Summer has most definitely arrived. Despite a cold couple of days last week, the skies have cleared, the flowers have bloomed, the birds have begun to sing, and the temperature has regualarly climbed to 16 or 17 degrees - on Thursday it even reached 19! Seeing the city in the sunshine again without battling with an umbrella/unruly scarf/bulky coat/all of the above has reminded me just how beautiful it is here. I still thought it was pretty in the winter, but somehow sunshine makes everything look nicer and makes you notice the little details you seem to miss in months of seemingly eternal cloud coverage. If it's this nice in the middle of March, I can't wait until May and June, hopefully it'll be like when I arrived and be 25-30 degrees all the time - definitely not Scotland!
Inspired by my success in Children's Rights, I've decided to use my paper as the basis of my final year dissertation, if I can convince a tutor in Dundee to supervise it of course, so I met with Vandenhole to get some feedback on what I could've done better and how to develop it into a full dissertation. He was really helpful with ideas on development, recommending books, approaches and potential topics to explore, but when I asked how I could've got an 18 or 19 out of 20 instead of the 17 I did get, he said that actually my paper was perfect, but UA don't actually award higher than a 17! This really is a strange marking system if only certain numbers of students can get each grade and they don't even award the top mark for perfect papers that couldn't be improved. I just hope this policy is taken into account when UoD translate the grades - I don't want to get a B in Dundee for an A equivilant in this ridiculous system!
Having been enlightened to the system, I have determined to work extra hard on my term papers this semester so that they'll be a good contribution to my exam grade (if I have an exam). In order to get on top of the mountain of words that I'm expected to churn out, I'm taking each paper in turn and working intensely on it, starting with Discrimination. After 10 hours on Friday, 6 yesterday and who knows how many during the rest of the week squeezed in between classes, I have lost count of the number of cases, statutes, regulations, directives and recommendations that I've read. I have however, almost finished (thank goodness). I'm absolutely loving researching this, but I need to get it finished so I can work on my presentation and other papers.
Tomorrow evening I'm going to a free film showing of the Belgian film 'Illégal' on campus. It's in French with English subtitles and looks pretty interesting. The cinema is expensive here even for students (7,50€) so it'll be good to see a film on a big screen.
The External Relations teacher is over from the UK this week, so I have a lot of reading for his 4 classes on top of the reading for WTO and Protection of Human Rights (Private has been cancelled - our teacher had to move back to the US so we have another one filling in) ... onwards and upwards, I will reach the summit of Mount Law Work this semester!
It is really great to have a dissertation based on your own experience and inspiration. It will certainly make a dissertation, or any task maybe, to be easily done.
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