My office of sorts: Blogging Struggles

This blog is to explain (ironically) how I have struggled without frequent and decent wifi connection and the impact it has had on my degree work and.

Since starting my degree I have completed 1 cruise ship contract and started (and now mid way) another one. While this environment has been imperative for my inquiry as I explored the effects such close confinement had on working relationships, the lack of wifi connection has put spanners in the works a few times.

With no real office space, I usually set up shop in the library, while it is not ideal as it is a guest area, some of the views are a nice way to work:

The lack of access to wifi means that when I do have connection I do not have time to read through and comment on bloggs as it is either too slow or too expensive. Posting bloggs was a bit easier as I could pre-write them and upload them if the connection decided it was going to play ball. Although it has had an impact on this specific side to the course, I feel lucky that I was in the same boat as some other students (literally). Sarah S, also on module 3 is on board with me and while we were not able to join in the discussions online to help develop our enquries, we set up study groups in the library where we were able to have discussions and develop ideas. So it was not all doom and gloom, we just went back to the good old methods of face to face discussion. BUT not having a solid wifi connection was difficult!

My "Game Plan" for my artefact!

So across this course, I have had many occasions where things have suddenly just clicked, and with my artefact, after ages spent tossing ideas around it finally occurred to me how best to present not only my findings but my whole journey across the course.

After some excellent feedback from my tutor Adesola, I decided that for my artefact I wanted to produce a game!

A board game to be exact, and it will be called "Ship Mate". A board game that is designed to bring a team closer together as its a group activity and also present my findings about relationships within a working environment! The fact that it is also ship specific relates to how most of my research revolved around a cruise ship and the journey that you take within the game represents the journey I took.

I have uploaded a sample of the board so I can explain further:

As you can see, there are anchors and rigging; you slide down the anchors and climb the rigging, representing how my jounrey of BAPP was full of ups and downs. There are various squares with ship related scenarios on i.e. IPM (In port manning) which is ship specific terminology to help the users get to grips with it and also crew cards; these will be cards that represent my findings with relationship specific challenges or even just anecdotal trick cards such as: Crew part hangover, miss a go!

This is just the starting prototype and I am really excited to develop it further and design the rule book along with it!

How is everyone else doing with their artefacts??

My Artifact

I was really struggling with developing my ideas for my artefact. My study was aimed at helping people develop positive relationships within the industry but having to present these findings in a way that could help people.

I had an idea that I could develop some team building exercises from the knowledge I found out in my analysis and combine this with an induction book for a new cast. This way you could get to grips with a new cast and team and learn about the environment you are in.

Has anyone started on their artifact yet? How have people gone about developing their ideas?

Cut, Cut, Cutting

I have found that with my critical review, sticking to the word count was a very difficult ordeal.

Having been out of an academic education for 5 years, the last time I was required to write academically was GCSE year and so I have had to mature a lot with my academic writing.

I wondered if anyone had some tips on how to cut down un-nessasary word counts?? I will list a few of mine and please feel free to comment:

1. Have confidence in your writing: I found a lot of my waffle was due to phrases like “I could argue this” and “this possibly could show”…  By cutting out the maybe’s and possibly’s my writing was more authoritative and direct.

2. Check for repeats: it is quite easy to repeat yourself across the specific sections in the critical review so ensuring you haven’t mentioned the same thing more than once is helpful.

3. Re-word a sentence: Sometimes by completely changing a sentence you can write the same thing with less words, by muddling around with the word order, cutting connectives and extra words can help reduce the word count.



Please feel free to help out and add more tips if you have had to go through and cut the word count.

A living blogg

My dance captain Sarah is on the same module and this has been super helpful with the enquiry because as we don’t have great interest connection or access to a lot of resources or campus sessions we have been able to work together and help compensate for the lack of resources.

Even being on the ship we have a team that we can constantly have discussions with and run ideas past and have group discussions so it has been like having living bloggs on board.

I feel this has been really helpful in module 3 to combat that lack of resources and it has been lucky that we have been in this situation.

Just when you think the prospecrt of getting literature is bleak...

after a quick Skype session from a ship terminal in Singapore and some feedback from my advisors, I came to the conclusion that when it came to literature, my study had took me on a path that I didn’t expect to go on. From the start I assumed I would be studying my a scientific route however I was took down the more social side.

Therefore it was apparent that I would need to find some literature based on more social studies. However, being on a ship it is hard to access the  bast amount of literature available due to time and internet.

Then something bizarre happened, in a bar in Phuket, Thailand, my team mate bumped into an old friend who he hadn’t seen in around 6 years who happened to be on holiday there. This friend turned out to be a university lecturer and through general conversation it emerged that he lectured in Sports Sociology. I could not even believe my ears, he has papers upon papers published on the social affects on sports and relationships within team mates. I know I was specifically looking for relationships within performing arts but just these social studies in general will give me some solid comparable points to work with.



I am just always amused how the universe works!

"Bodies go where bodies shouldn't go"

I have often written about how social media and web 2.0 is so beneficial to dancers but I came across this article discussing how its actually pushing dancers to imitate dangerous moves and end up inured!

 http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2015/s4330305.htm

Well, my instant reaction was 'How awful", I would hate it if dancers became injured because they were copying moves. Also, yes there can sometimes be alot of focus on making the body do "unnatural" things i.e. over split, sway backs! However, deeming it unnatural also could have many negative effects on younger dancers, some bodies are made to do certain things and others aren't but saying its unnatural may cause a dancer to be ashamed of their body!  

Furthermore, who gives anyone the right to deem anything wrong when it comes to dance. Dance is an art and therefore subjective. Its bad teaching if children are being told to dance through pain, not bad social media.

On the other hand, I do agree that social media has allowed a floodgate of "showing off" and this can cause unhealthy competetion.

At the end of the day, a dancer should be taught the fundamental lessons of not dancing in pain and not over doing it! 

This is just a brief over view of my thoughts. Please comment what you think about this!