It’s finished. The sequence is complete. The train has left the station. The end is no longer nigh. My work here is done.
I’m talking of course about my Uni assignments. I’ve now finished everything for this, my first, semester. I have to say that I’m feeling a lot more positive about my course than I did my last time at Uni. I’m actually really looking forward to next semester as i’ll be getting into the meat of games design, exploring more of my writing and doing film analysis.
The past two days have been quite stressful, pull up a chair and i’ll explain. Biscuit?
I finished my work before the weekend and spent sunday tweaking everything – checking my references, font, line spacing etc. I stayed up the whole night printing everything off: a portfolio of 8 assignments, my revised story and a critical reflection for my writing class, and a portfolio of 20 assignments and a revised essay for my media studies class. All in all I counted about 190 pages – that has to be atleast half a small tree, I feel terrible! After they were all printed I organised them in folders (I made rather nice dividers for the media studies one using photo paper) and finally put them aside. Needless to say I drank most of my remaining whiskey at this point!
It was about 8am by now so I had a shower and got dressed then lay on my bed until about 10am. I didn’t really sleep as I had my music blaring and I wanted to stay awake. By lunchtime I made my way to the enquiry desk and handed it all in.
That was the easy part.
As well as finishing my own work, I spent the night talking to my classmate on Skype. He seemed a bit confused so I offered to print off all the assignment cover sheets and table of contents we were meant to use and arranged to meet him on monday to help him put it all together.
So monday, I get a call from my flatmate just as I’m handing my work in saying he needs urgent help. I finish what I’m doing and rush back to find him trying to do a few things in MS Word (page break, tables) that I show him, then he needs to use my internet to get some book references (something about his Chinese computer changing Google UKs results?). So I let him fiddle about with it while I try to sleep (I’m extremely tired by this point).
The sleeping doesn’t go well and soon my MS Word know-how is called into question again. Same as me, his deadline is 4pm and sometime around 2pm my classmate phones me to meet up. Torn between the two (my flatmate still trying to finish his essay) I help my flatmate finish up and at 3:30ish we leg it to the library. My flatmate goes off to hand in his work and I nip upstairs to find my classmate.
I find him queuing for the only available printer, trying to get his work printed out. After what seems like an age we literally grab the sheets of paper and leg it across campus to the enquiry desk. My classmate isn’t the only one who’s cutting it fine and the queue for the desk stretches the length of the building (about 30 metres?). While we queue we try to put his work in folders.
It doesnt go well (i’m sorry to say my hole-punching went a bit squint) but in the end we qet his work into a clamp type folder. We were the last ones to hand in, a guy with a box waiting impatiently nearby, but we got there. Finally I can head back to the flat to sleep and I tell my classmate to get to uni early the next day (the deadlines were split over two days for two classes but I handed both in on monday).
The next day being today, tuesday, I awake sometime around noon. I had trouble sleeping the whole night, waking up three times feeling very thirsty, and I had dreams about someone trying to kill me again which is always nice. No messages from my classmate and I don’t need to give him anything so I assume all is well. I take my time, showering, listening to music, savouring the peace and quiet. I put some washing in the machine (i’ve discovered pressing the dryer button twice gives extra time!) and decide to head to a local retail park to maybe spend my christmas vouchers in HMV and Virgin.
Minutes from the train I get a call from my classmate to say he’s running late. He’s waiting for a bus and it’s now 3:15pm (I had completely lost track of time as tends to happen when you have no commitments to keep). So I about turn and get him the required forms for submission. I meet another classmate who’s handing in his work and we have a chat.
My classmate shows up and we leg it to my flat (fearing the library will be busy again). 3:40pm and we start printing (this is the 20 assignments thing!!). As fate would have it my ink ran out – it had been half full when I finished but I guess that wasn’t a true indication? Totally screwed for time, 3:55pm, my flatmate leaves to hand in atleast one part of his work, the essay, which counts for 60% I think. I don’t know if he made it.
Typical of me, I feel terrible, but really I did all I could and I have to query why he left it all so late? We both had the same time and, yes I finished only the day before, but I wasn’t rushed. It’s at times like this you remember what they tell you in lecture one: plan ahead ‘cos computers are fickle!
I’ve felt very tense and frustrated for most of the day, on what was meant to be my relaxation day. I went to Asda this evening with my flatmate. He had his last exam today so we are both officially FREE until February!!=) I had fajitas for dinner and we played some football. Now i’m just chilling out to my Feel Good Mix in iTunes..what a day..where’s that whiskey?
January 9th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Argh, I wrote a long comment and it disappeared.
Damn blogger. Anyway, lucky, its all over, yay. Unfortunately it isn’t over for me..yet. I’m hoping to get more done today after I’ve had a quick shower – I did the essay intro and then I’m going to do the last portfolio task. I’m feeling more optimistic although it will require a lot of hard work to get this pesky essay done, but I have a good idea of what I’m going to write anyway, so no worries there.
I had some problem with one of my classmates too on Monday, one emailed me saying she had written no notes for the methods module so needed my notes for the portfolio task. There was no way to photocopy them all as some are 10 pages long so I encouraged her to get in touch with her supervisor and the module co-ordinator (both are the same person). As a consequence, I am feeling a bit guilty and concerned about her. Oh dear.
Miss you muchly and looking forward to seeing you
xxxxx