Got some exam results back

A+s for me! La la la. (Still got a research essay to finish up, mind.)

On Being An Unemployed Bum...

This morning I had my last exam, which I think went well, although I was finding that I was pretty tired. (I didn't sleep well last night, for no particularly good reason.) On the other hand, I'm now free, free as a bird (or will be until I find my next job) and it's quite disorientating. I'm thoroughly used to the idea of holidays having set time limits and for there to always be somewhere something that I need to be doing, and someplace that I need to be. Right now, I don't. I haven't been in this position since the first half of the 90s, when I had long hot summer holidays and afternoons of hanging out after school. I'll let you all know how it turns out.

In other news, I hate the Student Health Service with a white hot passion, and will henceforth attempt to fill out the numerous forms that go into applying for aegrotat only if I think I'm dying. It involves lots of fluffing around talking to people who tell you different information and make you hang around their office for ages and come in for multiple appointments in which you say pretty much the same thing all over again, but you have to turn up for the sake of their precious damn forms. Bah! (I had a cold last week for my last exam and applied for an Impaired Performance Certificate. I suspect now that my exam would have gone better if I hadn't been stressed out by all the fluffing around.)

Exams all done

La la la.

Now I just have to write this Augustine essay and go to a party. Christine Franzen, who is lovely, is giving a party for her Old English students to celebrate the end of the exam. And she brought around apple and St Swithin's cream for good luck this morning before we all started.

I'm on the downhill slope gaining speed. :-)

(Oh, and pack for a work trip up to Auckland. To all the people in Auckland [waves], I'll be there for two and a half weeks from Wedensday evening, catching up would be cool.)

The Phone Is Dead. Long Live The Phone!

I am now in mobile communication again, having gone out to buy a replacement phone in my post exam celebration phase. It has a light. And takes photos. And will hopefully not forget what time it is anytime I should acidentally jar it, all of which are features which my old phone did not have. The shop assistant at Vodaphone was weird though. He had this thing about not meeting my eyes, and seemed in general not particularly interested in selling me anything. Seriously, ReptonInfinity who had come along with me did most of this guy's selling for him.

In other news, has anyone had the experience of studying really hard for an exam and then realising just before it starts that they ought to have been studying for a different exam entirely? I just have - I twigged halfway through yesterday that it wasn't Old English today, it was Latin. So Stupid! Argggh! And it isn't like people don't tell me these things anyway. In the aftermath, and despite the panic, I think I did OK. There were some bits that I didn't do as well as I'd wanted to, but I remembered a lot more of the course work than I was afraid I would. Phew. And now I'm well ahead in study for Old English on Monday. Now that's a relief.

Hang on, my new phone has just rung from the other room...

Last Exam of the Year is Done.

Phew. Not particularly inspired, but it's done.

And may I say that I find essays on comparative literature very tiring to write, which is what I spent most of ENGL308 doing. It isn't enough to understand an individual text, you have to understand two, or five, and then work out patterns and contrasts amongst them until you think your head's going to explode. I'm beginning to miss the halcyon days of 100 level papers, which I never thought I'd say.

Hark, outside there is blue sky.

One exam down...

...which had rather a lot of De Bello Gallico in it, and a lot of stuff about Dido and Aeneas. We didn't just have to translate out of the Aenead, but the sight passage from Ovid was a pretend letter from Dido to Aeneas. It was really sad, too. But we also had the Parrot poem, which is lots of fun.

I have one more exam to study for, in which I will write about Paradise Lost for about 3 hours. Sigh.

I have madeira cake in the oven. I only bake so I can lick the dough out of the bowl, really, but the smell as it cooks is just lovely.

EDIT: Death to typos! Stab! Stab! Stab!!!

No More Exams For Me...

La la la.
(Well, for this term, anyway.)

I also got confirmation of the site that I'm going to study in Greece: Eleusis, otherwise known as that place wot Theseus came from in The King Must Die. I guess I'm going to have to do some more serious reading than an historical adventure novel. ;-) (Although, the lists of sites says that I'm sharing the site, but doesn't say with whom I'm sharing it. Go figure.)

EDIT:
And now I'm back at home having my first cup of tea since 7am this morning. O Tea, how I love thee, let me count the ways...
I spent the afternoon bouncing around the campus (and town) playing Change-Of-Course Hopscotch and making sure that Babe has enough food for while I'm away. On the plus side, this meant some interesting conversations with Robert Easting and Matthew Trundle about a) travelling through Greece and b) what courses are good to take for an easy A. Matthew thought that Salient should run an article on the latter, but declined to comment on his picks for the shortlist. Probably wise of him.

EDIT^2:
Ah, the irony. I was putting off getting changes signed off in the hopes that I'd be accepted into CREW255 and could do it all in one fell swoop. I had to give up on that idea, eventually, because the professor running the Greek Field Trip was complaining about people not setting up their enrolments properly. What just arrived? My acceptance into CREW255. (Which, incidentally, I'm very happy about.)

Existential Angst

So I had this odd feeling yesterday afternoon - "Must Study" which was very weird because I didn't have anything I needed to study for. By some strange plot of the University, two of my courses are now complete - I had final tests for them yesterday morning, a third is virtually complete - the last assignment is going pretty well, and I only have one exam to study for, which isn't for two weeks. So to all those students who are currently rushed off their feet - I feel somehow that I should be one of you, but I'm not, and it was making me jittery.

All better this morning, though. :-)

No more exams for me...

La la la.
Roman history went pretty well. It's weird, I just about always end exams with nothing left to do at the 15 minute mark. This time I made it down the stairs, just about to hand my exam to the invigilator just before the "No Leaving" cutout which meant I didn't have to stare into space for quarter of an hour, but I still find it weird. Good planning? Lack of inpsiration? The crippling effects of writer's cramp? (Ow. I still can't type properly, quite.)

Still, it's over and done with and I'm pretty certain sure I passed the course. On to my summer holiday! :-D

Stephanie

Hooray!

My last exam is now done! I have writer's cramp and came the closest ever to filling my answer book. I also got to take lots of potshots at Pullman, which is always fun. And the fire alarm went off two minutes before the end of the exam. We all just stared at the invigilators in complete shock before being told to leave our scripts where they were and file out for 20 minutes. If it turns out that that was someone's idea of a good time for a fire drill I will be mightily pissed. But that's OK, I'd just finished my last essay and was starting to fill out the front cover, so it all turned out well for me. :-D

Another One Bites The Dust...

ENGL111 is done and dusted. I'm reasonably confident about it. I used all the time I had, not from needing to think but because I had things to say, so I'm not paranoid about all the people who left an hour early. Not paranoid at all. Really.

My first exam was really easy. La la la.

That's it. Nothing else to say.

Love to all,

Steph