Oh hello blog, I have found you again!

So, I have a confession to make. I'm not sure who is reading this, so apologies if you are reading something you have already heard about. But anyway, there has been a reason for my silence on my blog. Well two or three reasons actually. Which I am now about to share.

Firstly, mood wise, January to March are typically the months that I struggle with. And before anyone asks, no it isn't because I have SAD. I asked a MH professional if it was possible and they did not think so. No, the reason is that there are s lot of bad dates for me in terms of things that have gone wrong. So I always get a bit down. Usually it isn't that difficult to pull myself out of. Sadly, I didn't anticipate the second thing.

My grandad was diagnosed with cancer on his birthday. OK, they didn't know it was cancer at that point, they just knew he had a lump in his lung. They diagnosed it not long after. For some reason this hit me really really hard. I think I finally fully realised that the people I am closest to are not going to live forever, they are not indestructible. But dealing with that? For me it was hard. I can still remember when he used to pick me up to hug me. Or when I used to 'help' him dig on the allotment with my brother and sister, given the amount of times we used to get sidetracked by worms, I doubt we did much.

Up until this past few years, I have been really lucky, no one close to me had been seriously ill to this extent, then in the past 18 months I've witnessed two people I work with and love to pieces fight cancer, witnessed my mothers nervous breakdown following my parents splitting up and then seen my grandad get so ill fighting cancer. And you know, it is tough, life is tough. I realise I just need to get on with life with the support and love of friends and family who are there to pick up the pieces and keep you going.

Life, after all is for living not for sitting and waiting for each disaster.

Next blog will be more positive, and may contain pictures to make up for this depressing post.

The end is nigh!

Disjointed blog time! What is new there? Seriously, I like to do this, I decide at 1:20am (on the 29th March) to start writing a post for my blog. You know what will happen next, as I am supposed to be getting up to spend time with my Dad... Yes, I'll start on a deep meaningful point in this blog, go to sleep and come back in a week and have forgotten what the point of this post. Then I will proceed to try and write something, fail miserably and just give up on it.

This is the story of my life. And my lack of attention span! So let us go forth and see how far I don't get. I suspect (yet cannot promise) that this blog may well be a bit long as it is about the majority of my final semester at uni as an undergraduate student.

I cannot believe I have just written 'my final semester at uni as an undergraduate student'. It has taken me a lot longer to get to this point. To be able to say that at roughly 3:40pm on Tuesday 25th May 2013, I will have finished my final exam at university and thus no longer be an undergraduate.

Something does not feel write about posting that statement. It still doesn't feel real. I don't think it will hit until I move back to York (where this post was started, if it has finished whilst still here, I am accepting full responsibility for the snow.)

Don't get me wrong, it isn't the end of my education. But it is the end of my full time education experience. Exactly 20 academic years after starting at Poppleton Road Primary School.

But yes, I am reaching the end of another era in my life, and I have yet to see where I go next, I have one plan, doing an MA, but there are other plans if that doesn't happen. I'm not going to lie, there is a part of me that is feeling sad and upset as this experience draws to a close. But also, this part of me is glad that I pushed myself into doing a degree. Even though at times I have felt that I can not do it, that I am not intelligent enough to do it (thank you lack of self esteem!), I have managed to get to the final term.

Something slightly odd about knowing that you only have roughly a month of stressful reading, coffee drinking and forgetting how to spell the words 'the', 'and' and similar words you have known how to spell for longer than you care to remember!

I've loved every minute of it, seriously I have.

I don't want it to end.

Running the first York Marathon with a 6ft Fox and other tales...

Yeah, you read that right! I am running York's first ever marathon on Sunday 20th October 2013 with Sval, aka, the White Fox of York!

This is what happens in my life, odd little things like this occasionally! Usually in a moment of pure madness before I realise exactly what I have done. I think I have yet to realise that a marathon is 26 miles long....

Wait, I have realised. Oh why am I doing this to myself!

For my more observant stalkers/followers/procrastinators, you will have notice that I have failed to update this blog as often as I promise myself. Mainly because I keep forgetting about it, but also because I get distracted by things, such as uni work and sleep. Oh and food!

