Faculty Strikes & Sushi

Last week, the faculty at Uni went on strike. One of their strike days was Thursday, which is when I have my Writing Young Adult Fiction class - and because my lecturer was participating in the strike, you would think class would have been cancelled.

You would be wrong.

You're probably thinking my classmates and I dragged ourselves to Uni that day with bitter hearts to attend a gratuitous lecture, and you're wrong about that too! In fact, we held class that day for two reasons:

1. There are only six students in this class, so it's relatively easy to get us all in the same place at the same time.

2. We all love our YA module too much to miss it!

Five of us huddled in Kat's apartment as hail pelted down outside. Every week, our homework is to write a 500-1,000 word story in the genre we've just covered, and a few of those stories are chosen and master-classed. This means they're read out loud to the whole class, and then the writer and our lecturer talk through what was successful and what could use some work.

To the best of our ability, we master-classed two contemporary realism romance stories. The first was about a teenaged journalist who convinced two of her friends to participate in a love triangle with her, just to see if love triangles can happen in real life. The other was about a couple who met online and watched the progression of their relationship via the song lyrics they posted on social media. We tried to offer constructive criticism, but it was difficult through our laughter and the dramatic Thai love songs playing in the background.

I read out our lecturer's notes in my "primary school teacher" voice while Kat set up the slideshow on her laptop. Kat's roommate, a scriptwriting student, even joined us for a discussion on the importance of representation in young adult literature.

Five o'clock rolled around and "class" ended, but none of us were ready to brave the cold. So we made some tea, ate some more snacks, and kept up our conversation. We sent obnoxious (and hopefully endearing) texts to our lecturer about our work. Kat broke out the tarot cards. Eventually, hours later, we ordered a ton of sushi. I sent the sushi to the wrong address and El-jay drove me there, practically throwing me out of the car to get our dinner before it drove away. Embarrassingly, the delivery man was the same one who delivered my lunch that same day. I spend too much money ordering food to my front door when it's cold outside.

What should have been a three-hour obligation winded up being a seven-hour hang-out. We talked through story ideas, sang Disney songs, did some actual work, and shared some emotional difficulties. It's not often our schedules line up like they did that night, and it's so sweet when they do.

Before Thursday night, it was a stressful week. Too many assignments due, not enough sleep. Underdeveloped characters, plot holes, strange dreams. Seriously strange dreams. I had one last week in which my friend's grandfather (1) died and (2) somehow managed to frame me for his own murder from beyond the grave. Dream-me tried to return priceless art to the family to prove the goodness of my heart, but on the way to their house I fell off the back of a train into a river. I was chasing the train in a yellow rubber raft when I woke up.

If you have any way of interpreting this dream, please let me know.

As I was saying, it was a stressful week. But this strike Thursday was the perfect break - it wasn't life-changing or groundbreaking in any way, just pleasant and peaceful.

The assignment I'm supposed to be working on, even as I write this blog post, is a 1,000-word story for my YA class. It's inspired by a black ring I bought recently. I took one look at this ring and immediately thought, "That's the kind of ring a blacksmith would forge in the blood of the man who killed his wife." Thus, the revenge ring story was born: it's about a teenage girl who tries to get through her daily life while the ring, made by her great-grandfather and possessed by his spirit, encourages her to get revenge on all those who wrong her. In high school, that means every person who borrows a pen and forgets to give it back is a target.

Just a short & sweet update for you today, but get ready for a post on some recent adventures, coming soon! With pictures!

Book recommendation: Goldilocks by Laura Lam. Shameless plug - this book was written by my YA lecturer! It's about a group of female astronauts who steal a spaceship to scout out a planet in the Goldilocks zone, where conditions are just right for human life. I'm halfway through and already love it! Buy the book! Read it! Give it a 5-star review on Goodreads!