Wednesday, January 30, 2008

She returns hurtling at a thousand miles of an hour…

Many thanks to my startling scribe, Toddy. He has provided this blog with the most beautiful writing it has seen for a while. I salute his eloquence and his inspiring style. Here's to many more guest posts by him when I am otherwise occupied or out of commission.

I broke my arm. I fell off a balance board on to my right side really heavily on New Years. I swear I hadn't had an alcoholic beverage. It was at the start of my second party of the evening. It seemed fine. Then it swelled up overnight, and Tom took me to casualty on New Years Day. We were there for five hours. He must love me.

Chaos and mayhem ensued. I broke it at the worst possible time. I was half way through essay writing period. I had an exam to sit and a gobbet to translate. I did everything I could. I went to the uni. I got extensions, I petitioned for scribes to help me get things in for the deadlines. Unfortunately, even though I pay lots of money to go to this uni, my department refused to pay for any other help except a scribe for my exam. The scribe was appalling. She'd never done it before and could only type with two fingers. She clearly wasn't an arts scholar as she couldn't spell simple biblical names. Dictating to a scribe is disconcerting enough, let alone under exam conditions.

I'm not moaning that much. I was grateful for the help I did get, but considering my fees, and how students on other courses pay the same for far more contact hours, practicals and field trips, I feel a little bit of ill will is allowed. What was even more astonishing is the way my friends and family rallied around me. Many people have sat and typed for me, helped me revised, cooked for me, cleaned for me, organized and planned for me and looked after me and listened to me moan. Peter, Toddy, Yellow, Spanky, Dave, Matt, Cecil, Hannah, Dad, all the chaplaincy people, my grandparents and Tom. Thank you. Thank you for helping. I feel like I can get through this. Oh and anyone else I've not thanked.

One essay is done. The other one is half way there, and I will write more since I seem to be in a writing mood. Then next week sees me writing my gobbet. The weeks have flown away from me. I have a dinner party to cook for this weekend. Then on the 5th I have an interview at UCL for their MA in Museums Studies. I'm extremely nervous. Extremely nervous. I have no idea what they will ask. The guy interview me literally wrote the text book so I am going to swot up on that. Growing up scares me somewhat. I just want to get through this last term, write an interesting dissertation, and start finding myself again. What a cliché ? University has been killing me in someways, as I feel like I have no time to do creative things, the things that I enjoy the most and make me happiest.

When I try to explain this to people, they quite often tell me that I just need to find a proper job and make some money. I know little shreds of me will die if I have to do that. I live frugally now, and won't need much more money once uni is over. I want to go to work smiling as often as possible and being satisfied with what I do. My mum and dad do that quite often. I'm a realist, I know it can't happen all the time, but I know that their jobs fulfill them. That's all I want.


 

Picture and more lightweight fluff to come when I have it. All I have today is words about confusion.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Make a complaint about the scribe's competence before your exam results get released (or ask for it to be put in as mitigating/extenuating circumstances or something).

In my first year, I got asked whether one of my carers could scribe for an exam. I then pointed out that it needed to be someone who could read all the latin/greek etc. properly, so ended up with a lecturer doing it...but only because my School agreed with me. A lot of people get random scribes, and it's not good enough...