Could have been a bit longer

In a major act of psychological reshuffling, I am in the middle of throwing out most of my undergraduate notes. "Good god, woman - you still have your undergraduate notes?! What kind of a freak are you!?" I hear you cry. Well, leaving aside the latter question, yes, I do, actually - and also, so it transpires, all my coursework from my GCSEs and A-levels. It came to me in a big box from my mother's a decade ago, whereupon I shoved it under the stairs. My M.Sc. notes followed shortly after (and hit the bin yesterday).

Given that I've already pitched most of the stuff related to my Ph.D. (apart from the bound beast itself may-its-chains-never-be-loosened) you'd think I'd have got shot of this stuff ages ago. And yet still it lingers, gathering dust and yellowing, vainly waiting for the day when I might want to look something up from a dimly-remembered lecture. I blame the Internet. Or fandom. Or something.

Today notes and essays produced in the summer of 1991 are about to hit the bin: this was a seven week course on American history (from the ratification of the Constitution to the end of the Cold of the War - in, truly, seven weeks). I was nineteen, had no exams that year, and the supervisor was a riot. Happy days. Flipping through what he wrote at the end of some of my efforts, it's funny to see the most frequent comment: "could have been a bit longer", "pithy, provocative, could be longer", "short for a supervision essay, where would you put all the detail" - variations on which theme have followed me around since the age of about thirteen (see the A-level essays I pitched yesterday). Really, at some point I should have twigged that - since I didn't give a rat's arse about writing down all the detail, it was there in the damn book if I needed to check - I was going to make a really awful academic. (Interesting to note the comments of both GCSE and A-level English teachers, which amount to: "Write More Fiction".)

Having said all that, I'm keeping the essays I wrote for my history of political thought papers (Before 1750 - eight weeks; after 1750 - eight weeks.) That course was all about reading a big old text and saying what you thought of it, based on a vague and hand-wavy but sufficient-for-purpose notion of the context in which it was written. Much more my kind of thing, and consequently they are really rather good.

ETA: emeraldsedai talks about how things get "fossilized", and it's interesting to note how the farther back I've gone, the harder it's been to chuck stuff. Ph.D. notes went out within months. M.Sc. went yesterday. Not all my undergraduate notes are going. All my primary school books are staying.

From the vaults

Right. The bulk of what's lurking under the stairs is a vast pile of video cassettes, mostly stuff taped off air in the late 80s, early 90s. What the hell shall I do with them? I feel like I shouldn't be shoving video cassettes into the bin for landfill. (I'm umming and ahing over whether to keep the off-air copies of Blake's 7 from 1980 and 1981, which must be unplayable by now.) Any ideas? There's over 100.

I also have a large number of back issues of Starburst, going back to issue #1, and up to something like #180, if my memory serves me correctly. (I haven't pulled them out yet to check, will update when I have.) Back issues of Starburst are going for peanuts on eBay and frankly I can't be bothered with all the fuss. Any thoughts? Do you think a library would be interested? They're a bit musty.

I also have a box file of Horizon newsletters, again slightly musty (issues 18-30 from 1987-92, and also issues 38 and 39). Anyone want them? They're going in the bin otherwise. (Horizon is the Blake's 7 Appreciation Society: these are A4-sized magazines with a glossy cover.)