Country Life

Well I'm at home. I've done the mandatory religious observance to keep the Aged Parents happy, and am sitting in the sun. The thing about being out in the countryside is that it's so noisy - more birds than I can identify screaming to be fed by their parents, squirrels, rabbits, the occasional fox - all accentuated by the absence of my usual auditory input: sirens, gunshots, car stereos, bad music played on mobile phones, people hawking up mucus onto the streets, revving engines.

As it's a holiday, I'll offer some free advice to my media students. If you are going to use the web for 'additional resources', avoid sites like 'megaessays.com', 'freeessays.com' and most of all, '8thgradeessays.com'. 8th grade is US high school for 12 year-olds. My superpower is being able to detect plagiarism in seconds so I will catch you, and it's not worth it. You're all intelligent enough and resourceful enough to find your way to the library and read some university level texts. If you get away with using American high school essays, you might get your degree but you won't have become educated. There's a difference between having a certificate and having acquired the literary and critical skills which make you a unique, skilled reader. If you only care about the certificate, of course, then good luck to you, but I think that's rather depressing.