Category: General

So, actually, I’m doing fine. It just took me a little while to work through deeply upset to useless to angry to angry and doing something about it. It appears that this particular lecturer has an unfortunate way with words; and so the anger’s now subsided. That added to her response to my e-mail which suggested that maybe my essay was more in need of tweaks and improvements more than wholesale re-writing again.

*sighs*

I know e-mail is a hard medium to get the hang of, but it’s kind of important to remember that if you don’t phrase things right, all people have got is that bare text in front of them – and it can really suck if that’s not right.

Anyway.

Spent yesterday at a party – drinking into the night, not *far* into the night, but hey. And not really drinking enough – but I had a really good time – chilled out – got to know a couple of the lasses who I’ve been on the course with far better, feel sad that I didn’t get to know them earlier.

Bah.

Tell you one thing though, it’s incredible how much a house says about a person. I walked in and *knew* that the owner of the house was gay. It shouted at me, and I kept saying to myself “don’t leap to conclusions”. Apparently, she is… The thing is, it was clean, the spaces I went into were all the shared ones (she has lodgers – hence this lass living there (see, even still I’m hesitant to go as far as friend, because I really *don’t* know her well enough. She’s dead nice though)).

Yeah. So. But it’s not like my house where there’s lesbian books and magazines, and rainbow flags, and blah, and blah. So what was it that told me? That’s what I don’t get… I just *knew*. Heh, rar for gaydar.

So, I’m trying to work on the other essay. Unfortunately, now, I feel totally incompetent to tackle either. That and just perched on the edge of sliding down into that shiny, shiny water. That pool. That pool of despair that me and my councellor talked about before. Shit.

Really.

My head is filled with the “if this is too hard for you”, from that e-mail last night. I know it’s not too hard for me, but I just don’t get it, and it’s led me to a place where I’ve got the “have I understood this one?” feeling about the other essay. I felt it was a bit too descriptive, and now looking at it I find myself completely unable to work out how to take it forward. I do just feel like curling up in a dark corner and crying – not least because it might be less than 28 degrees in a dark corner somewhere, and if not, I could just fall asleep in front of the fan.

Damnit.

Damnit, damnit damnit. I should have stuck with technical writing, I may have hated it, and it made me miserable, but I didn’t feel *crap* at it.

So, my happy little post last night reflects my mood this morning. I do feel dumb, quite frankly. I thought I’d got this essay, and clearly I haven’t, and apparently it’s not even pass-worthy. I clearly just don’t get what they want.

It actually kpet me awake last night. I spent half the night led there just thinking about it – and now feel crap today as a result. I’ve got this stupid final conference thing this week. Everyone saying how fucking wonderful it is to have finished the course – and I really don’t feel exactly ‘wonderful’ at the moment. Crap. That’s how I feel. Completely crap.

I suppose I should go have a shower and get some more essay writing done, but quite frankly, I don’t know what I’m going to achieve. I do feel – I guess – completely annihilated. I have to admit, I thought I was pretty good at essay writing; marks of 70 odd percent kind of supporting that, so to suddenly find that I can’t even get a pass? One of the interesting things, is both of these essays are completely different to any other essays I’ve had to write through the entire course. They’re first person reflective pieces, which is, I have to admit, something I’ve never had to write as an academic essay before.

Doesn’t stop me feeling completely shit though.

So, I got the response back from my re-written essay. ‘Still needs work on it to pass’. *sigh*.

She’s commented that some things aren’t integrated and that it doesn’t flow well – and she still doesn’t see what changes I’ve made to my practice. I knew it didn’t flow brilliantly, it’s a first draft afterall. But the rest. The rest I don’t get. I’ve just written a very long e-mail, well, moderately long, because I just *don’t* get it.

Perhaps having a resubmission one year from your dad’s death isn’t the greatest time to do things. But I feel alright, really, just I’m beginning to feel really fracking stupid. I know I’m not, but how can this essay be so… I dunno. It’s just.

Argh. I want to curl up in a ball. I’m so frustrated. I thought it was fucking good the first time – but no, it wasn’t right. So I talk to her, she says ‘include this, that, etc’; so I do, now there’s what? Not enough depth? It’s not got enough of the letter q in it? “Transference isn’t integrated”. I talk about it in the reflection, then discuss it in the essay, what more integration does it need?!

This time I thought it needed tidying but nothing that an hour with a highlighter and a red pen wouldn’t cure. But no, apparently I can’t write essays anymore.

“optimise patient flow through bottlenecks using patient templates”

I am by no means what you would call a femme. I don’t grow my nails – an I clip them short (although I do *have* nail files and have used them on occasion). I rarely wear skirts (I do though, if I’m in the mood). And I own no perfume. None. If I want to smell nice when I go out I have a shower ;-)

I think actually, that’s just ‘cos I don’t do that kind of going out. Not for not wanting to, but for not being able to afford it.

Anyhow, the two ways in which I do go for femme is – shaving my legs. I shave my legs. I’m pretty lazy about it, largely going to no effort at all and shaving them only if I’m going to wear a skirt, or go swimming. But I do *like* having shaven legs.

