“What has it got in its nasty little pocketses?”, ponders Gollum, suspecting Bilbo of stealing his Precious, the Ring of Power.
Alright for Bilbo, I say! As I’m sure other skirt-wearing women will sympathise, there’s no way my Precious will be found in my pocketses for the simple reason I rarely have any or, if I do, they’re just about big enough for... well... nothing.
And that’s why you’ll never find me without my favourite black bag which, thankfully, has plenty of pocketses. But what precious things has a University of Birmingham languages student got in its nasty little pocketses?
Well, I'd challenge you to find a UoB student without a laptop, and I’m afraid I'm no exception. But 'a' laptop? Sorry, no. Meet my Precious... yellow stick-on Russian letters, a list of ALT codes for German and French accents/umlauts - a languages student’s laptop. And no, you can’t steal my Preciousss.
Next up, well, where would a hobbit be without second breakfast? My lembas bread usually resembles a homemade wrap that I warm in one of the many free campus microwaves, although sometimes... you just have to give in to a hot sausage roll or pasty from the Teaching and Learning building café... Unlike beer-drinking hobbits, I have a water bottle and a flask and teabag (sorry coffee-lovers) ready to be filled from a boiling water tap (the things you discover at UoB!).
And I must confess... there are perfectly good online textbooks, books, note-taking options, but there’s just something about paper and a trusty fountain pen. So, my pocketses hide a Russian textbook from the library, a French/German fiction book for those spare moments, and a tatty black folder full of reams of paper with grammar exercises, vocab lists, history and culture notes in Russian, German and French - an insight into a language student’s brain – (mostly) organised chaos...
And when my uni day is done, I'll be desperately rummaging for one last Precious... then I grab my car key and whizz off home in my little blue car.
A P.S. for all of you Lord of the Rings fans... did you know Old Joe, the world’s best clock tower, (I'm not biased, I promise) inspired Orthanc, Saruman’s fortress? Do you actually need another reason to choose UoB?
I love learning languages and am currently studying advanced German, advanced French, and beginner's Russian. I am absol...
