the sweet student life

Today - or tonight - as I write this I have 26 days left as a Durham University student, and only now am I starting to feel like one:) I am writing and enjoying it. Making trips to the library to get books, not just to print letters to friends, though every single time I've been up there it's been closed, but that just adds some extra interesting typical student stress. I might wanna check out their opening hours. I think at the beginning of my year here I may have bought a notebook and maybe a pencil, meaning I started off feeling wee bit student-y. But the feeling soon passed as did my enthusiasm for what I was doing. I have written abt how all my modules were cancelled and I wasn't very thrilled abt it and didn't really want to study blablabla so I'll not mention it again. But that was basically my experience, which I clung to, until recently.

But now I am loving it:) Maybe it's simply that I work well under pressure. Seems to me most people I know do their best work that way. Many people at any rate ... wait, maybe just my older sister? Anyway, she and I work well under pressure.

I am writing loads and enjoying it. That is mainly bc I am writing the fun chapters, the "human side" ones. No stats yet. But I am writing, and I wasn't really before. My lovely supervisor told me I don't have to reach the 40,000 word mark, but I ought not to go over. There was a time, not so very long ago, when I thought I'd never make it to even 20,000. (There also was a time when I thought I'd reached 20,000 words but had in fact just written 3,000 but as it's too embarrassing to mention, I won't) Now I worry I am about to write too much. It's a much nicer thing to worry about, I think, though editing and deleting isn't great if you like what you've written.

Nick suggested that had I read loads on the subject before Christmas, flown home around that time and done my field work, then come here to write it up, and then gone back to Iceland this summer to follow up on my research I might have had a better time here, study-wise. I think he's right. I did have a good time in most every other way, though:) My tuition fees and lack of gumption to pack up and go home when my dept "failed" me brought me an exiting & lovely future, heehee. I needed a lot of time to digest what I was reading and getting into. Social science(s) are new to me. Dunno what to do with them, or didn't know anyway. Theories and stuff that matter?!?! Wazzup with that? Theories that deal with people, not just words on pages, artistic expressions and ideas, like in my Humanities background. Nice:)

So, I would likely have been able to write more earlier on if I'd been able to apply what I was reading to actual people, like the wonderful folk who helped me out back home by allowing me to pick their brains. It all makes sense now. It's coming together. And I am happy about that.

Now, whether the chapters I am currently writing are any good is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, or whatever. That is sorta beside the point for me right now. It's important but ... ok, it's very important and I am very scared that I won't actually pass. I will worry about that enormously in October, but not now. Ok?

I guess the point is that in doing my Masters here at Durham Uni I've actually learned something, and not just what I came here to learn. I've learned loads about the topic I chose, but even more about me, my poor work techniques and how to improve them, the way I register, digest & eventually interpret info and important materials, what gets me started on writing, and what not to do ... next time around!

:)