Catch Up

When you can’t do question 1i), let alone 1ii), let alone questions 2) or 3), and have been trying to do so for over an hour – and when you couldn’t do the last homework either but had to work through with the solutions – and when you don’t even understand the lecture notes four lectures in – …

Time to blog!

Erm, so yes! We’ve had internet for a while now, but let’s just say that fourth year doesn’t get any less busy than the previous three. That’s in a good way, mostly, but the new routine and the new house and the new people-circumstances are still taking some getting used to. I am still trying to learn to spend time on my own in the house positively, and more importantly I am still trying to learn how to work again, as it’s something I basically haven’t been doing for eighteen months, and, well, you just get out of the habit. I’m doing a lot better than I thought I would, actually, but I think I still give up too easily when the going gets tough – and that’s still way too often. The pressure’s on, to say the least.

In other news, J continues to be wonderful, I’m doing quite a bit with Quaker Meeting (and seriously considering applying for membership; explanation may follow in a subsequent post), and my Mum thinks I’m bipolar (, which I think is utter rubbish). I got out my clarinet the other day and had no lip muscles left whatsoever.

And that’s about it, really! I need to go and make lunch and head out. Oh, except that when I have a chance I will take some pictures of my new house, because it’s kinda cool, and some pictures of the garment that I made the week before coming back to Durham and am so incredibly proud of!

Still At Home

I am ill. Not scary swine flu ill, but ill enough to feel pretty shit and not to have used the train ticket that I had booked for going up to Durham on Saturday. This sucks, although as lectures don’t start ’til Thursday and I was planning on avoiding all things Fresher-related anyway, I guess the timing could be worse.

My Dad is convinced that I have brought on the illness by anxiety, and as such the path to getting better is to leap out of bed, (wo)man up, and deal with it accordingly. I am yet trying to convince him that as much as there may possibly have been anxiety-related incidents involving crying and shaking and burying into duvets, a bug is a bug and the prospect of travelling again is even less inviting if I haven’t first got rid of it, which I can’t do by willpower alone. Grump. Parents. If he’s trying to persuade me that staying at home isn’t such a great option after all, he’s doing a bloody good job of it.

However the upside of one of the above incidents is that after yet another well-intentioned invitation to Talk About Things To Us, I am increasingly sure that I am going to take a gap year after university. Or a gap six months – whatever – because the wonderful freedom about leaving the educational system is that no longer will my life have to revolve around September starts and May exams. Maybe I’ll work, maybe I’ll travel, or maybe I’ll just stay at home and remember what bonfire smoke smells like in south Birmingham on November 5th, but what I will not do is refuse to give myself time and space to breathe. Maybe, just maybe, my ideal job will come up in the meantime and I’ll go straight to there.

But I won’t have to, because I will be free! I think that I need that light at the end of the tunnel.

Reflection

Just a quick note to say that I got my results t’other day. After several incorrect mental calculations, I have finally swallowed my pride, used a calculator, and come out with an average of 60.5, or a borderline 2:1. Combined with last year’s marks, I now have a degree average of 69.9, or an infuriating 0.1% off a first.

I really don’t know how to feel about that. My head is telling me that I’ve done better that I can ever have hoped to have done, and that I owe one hell of a lot to one friend in particular, S, who has supported me through the year both in and out of lectures and has gone way beyond the call of friendship in doing so. He deserves every single percent of his own 96 average! I also know that on top of that I will have a good case for mitigation*, and hey, a 2:1 is perfectly respectable.

Despite all that, though, I’ve just been left feeling a bit numb. On a normal year I’d've missed the first – and be gutted. There’s still a nagging part of me that wonders just how much of it was due to the year and just how much I’d've done poorly anyway, and there’s the disappointment at the exam marks for a couple of modules in particular. 48 on Maths Teaching. 48! At least it was brought up to 69 by the coursework, but still…! On the plus side though that’s the first (and last) essay exam that I will have done since A-Level, so it may just be a question of live and learn.

I suppose that what I’m really terrified of is having a similar experience next year. I always said that if I didn’t come out with a first class degree then it wouldn’t be the end of the world – and yes, I do still firmly believe that. It’s just that if I don’t do as well as I might have wanted, I want it to be because the Maths was too hard and not because other shit got in the way. If that makes sense?

Year closed, eh?

x

*Although after a close friend’s recent experience, I wouldn’t trust mitigation to get me anything. I’m certainly not banking on it.

The End Of The Tunnel

Two more exams to go, both tomorrow. Nearly there, so nearly there, so nearly there…!

Progress: 3

See Progress: 2. Only minus the Galois Theory because that happened this morning.

Only one exam down, and already I’m basically too tired to care. I should have been revising this afternoon for tomorrow’s exam. Instead, I… well, I haven’t been revising, put it that way. Sorry to inflict more exam-related gloom upon your feeds. I figured it was mildly preferable to doing so on Facebook, and, and… And just phmeh.

I reckon I passed this morning. I didn’t do well, but I should have 40%, so that’s the main thing. I think part of this apathy towards revision is that while I know that I don’t mean it in the long run (and certainly won’t mean it if I have to retake the year), there’s a tiny part of me that wants to fail, just to say “I told you so”. Hell, at least failing the year’s catagorisable. There’s a tick for your box.

Idiocy

I am so completely dippy at the moment it’s not true. Tonight was the Choral Soc Exec handover meal. I only realised when I saw some photos of the said meal being put on Facebook just now and I suddenly thought, “Shit, I was meant to be at that!”. Normally I’d've remembered in time to throw a nicer top on before heading out or at least half way through the night, even if it hadn’t featured in the evening’s immediate plan.

