Con/VCA merger, essay grades, and bread (Suzanne)

So, I got an email from the Dean of the Faculty of Music today, and apparently, the Victorian College of the Arts School of Music is merging with the Faculty of Music at Melbourne University (aka ‘the Con’). Technically, they were both part of the University of Melbourne, but the VCA continued to provide its largely autonomous music program separate from the original Conservatorium when they joined. Until now.

I hope this means that we’ll get a much more radical and progressive course at the Con, and cooler practical electives. We’ve always been more academic than them, and also considerably more entrenched in the Western classical tradition, and it will be nice to be able to take a class on improvisation or Alexander Technique or jazz from their side. I kind of wonder how they’re going to combine the programs, though. VCA music has this kind of independent, creative, new and hip ‘artsy’ flavour, as opposed to the straight-laced ‘historian’ flavour with lots of heritage and tradition at the Faculty, and they’re very different programs on campuses about 20 minutes apart by tram. Do we shuttle back and forth between classes on two campuses? Are they structuring it with the theory and history core at the Faculty, or the interdisciplinary creative arts core at the VCA? Will the distinct advantages and disadvantages of each program be maintained?

I’m actually a little sad that they’re not doing double degrees or undergrad law next year because of the Melbourne Model. I wanted to be an O-week host or Music Faculty student mentor to my very own little music/law fresher, and show them around and teach them all I know and warn them to get the heck out while they still can. I can still mentor little straight-Music freshers (somehow I don’t think the new postgrad law students will need me to mentor them), but it’s not the same — with Music/Law you know there’s only two or three of them in each year, so you know that they’re your special little first-years, whereas Music has more than 100 students per year, so it’s not as special as finding the one other person who does your course.

Anyway. In other news, all three of my essays this semester came back. We can draw several conclusions from the comments on them:

1. Music essays are much more generously marked than law essays. The torts essay I got an H2B on was much, much, much better than the music history essay I got an H1 on.

2. When your Dispute Resolution lecturer is telling the entire class how much he thought the assignments sucked, and how much help with writing you all need, and how you shouldn’t repeat the terrible things you did on the assignment in the exam or you’ll all fail, getting said assignment back with a decent grade on it is like early Christmas. With extra pudding.

3. Never trust what the textbook says in a law essay. Chances are that by the time it was published, it was already out of date. Case in point: I missed discussing Doe v ABC in my essay on privacy law. Why? The decision was handed down in April 2007, by the Victorian County Court, which as far as courts go, isn’t particularly high up in the hierarchy. It wasn’t in any of the casebooks yet. There’d been very little commentary on it. But it was a fantastic case – it basically provided authority for my central thesis argument, took a step towards resolving the contradictions in previous authority, hinted at the direction future developments in the law might take, and it was relatively easy to read. I was kicking myself after I saw the “What about Doe v ABC?” comment by the marker and went and looked up and read the judgment.

Here, therefore, as a corollary, is Suzanne’s lovely tip for legal research: always look out for the most recent sources. Cross reference, look in multiple databases, or in the latest edition of the specialist journals. Skim through all the cases that reference the leading case, not just the ones that have been commented on in journal articles. If your last article is from 2005, always, always, make sure nothing has happened since then. This holds true across many law subjects – it’s not at all uncommon for the law to change while you’re taking the course (usually not drastically, though).

4. I much prefer exams.

Tomorrow there’s a music students’ society BBQ, so today I went to Safeway and bought six loaves of Home Brand bread for it. The lady at the checkout gave me a rather strange look, one which plainly said “Are you really gonna eat all that?”

I wonder how she would have reacted if we’d decided that one person was going to buy all the 20 loaves necessary herself, instead of splitting the job between three people. Or how she’ll react when the person who has to buy beer for about 200 expected students shows up.

Ahh, student society free food events. I hope I get re-elected for MSS next year; I’ve really enjoyed the experience.