Honours for one please.

Signing up for Honours was like returning home when you hadn’t been there for thirty years. Familiar, warm and welcoming in many ways but at times bewildering, unknown and cold as ice.

It felt dark for a long time, not in a bad way, more in a curious wtf kinda way.

My proposal was 600 words written over a period of six weeks with feedback from my circle and academia networks. I was ready to submit online when the system told me I had space for only 600 characters. I write well in a crisis of deadlines and lack of clarity, and had my revised proposal within an hour or so. However I could only do that when my preparation was there, this time it was. It was to be good rehearsal for me over the next few months when I would make ready assumptions about how to do what I was asked, and be ready for last minute changes because my assumptions led me down vast manicured lawns that were nothing like the overgrown weeds on the piece of dirt behind the shed.

Part of it was the development of a film residency at Testing Grounds, more on that once I know more about what I’ve created. I said yes to me doing Honours because I wanted to know what I was capable of, to stretch and wring in equal measure. It’s been four months now, and I live to tell the tale, to get to the end of semester one with a couple of High Distinctions under my belt despite some deeply uncomfortable anxiety peaks, and with huge thanks to those who offered not only solace but an ear, an eye, a moment or a gin. It all came in so perfectly, eventually.

A taster of film elements being developed.