boo-hoo, what's a girl to do?

with wall-to-wall work and everytime I look round, ballots are being held to see if it can't be made worse.
'Unanimous'. what's in a word? Can it be made to mean 'majority rules'.
No time to eat, sleep or live any kind of life....not since junior doctors had their hours cut, have people been asked to work so intensely. What can you be doing? people ask. A Phd in a year? no, a simple degree now requires 25,000 essay-words to be delivered in 11 weeks, plus all the rest of it, the continuous CONTINUAL testing and assessment, so before you can possibly have located a book from the HOPELESS library (Example: one copy of a text book for several hundred students who all need it NOW)you are supposed to have read it and prepared yourself for testing, between the moments when you have read and prepared another 2,000 or 3,000 word essay, between the instants when you have memorised 50 slides for more tests and written a few catalogue entries, visited galleries, sites, buildings, attended lectures and meetings, seminars, tutorials, extra duties as social directors for especially endangered species of student, ie. mature, disabled or poor, etc etc, et-bloody-cetera.
There, there, that's better... this may be my last blog for a while, I'm going down down.....or into deep hiding, or away.... Did I mention Christmas exams? - to be imposed after all the promises to the contrary? Well, it remains to be seen; calling in the Union guns to do their job. This is a battle we can't take on alone.
Whoever thought getting an education would be such a battle, just to be allowed to complete a simple degree? What an innocent I was 2 years ago.

Foiled by the machine

At last we have been able to sign up for our courses. Except I couldn't seem to find the way in, off-campus, and had to finally admit defeat and go in and ask for help. Then, I found I had over-looked one crucial hour, which clashed with another subject and my whole little edifice collapsed.
Several modules didn't show up at all, so the irritating online prompt message kept re-iterating that I hadn't completed. Eventually, in a fury, I signed up for any lectures I could, just so that I could finish.
This morning I calmed down and redid them. Most of the modules are showing now; in fact only the Archaeology field trip option refuses to appear, so I am still an 'incomplete'. It makes me feel like an incompetent, but I am feeling relaxed about it now.
Possibly the reason I felt so bad yesterday, was that I came dowm with a gastric attack overnight and am only just now recovering and - phew! - feel suddenly better tempered. This morning I felt really depressed and negative but I hope I have flushed that out now.

It is a pity about the course I had to abandon, because it was a kind of bridging course between my 2 subjects, as well as being linked to another course I am taking and I had intended to write my dissertation on a related topic.
Oh well, back to the drawing board....

Digging in Cruel Boots

The dig is done - at least as far as Team One is concerned and Team Two can do their worst to it. They will open up a new trench as well as having to fill the two open ones - more grunt labour.
We were very lucky with the weather, many short sharp showers gave a hint of how unpleasant it would have been if there had been insistent rain, the clay turning unmanageable almost immediately and sods became so heavy that lifting a bucket of them became an almost Herculean task; moving the wheelbarrow became impossible for me. I discovered I had muscles in all sorts of places I hadn't thought about - and forearms like Popeye but - oy!- those steel-capped and mid-soled boots nearly killed me.

The group dynamics were interesting to observe, although I am not sure that my observations wd be appreciated in the Log which we will have to submit in 6 weeks time, complete with Photographic record and Context sheet. The males, in the minority of the grunt force, managed to stick together so adroitly in the beginning that one trench was 'manned' entirely by females, a couple of whom were entirely hopeless as far as the de-sodding task was concerned. The trench with the 'boys' was soon done and they were on to the task of removing soil with trowels. Meanwhile, the second team struggled with a larger area of sod (fewer features). On the second day we were allotted two male workers from the A Team, who were not best pleased to find their Trojan efforts of the first day(I'm told)rewarded by being sent back to back-breaking labour for the next half day. Their reaction was to stage a go slow. Eventually, several of the more hard-woking girls decided the only way was to shame them into working harder, so we set to work beside them and showed them how hard we were working. One way or another we finished the job by lunch break of the second day, but it was notable that the 'boys' were often to be found leaning on their shovels or manicuring the site, while the 'girls' worked unremittingly. This was abetted by the Supervisors, who allotted them the easier jobs in the first place and criticised any girls who seemed to be taking it easy. Maybe some kind of reverse sexism, because there are so many youny pretty blonde girls! A plain girl (with a good strong voice)got the cushy job of standing around with the measuring pole, while C, our recording Chief, took electronic measurements.

I was irritated to realise as further details of our optional courses slowly emerge , that I probably should not have taken this course at all, since there are two further courses which I want to take, both offered in Semester One only. IF they are timetable-compatible, I have now got all three options in the first semester as well as two out of three Core modules-----and that is just ONE subject of two. Anyway, it is all idle conjecture until we are permitted to see a proper timetable (I have seen two separate Provisional ones that differed radically) and get to sign up for the various courses. It is so frustrating, waiting for the admin to get their act together. Nothing new on the strike; I don't think it will happen, it would be so disruptive that I think it cd only be counter-productive.

Only one week left of my lovely holiday - - looks like a hard year ahead.....