Categories: uncategorized
Date: 05 October 2004 19:30:35
I'm baaaaaack!!
So - the last couple of weeks - mostly spent UpNorth writing up my dissertation. Which I have, just about - just a couple of hundred words to write, a few hundred words to take out and a couple of paragraphs to add in from a previous essay, and then typing it up and it's all done! So it will be finished and sent off with nearly 2 weeks before the deadline - if it snows I give you permission to blame me. Muchos gracias to the lovely H for letting me flatsit - going away to write was definitely a Good Plan.
What I (re)discovered during the process of writing included: I write really really long sentences (note to self: stop being so long-winded); I love researching and writing up and relating my feeble attempts at practice to theory; I really want to be paid to do that rather than doing it in my spare time and holidays. Add to that a very (I think) successful meeting with the potential PhD tutors, and it was a very useful time indeed. I could do with a week off now though, I'm knackered.
I was dead nervous before the meeting with the tutors - I still can't quite believe that serious academics might be taking me seriously. When I got there, I met them and discovered that they were both younger than me (they both looked it anyway), one of them had her nose pierced, so as well as mumbling away about some tentative research ideas that I'd not thought about much recently due to concentrating on the present dissertation, I also found myself a few times thinking "you're *so* not what I was expecting!" But they seemed to like my ideas and said they would be happy to supervise me should I get funding. They've also just applied as a department for some ESRC funding for a particular research project which, if they get it, will be really complimentary to what I want to study, and hence will put my application at an advantage. So prayers for them as well as for me are most definitely in order :)
I loved being UpNorth. It's been really tough coming back to London. Although London's great, I've just been here too long and I don't feel like I *fit* here any more. There are so many great northern cities, some people I care about very much up that way, and UpNorth itself is a great place, really vibrant and more diverse than many other places (the vibrancy and diversity would be one of the main things I'd miss about London), so I feel a bit like I'm marking time at the moment.
Yesterday I took the car for its annual MoT and service. Except that the service didn't happen as I had to spend so much on the MoT repairs (ouch) - the garage said the most expensive damage was probably caused by speed bumps, the scourge of the London driver, so I'm driving really gingerly at the moment as I don't want it to happen again. In the afternoon I had my statutory Manual Handling training, and then I had my Russian class. I'd only missed one lesson last week, but it's so different to anything I've done before and I was so tired having only got back home the midnight before and having all the intellectual effort catch up with me that I really struggled - by the end I just wanted to cry and not do it any more. Nothing serious, I was just being a bit pathetic as I was so tired, and once I find a spare couple of minutes to go through the book I'll keep on top of it, but I have decided that I'm not actually going to do Romanian this year after all. I know it wouldn't be so taxing as I already know the language, but I think Russian's going to take so much out of me that I've just decided to look after myself a bit and not bite off more than I can chew.
And then today back to work. *sigh* Greeted by not too huge a pile of files and messages on my desk, but a number of clients who have now got social work involvement, a new baby on the child protection register, a very depressed lady who described her youngest son as "having horns and a tail" and a girl with learning difficulties who is pregnant but really doesn't understand what is happening and will need a ton-and-a-half of support once she has the baby. You do get to see this sort of thing reasonably regularly in my job - though not usually all on the same day, and not usually on the day you get back from holiday. I'm a not-quite-burnt-out-health-visitor - get me out of here.