Then again, I probably still wouldn’t have gone even had I realised sooner, given the circumstances (although with texted apologies, admittedly). Sometimes people are just more important.

Oops…

Protestation

I don’t want to go back.

Please don’t make me go back.

I don’t want to go back to work, and stress, and panic, and a horrendous set of exams which I’m probably going fail most of anyway, and an essay deadline, and backache, and worse backache, and food shopping stress, and a messy kitchen, and other people being stressed, and being trapped in my room when I’m having a dip, and end of things sadness, and summertime sadness, and small place claustrophobia, and not having any nice bread ‘cos I won’t have time to get any, and pretentious people irritation, and mitigation forms, and having to leave our house, and not enough time, and finalist goodbyes, and no-one there to just talk to ‘cos they’ll all be working, and doctor’s appointments, and counselling appointments, and what do you do in a relationship during third-yr exams?

x

:-(

Premonition

I.Hate.Number.Theory.So.Much.It’s.Not.True

Not in theory, exactly, but bloody hell, in practice… This is the first of six modules that I am working through incrementally, the start of the first of six modules and there’s no way in hell that I can pass this exam in the time I have. If I can, it will be to the cost of other modules.

And if I’m going to fail anyway, is there even any point in trying?

Boolean Logic

I’m well or I’m ill, it would seem.

So that means that I’m either well and can take six third-year exams in eight days as normal, or I’m ill so I have to take the year out (- nice sympathetic response from the university there). I’m clearly well enough to go to lectures, so I must be well enough to sit down in the library and enthusiastically figure out all the stuff I have thus far failed to think about. I’m with it enough to hold a coherent conversation most of the time, so of course I’m completely sorted when it comes to stressful itineraries and on-the-spot decision making.

I’m tons better on citalopram than I was on fluoxetine – so now I’m completely better, full stop, and don’t have to have allowances made for me any more, because being better means that there are blue skies and happy sunshines and shiny silver bits floating about in the trees, and no lows, and no anxiety, and everything’s normal again so I can get on with life. Green spots, guys. Green spots.

Sometimes I think that people are simply trying to persuade themselves that it’s that easy, because they don’t want to have to think about or deal with the alternative. I have a lot of sympathy, I really do.

x

In other news, I haven’t had counselling for well over a month now because the already struggling counselling service has two people (including the one I see normally) on long-term sick leave. Which kinda sucks all round, really.

‘appenings

Things what’s been ‘appening recently, in no particular order. It’s a bit of a long’un, I warn you:

- At about half twelve this lunchtime, I experienced a moment of real triumph when I finally got my basic GUI to work. No glitches, no incorrect syntax, no user-traps, and a beautiful, beautiful programme that does exactly what it’s meant to (and I even know why!). I had a bit of advice in the early parts from a CompSci friend who has a rather quicker grasp of object handling than I, but we both agreed that him pointing me in the direction was a much better approach than him actually doing the coding for me – and I designed and built the actual interface part myself from start to finish. Which I have to say I’m pretty proud of, considering that I’m by no means the fastest coder and that this is where I am only twelve hours after first sitting down and going, “So, MATLAB….”

I would post a picture, but unfortunately I only have access to the software on the university computers so it may have to wait for a future occasion. I know, I know!

It’s not the end of the road by any means, but what’s left to do simply involves modifying and titivating what I already have – all the code is essentially written. Oh, and then I have to make it into a 15-minute presentation for seven days’ time. And write a 4000-word essay… but hey, I’ll be in a much stronger position to do that with the programme there.

x

- In a related vein, I’ve come to a decision of sorts with regards to my degree. And I guess that the above paragraphs tell you that decision already – I’ve decided to carry on as best I can. The citalopram has by no means made things go away as such, but it does seem to have made me sufficiently stable to contemplate thinking about things again, even if to a slightly reduced capacity.

The fact is that the university have left me with no choice but to fight or accept failure. And I am going to be of the ones who fights their damn hardest.

When my parents came up ten days ago, my Mum and I discussed strategies – for working, and modules, and the like. As a result, I have now spoken to two lecturers about Stuff – about the fact that I’ve been struggling, about why I haven’t handed in any homeworks this year, and about the fact that it will take an absolute miracle for me to pass this year and that any help would be appreciated. In addition to the fact that my Maths Teaching lecturers already knew*, that covers half my modules. Well, two and a half, anyway, and that includes the second half of Number Theory which is the one that I really can’t do.

x

- As of a few weeks ago, I have two new housemates and a prospective house for next year, which is nice. I’ve met the second housemate twice (!) and have yet to see the house, but I’ve been very nicely guaranteed a bed in college should that all fall through, and it’s quite nice to have some security. Great as college was in my first year I really don’t want to move back in, and at one point I thought that I was going to have no choice – and the one thing worse than living in college would have been living with people who didn’t know me or my situation.

x

- I was sitting in one of the IT classrooms earlier, playing about with bits of code and trying to work out why I couldn’t assign a value to my global variable (I figured it out eventually**) and idly watching the screen of the lad just in front of me (yes, bad Lucy, I know). He was on Google Maps. He typed in somewhere in Cumbria, and zoomed in really close on to what looked like a school building. He paused there for a while, then scrolled the map along, following a series of roads along a particular route.

I know where he was scrolling. He was scrolling home. I had to look away because I was in danger of being overwhelmed by the homesickness that prompts me to do the same thing.

It’s funny how similar we all are :-)

x

*Reason 1: Summative coursework. Reason 2: I was in close contact with large numbers of school kids six days into fluoxetine. I mean, come on?!

**Two identical variable names, one global, one local. Yes, that was very stupid.