I had written something angsty about struggling with my current assignment but someone who shall remain nameless closed my browser before I hit the publish butter and all was lost. Never mind it was just a critical apprication of Homer’s The Odyssey in 500 words or less – I swear I’ve accidentally enrolled at the Reader’s Digest University or something. The fastidious and fickle faculty favour the 500 words or less approach these days it seems. The last ‘briefing note’ (not quite sure when essays became ‘briefing notes’) I completed was to answer the question ‘What is World History?
Yeah that one was fun. I should post it up here for shits and giggles and you can all pick it to bits. Was totally flying blind on that one and had NO idea what they were wanting from us. Received my graded ‘briefing note’ back on Wednesday and was rather surprised to be given a Distinction for it. However, when I read back over it – I discovered that I don’t even remember writing one iota of it. The content was familiar but the actual paper itself seemed unrecognizable to me. So that was probably either because my subconscious had blocked out the entire horrific experience (due to the psychologically traumatic nature of the damn question) or because my medications and generally pain muddled brain is messing with me again… which I admit seems more likely.
But I digress… back to Homer and the damn 500 word limit. How can you write about an epic saga in 500 words – let alone THE epic saga. I reckon if you did a word tally of every sentence in the poem that mentioned ‘the rosy fingered dawn’ you’d get more than 500 words. I’ve done a rough draft in dot points trying to be as concise as possible and I’m already 700 words on the page and it’s not even in proper sentences yet. Shame the assessment criteria doesn’t say anything about how much you get penalized for applying generous artistic license to the ‘limit’.
Anyway, in amongst the gnashing of teeth this afternoon I found this link to this Odysseus Nostos – little stick man anime thing of The Odyssey for anyone whose not read it… though in truth it’s probably more amusing if you have.
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