Moving on, let us go forth and deal with some other exciting (to me) news, which as usual seems to be revolving around uni. Because that is my life. Well kind of, it has expanded a little bit. So anyway, the stuff you are about to be told may not be in chronological order, but since when have I ever done anything in a logical way?

My life is fully revolving around Doctor Who again. And I mean fully! If I'm not in lectures/seminars/doing prep for seminars/asleep/eating/etc I am doing my dissertation. Therefore, EVERYTHING in my life is now related to Doctor Who, especially my thoughts. Which is entertaining. For me, not you maybe!

AND next week, I may or may not (I am) going to Cardiff to the Doctor Who exhibition with Lauren, and I am EXCITED! This is of course all for my dissertation research and not for our entertainment at all.... Yeah I don't believe me either! More to follow on this after the trip!

The snow has been a bit erratic in Lincoln, it comes, it goes, it comes back again, it goes away slowly again and is supposed to come back again soon. I have enjoyed it, especially on Friday when I spent a few hours with Rebecca firstly just out walking in it, then acting our mental ages and making snowballs, snowball fights and both falling flat on our faces when she ran up behind me. But I do not enjoy it being this erratic. Either stay or go!

Last week also brought a highly emotional week for me. Based on my MA interview. It turned into one of those meetings where I struggle to pay attention and communicate the points I wanted to say. I walked out of that meeting convinced that I wasn't going to get onto the MA at all, nor be offered a place. Luckily, after two days of stressing out over how rubbish the interview went, I have been given a conditional offer to do the MA part time (I MUST GET MY 2:1 NOW!).

Speaking of which, I got two of my three essays back and although I didn't do too well on Shakespeare (52%), I did do a lot better on my Sci-Fi than I thought (64%). I was disappointed by the mark for Shakespeare, but I know where I went wrong, and it is only worth 40% of the module so the world is not going to end because of that score. I haven't got Georgian back, mainly because I am in denial and convinced I have done badly in it and really don't want to know. Which isn't the wisest thing, I am sure! I should get it back next week.

Semester 2/B/whatever the uni now call it, is in full swing, and I only have one new module this term. Literature, Film and Gender which has replace Sci-fi. And I am enjoying it so far. There is a lot of stuff that seems interesting to me. And, oddly, I am starting to think of ideas of things I could do for my project, not something that I do often this early on in the semester.

And a final uni related note, operation get over presentation phobia is now in full swing. My S&G mentor has started getting me to speak aloud stuff to get me to be able to do my presentations for both the rest of my undergrad career and my postgrad career. I am going to get over it! I AM! I am also challenging myself to speak in all seminars at least once, which has been a bit hit and miss. But I am getting there slowly.

So, non-uni side of life, I've started helping out at Scouts this week (the 9th Lincoln (Salvation Army) Scouts to be precise), it is a small troop and I've only met about half of them so far, but I think I will enjoy helping out, never really worked with that age group before. Currently sat looking at the programme I was given and it looks like they are doing a lot of exciting things. Also, I am apparently a lot more talkative than I realise and settled into helping out quickly.

And on that note, time to go back to Doctor Who....

2013

Ok, So I've kind of failed at posting recently. I get distracted a lot. But also, I don't know if you really need an in depth description of me working, attempting to sleep and driving places. Which is the jist of my life for  the last few weeks of 2012.

Saying that, I will do a brief update on adventures from my last post and over Christmas this coming Sunday  and I do intend to try and post a bit more regularly from the week after that onwards.

2013 is in full swing now, it is a big year and already a lot is happening, so posts will occur.

Happy New Year!

The first week with no teaching!

So, good points to this week.

1- I finished my Shakespeare essay early! Although it was slightly over the word count, but I have managed to cut it down to be under the upper word count limit.
2- Cinema to see Nativity! 2 With Jasia and Chrissie.
3- I handed my essay in a whole day early- never done that before, and probably never will again!
4- Late night trip to Grimbsy and back to see the shooting stars that occurred on Thursday.
5- Officially taken the first steps needed to get over this phobia of presentations! Working on it with my study coach in the new year.
6- Applied to do a MA in Lincoln next year.

