Over the last few days, my mood has been slowly getting better, calmer, and happy. Almost certainly a hormonal type thing, but combined with general life niceness. We’ve had a few gorgeous days in Exeter, and the beginning of spring makes me feel very positive – looking out the window of our manky kitchen to see a cluster of snowdrops is somewhat reassuring.
I went home on friday; the train journey home provided me with a good 3 hours to sink into a FICTION book; something I’ve not been able to let myself do for ages and really enjoyed it. Once Kay has finished with it, I’m going to borrow the first book of Northern Lights trilogy which I’ve been meaning to read for ages.
It was nice seeing my family again; my mother seems so much more alive at the moment, with all her new friends and interests – and in less than a month’s time she’s off to Australia with her sister. Andrew bought me birthday presents (or, to be more exact met me in town to buy me something) so I’ve got 3 cds I found in a charity shop, a -nice- flesh coloured pencil, and a ink pen.
I also had a good bit of time to sit in my room at home and start working on my next essay – I need to present it on tuesday, so time’s starting to run short!
I managed to get 75% for my last cognitive science essay, on language and thought which I am REALLY chuffed with – especially since it’s worth 7.5 credits by itself!
I came to the conclusion that I’m the kind of person who CAN do well, IF (and only if) I work as hard as a can – in which case, if I’m lucky, I’ll -just- get the top marks. This sort of situation is more annoying than you might think, since getting -less- than the top level is intensely frustrating since you can not help but shake the feeling that if you could have worked just a -little- harder…
On the flip side, I’m actively worrying less about work. My approach now is to try and methodically get through what I can, but give myself breaks and go out and do things even if it means pulling an all-nighter at the end and losing a few marks. I’m learning and experiencing more valuable things at university than simply work.
As to the work aspect itself, I know I’m heading to the outermost limits of what could be classified as ‘part of my course’, but I’m not worrying about that either. For once in my life I want the chance to pursue my intellectual interests, and if university is not the chance to do it then I don’t know what will. And no, I don’t want to be a postgrad! 🙂 🙂
To see a dodgy ‘ported from wordpro’ htm version of my essay, click here.