Surprise - A look back
Here we are - end of another year. I dislike the repeated 'round-up of the year' news programmes, but nevertheless find them fascinating. Maybe I should attempt one myself, on a personal level. Something a bit distasteful, but clenching my teeth and buttocks, here goes:
The first half of the year: all I remember is the increasing, rising to near-panic, feelings of horror as the exams approached. The all-consuming nature of frantic revision and the knowledge of how little I knew. Many promises were made internally: never again would I leave it so that it was so desperate, etc. But I hadn't - I started in the Christmas holidays, just as I am now....
The horror of the exams in the barn that is the RDS pavillion, the little rickety desks, with their hard chairs, the unpleasantness of finding oneself sitting next to a fidgeter or someone who stinks of fear. This is etched on my memory, but so is the relief of the trial ending and pleasure of the long summer ahead, the ability to travel, see friends, actually read for pleasure again, or not to read, the choices, the choices...
Loved my month in Italy, almost unalloyed delight. OK to be alone, surprisingly, except eating a problem. Inever did grt over that entirely, but it worked out well, as I lost a stone in weight, gained in the first half of the year, as I crouched over the computer/books/notes and cards, rarely stirring for exercise.
Then to learn that I had done well in those terrible examinations, genuinely unexpected results giving me a present of pleasurable pride, which would have been lovely to celebrate with someone, but any old way, a delicious thing to savour as I went on my sight-seeing way. The number of monuments, parts of galleries and sites in Italy that were not available to the public through'restauration', was frustrating, I have to say, maybe up to one quarter of the things on my 't0-see' list were unavailable. Rome was surprisingly delightful, Florence was wonderfully exotic in a miniature way, but noticeably more expensive, and all the places that I didn't visit...Venice, Sienna, hardly bear thinking about.
Later, visiting old schoolfriend in Brittany felt like pure indulgence. Archaeology all around and very little did I do or see, but the bits I did were very special, because of their rarity maybe. I don't know what it is about Brittany, especially the bits off the tourist map, but it marvellously relaxing and I just pottered about, with odd trips to the beach, bits of bricolage and dog-walking and music festival-going that turned out disappointing compared to last year's feast of Bagad.
Returned to do a month of paperwork, catching up on applications and the boring things of maintaining life in a 3-student-household, catching the tail-end of the garden's summer, lots of cleaning up to do and getting ready for 2nd year of course.
The start of the academic year: I may have done better than expected in my exams, (but no prizes, so no swelled head) but this is another ball-game and I feel a weird feeling of having to live up to expectations, entirely my own, which takes a while to get over. The grind of essays reasserts itself, with the usual difficulty in accessing books from the Library and then finding time to read them. The administration is in a tailspin over the course structure and at the end of the year, we have no idea of how next year will be organised, which is very unsettling. Halfway through the course, I am not feeling as happy as I might have expected. I am tired of the relentless intensity of the pressure to produce, when there has not been time to research a topic adequately, let alone inwardly digest the information constantly streamed at us. The recurring thought: 'this is not education, just processing', becoming a disappointing refrain. Occasionally, I really love it, sitting in the Library, even in one of their supremely uncomfortable plastic chairs, just enjoying discovering some unexpected aspect of some topic.
I am poorer this year, buying far fewer books, but reading more, not feeling so lost in the welter of subject-matter, but still struggling to attain the level where I want to be. Still struggling with abstract concepts, critical and analytical thinking and not quite achieving control over them.
Years' end finds me enjoying what is essentially the only break in which to enjoy reading for its own sake, but trying to stay focussed and hope to forestall the awful panic that inevitably builds towards May and the dreaded exams. And then there were the kids.......
The first half of the year: all I remember is the increasing, rising to near-panic, feelings of horror as the exams approached. The all-consuming nature of frantic revision and the knowledge of how little I knew. Many promises were made internally: never again would I leave it so that it was so desperate, etc. But I hadn't - I started in the Christmas holidays, just as I am now....
The horror of the exams in the barn that is the RDS pavillion, the little rickety desks, with their hard chairs, the unpleasantness of finding oneself sitting next to a fidgeter or someone who stinks of fear. This is etched on my memory, but so is the relief of the trial ending and pleasure of the long summer ahead, the ability to travel, see friends, actually read for pleasure again, or not to read, the choices, the choices...
Loved my month in Italy, almost unalloyed delight. OK to be alone, surprisingly, except eating a problem. Inever did grt over that entirely, but it worked out well, as I lost a stone in weight, gained in the first half of the year, as I crouched over the computer/books/notes and cards, rarely stirring for exercise.
Then to learn that I had done well in those terrible examinations, genuinely unexpected results giving me a present of pleasurable pride, which would have been lovely to celebrate with someone, but any old way, a delicious thing to savour as I went on my sight-seeing way. The number of monuments, parts of galleries and sites in Italy that were not available to the public through'restauration', was frustrating, I have to say, maybe up to one quarter of the things on my 't0-see' list were unavailable. Rome was surprisingly delightful, Florence was wonderfully exotic in a miniature way, but noticeably more expensive, and all the places that I didn't visit...Venice, Sienna, hardly bear thinking about.
Later, visiting old schoolfriend in Brittany felt like pure indulgence. Archaeology all around and very little did I do or see, but the bits I did were very special, because of their rarity maybe. I don't know what it is about Brittany, especially the bits off the tourist map, but it marvellously relaxing and I just pottered about, with odd trips to the beach, bits of bricolage and dog-walking and music festival-going that turned out disappointing compared to last year's feast of Bagad.
Returned to do a month of paperwork, catching up on applications and the boring things of maintaining life in a 3-student-household, catching the tail-end of the garden's summer, lots of cleaning up to do and getting ready for 2nd year of course.
The start of the academic year: I may have done better than expected in my exams, (but no prizes, so no swelled head) but this is another ball-game and I feel a weird feeling of having to live up to expectations, entirely my own, which takes a while to get over. The grind of essays reasserts itself, with the usual difficulty in accessing books from the Library and then finding time to read them. The administration is in a tailspin over the course structure and at the end of the year, we have no idea of how next year will be organised, which is very unsettling. Halfway through the course, I am not feeling as happy as I might have expected. I am tired of the relentless intensity of the pressure to produce, when there has not been time to research a topic adequately, let alone inwardly digest the information constantly streamed at us. The recurring thought: 'this is not education, just processing', becoming a disappointing refrain. Occasionally, I really love it, sitting in the Library, even in one of their supremely uncomfortable plastic chairs, just enjoying discovering some unexpected aspect of some topic.
I am poorer this year, buying far fewer books, but reading more, not feeling so lost in the welter of subject-matter, but still struggling to attain the level where I want to be. Still struggling with abstract concepts, critical and analytical thinking and not quite achieving control over them.
Years' end finds me enjoying what is essentially the only break in which to enjoy reading for its own sake, but trying to stay focussed and hope to forestall the awful panic that inevitably builds towards May and the dreaded exams. And then there were the kids.......
posted by ruth @ 3:01 AM
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