Bad points to this week;
1- Between Sunday and finally collapsing with exhaustion on Wednesday I had a delightful 8 hours sleep. This sleep pattern of over and under sleeping continued for the rest of the week.
2- I have realised just exactly how far behind with my dissertation I actually am and have been in 'blind panic' mode for the past week or so.
3- I had to ask for an extension on my SF and Georgian. It isn't for lack of trying, its the lack of concentration and sleep that are really starting to get to me.
4- I broke (read bit) all my nails so they are really short again!
5- I am really failing at keeping up to date with posting in here weekly, this blog is over a week late, it should have been posted on the 16th, instead, HAPPY CHRISTMAS. Therefore. One of my new years resolutions is to try and get back on top of it. I'm going to set a specific time on a Sunday evening to sit and write it.

The lovely end to the semester!

Sitting in the floor in a seminar, around a Christmas table cloth with food and wine whilst also listening to people in the seminar room next door singing christmas carols is both really surreal and a really, really nice way to finish a semester.

Yes, I did it, got through the first semester, now to just do the actually essays!

So week 11, was a bit of an odd week, because there was very little being taught. Mainly because it was the end of the semester. And I was actually a little sad that the SF module is over. I loved every minute of that module, even when looking at the texts that I did not enjoy. Not something I say oftern.

Also, the MA talk happened on Thursday. The word presentation was repeated a lot. As was the words 'I need to get over this phobia now!' Mainly because this MA is something I really, really want to do and I am a bit sick of allowing this irrational phobia to rule my life.

And that folks, is my plan for the new year. Get over this bloody phobia.

The weekend also saw the flat having our christmas dinner, which was a nice way to spend our last afternoon as a flat and what little free time I now have until christmas day istelf. For it is the season of essays, essays and more essays!

Speaking of which... I should go do some...

Two for the price of one!

I'm doing two weeks of blogging in one, simply because I didn't have the time to do the one for the week before.

So here be week 9- The week of the trip home to York and all that jazz.

So York was fun. I did no uni work, as usual. Instead I got highly stressed driving up the A1, being surrounded by lorries. Loads of lorries. About a million or 10. One of those two figures I forget!

Returning to Lincoln I was yet again surrounded by a million or 10 lorries. I blame this on the fact I travelled too and from Lincoln in the middle of the day, which always seems like a sensible idea at the time. And never is. But then again, it is the A1 so...

I am also known as the cause of many broken washers in my family right now, well OK I'm not, but I returned to the story of my aunt, grandma and mothers broken/faulty washers. It reminded me of the time that I went from broken heating at uni to broking heating in York. Not fun.

Apart from that, week 9 was a week of reading nothing but Shakespeare and gender stuff in preparation for my presentation

And here is week 10- The week of Shakespeare, insomnia and panic attacks

Presentation did not happen. Because, well I freaked out. I got to the seminar fully intending to do this presentation, I'd prepared it to the best that I could (although I did finish at 4am.) I even went to the seminar intending to do it, but my brain just let the fear kick in which meant that it just did not happen. I panicked a lot, and spent the entire seminar outside controlling a panic attack. First one I have had like that for ages.

And this loss of confidence, pretty much set the tone of the rest of the week. Spent most of the night being unable to sleep and listening to my brain telling me that I was a bit of a failure with university work, that I was going to fail and I might as well quit while I was ahead.

This ladies and gentlemen, is what my brain likes to do a lot, it hates me! That and exhaustion. I think I averaged about 4 hours sleep a night this week, if I was lucky.

However, as I do try to not be so down all the time, so here are some positives;

On Monday and Tuesday Vicky and myself went to see some Shakespeare plays that some drama students at our uni put on. We saw Troilus and Cressida, which is AMAZING! I understood a lot of the references that had been made in it. And then we saw A Midsummer Nights Dream, which was also good. Glad I went.

I also further developed some essay ideas that had been hiding away in the back of my head for SF and Georgian.

Also, I ended up back in York Saturday/Sunday to pick up some stuff I needed for an essay, and nearly blinded myself in the process of driving down the A57!

So, yeah that is all I remember from these two weeks, I need to get back into the habit of writing these on Sundays again!