to the Uni from Stop C. Approaching the bus timetable, we were able to read that in fact, the No. 21 doesn't actually go anywhere on Saturdays as it doesn't even run on weekends.

If you are expecting the day to perk up after this, think again.

Luckily the No. 19 ran to where we needed to go so we hopped on and finally made it to the campus. Opposite an enormous and spacious park, the place itself wasn't too unattractive. Unlike the back end of town which we wandered through, which was dominated with pound shops and a 'Booze City'. We headed for speedy booking, which took longer than turning up without booking, and were told that we'd be collected from the main hall to go to the journalism talk at 11.

While waiting, we played a fun game called 'Guess Who's The Course Leader For What', at which we were reasonably accurate, correctly guessing that the snappily dressed woman was head of fashion and textiles and the man in the braces was English. A man then came in dressed in a black t-shirt, jeans, and bearing a strong resemblance to Edgar Wright. He called the journalism people, as well as media production and film and television studies.

So we headed off to this room, which was already full of people. Edgar then announced to us all that he was actually the head of music production or some other bollocks, but was going to do the talk off a slide show for us for some reason. Meanwhile, an Irish man stood facing away from us, occasionally muttering words we couldn't make out. At the risk of sounding like an old drama teacher, the acoustics were terrible, and as we were at the back, we couldn't hear a thing. The entire talk was focused on media and film and television, with no effort to discuss journalism whatsoever.

After nearly 40 minutes of "mumble numble...rumble...bleughhh" the Irish man, who turned out to be the representative from journalism, announced he was going to take people on tours of the studios. He took the first two rows. There were approximately eight. We were the last. While waiting, Edgar put on a film that we couldn't hear either which did mention some journalism stuff but not much.

We gave up waiting, and went to reception to ask if they had a hall where we could talk to someone one-to-one, like at all the other open days we'd been to. The girl didn't want to say no, so she got this poor man to run around trying to find someone to talk to us. Eventually, the half Dean or something came to see us and announced she didn't really know the journalism course either, that the head of the subject was at home "...because he has a family" and proceeded to spend 15 minutes reading off a booklet we already had, just bullshitting to within an inch of her life. She was really quite good at it.

So we went for lunch, which was pretty cheap (that's a good thing) and decided to check out the library (which was also pretty good) before waiting for 40 minutes at a bus stop to come home.

This morning I got an email asking for my opinion on the open day. Was it well organised? Did I get all I needed from it?

I wonder what I'll put.