The first weekend

Well, I am back home after a quite exhausting weekend of lectures and tutorials for the GDL. Am pleased to report that it was actually very enjoyable!!! The accomodation we were allocated was fairly dire, and the food was .....well it wasn't really food.

The first day was particuarly tiring as we studied until 9.15pm - making it a very long day. That covered English Legal Method and generally was interesting, although there was a tendency in our tutorial group to digress somewhat.

Saturday was much better - another long day of non-stop tutorials from 9 til 5 in Law of Tort and European Law. I really enjoyed both, though was rather concerned when a tutor asked if we knew our left from our right - flashback to primary school moment there!!

The highlight for me was the Law of Contract tutorials - fab tutor and really engaging debate as a group. This could become my favourite subject which I really wasn't expecting.

Overall I think that all of us realised just how challenging it is to study the GDL by distance learning. As well as having to cope with full time work and families, we also have to commit a lot of time to personal study and have very limited contact with the tutors.

Another highlight was Saturday evening when 7 of us decided to pretend to be "real" students and explore our university town. We had a wonderful conversation in a lovely little pub based around the Donoghue Stevenson case which led to one person's comment - "what if Nobby's Nuts negligently filled a pack with scorpions, but the scorpions actually whispered out of the packet we aren't nuts, we're scorpions" the following debate was very interesting, if slightly coloured by the fact we had all consumed a rather large amount of beer.

Unfortunately I was still somewhat under the influence for the law of contract tutorial but still managed to come up with some succinct and relevant arguments - hey if I can do that inebriated I have high hopes for my sober contributions.

All in all, have met some very interesting people from all over the world, all of whom are approaching the GDL from different backgrounds and with different plans for their future careers. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life. Can't wait for our second weekend now which is, unfortunately, not until December. Until then, head in the books, English Legal Method assignment to complete and 4 "practise" courseworks.....think the next venture into beer drinking will probably be when I am back at uni!