And I also pluck my eyebrows. It’s taken me a while to get over my phobia of hair removal by plucking (it hurts! not much, but I’m not one for inflicting pain on myself) – and for a long time would only get *others* to do it. But recently I’ve managed to inflict basic maintainance plucking on myself. I like the shape :-)

Unfortunately, they’ve got out of hand again and I can’t quite get to the stage of ‘yeah, I’ll re-shape ’em again’. So. Poot. I’ll have to go get that done. Perhaps saturday. Saturday being the intended start of ‘after I’ve finished all my essays’.

I say that, because I should be working on the second 2000 word essay right now. I got up with every intention of doing so, but I have this other phobia. Failing. For one who scored 15% in one exam (I think it was 15 – it may have been 5) at university the first time round (I think I’ve mentioned before though, some chemists were beaten by us biochemists – so I may have done badly, but others did worse!) this may seem somewhat odd. But I do. Or more accurately I have a phobia of trying and failing.

It’s taken me quite a while to accept that not everything I do will come out as well as I’d like it to. It took me long enough to accept that I’m not perfect (close though I am ;-) ). So having tried (granted not that hard) and failed (twice) I am finding these essays hard to tackle. The NP5 one, that wasn’t too hard to tackle – just because it was made clear by the person I spoke to at it wasn’t a bad essay. Just the wrong essay. The other assignment, that I still feel is a pass-essay, but it failed. It’s not good though, it’s clear that I was ‘a bit of a state’ when I wrote it. But I am still – in some ways – a bit of a state. I find it hard to concentrate. As we approach one year from my dad’s death I do find myself thinking about it more and more.

And I still feel tearful. I miss my dad an awful lot – there’s so much I’d’ve shared with him. But, that’s not the way my cookie crumbled. So anyway. I need to write this essay -  but getting into that headspace is harder than I’d like. i just need to concentrate for a few hours. I’ve got sme nice reference, I think, sat here. I do think this is a lousy mdoule and that it’s not well designed – the module handbook is about as useful as a 3 year old dead haddock, and the whole teaching of the module left me completely unsure as to where it was going and how it was meant to fit into the rest of my course.

So, yeah. Anyway. I actually picked up the laptop to start writing it, so I guess I should. I’ve got the Subliminal CD on the HiFi and a 500Mhz processor in my (getting rather hot) hands – I think we can safely say it’s time to write an essay.

I’m on Digg. This is slightly disconcerting – mostly because I only posted the Save-A-Nurse thing out of sheer frustration and desparation. Mind you, I’ve no objection to lots of people seeing the site (*crosses fingers and hopes her host can cope*). My website suddenly feels more public. I realise it’s hardly a popular digg thing, with 3 diggs, but hell, that’s more than I ever expected.

I blame Nikki.

Anyway, the application form for Glasgow is in an envelope on my desk now, waiting for me to wander to the post office on the way to work (student placement work, not real money work, to those who might be new). And then I can get back to waiting for one of the other four… (I shall apply to the others over lunch, yes…)… to offer me an interview. But then who wants a not-yet-qualified student nurse when there’s hundreds of qualified, experienced band 5 nurses out there desparate for jobs.

As one of my student colleagues said “we’re in an enviable position, we haven’t got a job to lose” – but… this is not a good topic to think about before work. No. Positive thoughts, that’s what I need. Positive thoughts… and an omlette.

Damnit, this CD is very silly, the sense of humour is very childish

# Oh jesus christ almighty
# Do I feel alright
# No, not slightly…
The lyrics rhyme in that way that… well… pop music dictates they should. But she manages to get the word mortgage into a song, so deserves respect.

That song seems to sum up my life. Heh.

Anyway, yes. I’ve been bad. I’ve created this:

Aye, it’s a PayPal donation thing. What’s it for… it’s for this. I don’t really expect a lot, especially given I booked myself on a holiday. I was joking about it with Nikki…and then I thought, why the hell not?

Spread the word…

So, I’ve mostly been listening to Rochelle-music for the last few days, at least while at home. My usual Radio 1 type listening habits haven’t changed. And Jo Whiley played this cheery sounding song by Lilly Allen (yeah, annoying myspace page) called LDN (here’s the video which I’ve not managed to suck down onto my computer, annoyingly).
Anyhow, it’s one of those fun things where the music’s desparately cheery but the song’s actually… not. Knowing it was out as a vinyl single I looked for it (it’s just that kind of music) – and… found out it was a limited edition of 500 that sold out within 4 hours… One copy is on e-bay at the moment for… 50 quid. That’s a bit more than I was intending to pay. Anyway so, I’m nabbing  her album, see if it grabs me the way that music does sometimes.

I got home today and there was a big pile of post – and I looked at it, lying face down on the floor and tried not to get my hopes up. I thought ‘I won’t expect there to be an interview doojit there, but it’d be nice if there was’. There wasn’t. *sighs*. It would be nice to at least get to interview in one or two of the posts I’ve applied for. Or any really. It’s starting to do my self confidence not-a-lot-of-good, in the way that job hunting does.

Ah well. Another day, another form. Wish me luck. Lots of it. Good luck. Ideally lorries filled with good luck turning up and deposting fresh gooey loads of good luck all over my car and my front garden. Perhaps filling the bath with it, so I could bathe in good luck…