THE phrase ‘academic weapon’ has been around for a couple years but it seems to spike in popularity around April to May.
Why? Well, it’s assignment season in university.
And the ever-growing problem of procrastination by students when it comes to doing essays, equals more time on TikTok and Instagram, from which the ‘academic weapons’ are glorified.
What is an ‘Academic Weapon’? Urban Dictionary says it’s, “A student with straight A’s, exceptional rizz, higher in the social hierarchy and possesses an intellect which threatens try-hards”.
Or in simpler terms, “Someone who never seems to put an effort into anything and shouldn’t be achieving anything close to what they achieve”.
Now, most the time that is not me, I know that I try hard, and I’m happy to be that way because the proof is in the pudding in terms of previous essay results, but this week I was quite literally an academic weapon, as I managed to complete an essay in the nick of time before the hand (I am not going to say which one in case my lecturer is reading).
This academic weapon even had to take words out of the work because it was over the word count limit, I had 3000 words of quality writing – I hope – and had to strip it back to 2750 words.
A reward was needed… a pint of liquid black gold, aka Guinness, in The Cricketers pub, all the essay stress had vanished during the process of having a Guinness… watching it being poured, settling, topped off, settling again, then guzzled.
I have more essays to submit in the next couple weeks, my last being the 10th May, but I’m not worrying, I actually enjoy assignments as it allows me the chance to show my quality and hard work, oh, and say academic weapon at any given chance when I’m struggling.
At the start of the week our video module group went and filmed Marina Cornwall, a 70-year-old powerlifting champion, as part of our final news day lecture in university.
I’d actually consider her a friend now, she’s happily worked with me before for university projects and she’s great on camera, even though every time I see her she says “oh I hate being on camera, Will”.
This time we filmed her talking about the success she had in her recent championships, winning gold medals and breaking records, as well as her demonstrating different lifts on me at the gym.
It was fun and something I was not expecting to be doing when I woke up that Monday morning, but that’s the beauty of thinking outside the box.
Usually, I am the one writing news articles of people and their achievements, but this week it was roles reversed and I made the top story!
My local newspaper ‘The Salisbury Journal’ wrote an article about my Masters story and used the picture of me looking smart, it made the top story online for a day and it was in the print newspaper later that week.
A very proud moment for myself and those associated with the journey, but the initial article had an error that my journalistic eye caught, well to be honest it wasn’t hard to miss.
It wrote “A student from Fordingbridge…” in the top line, which was false, I am from Salisbury, I went to Burgate secondary school, which is in Fordingbridge, so I can see how an error might’ve occurred, but c’mon.
So, before I shared it on my socials, I called the news desk at the Journal and requested an urgent change, politely, and they informed me they would do it as soon as possible…
An hour went by, constant refreshing of the website and no edit was made, so I called them again and this time a different person picked up, I explained the situation and he responded, “Oh, I think they forgot, let me do it now for you”.
Within a minute it was changed.
Picking up the phone actually does get stuff done, who’d figure!
Finally, I could share my achievement on my socials, from which I got lots of congratulations, so thank you.
This weekend I was meant to play my first cricket game of the season, but shock, the weather ruined that.
Early season cricket is bittersweet for me, I obviously love the game, especially after a long winter hibernating from the crap weather, but I also hate playing in the early season because it is cold, wet, just foul, and it usually ends in a broken finger or two.
I did take a trip to Sports Direct to get some hand warmers in preparation, many packs were bought.
On the walk to the shop I was with my mate Freddie, both of us were wearing a Spurs shirt – Freddie is a huge Tottenham Hotspur fan, and it was the North London Derby on Sunday – I was wearing Freddie’s navy blue Spurs shirt… and I rocked it.
We did get some minor abuse on our walk from Arsenal fans, but all is fair in love and war, or something like that.
It was actually the first time I had worn a football jersey; my family have never supported a football team so naturally neither have I, which has actually been nice because I can just enjoy the game and usually I always route for the underdog.
For many years my friends have tried to sway me to support their team, I have mates supporting Chelsea, other supporting Spurs, Man United, Liverpool… Southampton.
But I’ve always denied full support of any club, I only wore the Spurs shirt because the navy blue looked good on me, proper fashion statement.
I am looking forward to putting on my cricket whites this week, hopefully, and that is something I can fully support.
Read last week’s blog here…
