Yes, I have been neglecting my blog. And yes, I hate myself for doing so. But how would you feel if you discovered on Tuesday that you were supposed to start studying Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night on Wednesday (the next day, indeed), knowing that you had not managed to get hold of the play, much less read it? And then there’s the assignment which is due in on Friday and you haven’t started writing it yet… The constant worry about finances, struggling to read through Atonement for the first time, whereas your fellow students seem to be finishing it off for the second time, you have a million e-mails to reply to about insurance and other equally important matters, and as this is slowly starting to come together one of your lecturers decides to give you an in-class test next week which calls for preparation from your part.
How I’ve even managed to breathe is beyond me. But as it is, I have somehow managed to read all of Twelfth Night (using a very handy internet transcription of it), I wrote my essay for the assignment last night (quite literally so), sorted out some issues regarding the internet and the most recent phone bill, found out that the useless insurance company in Norway compensated the loss of my phone (giving me a lot less than what it was worth, those bastards), I ordered a book I only recently discovered I need for one of my courses and am reading through Atonement as fast as I can, using every spare minute I get to read a line or two.
Initially, things seemed set to become nasty last night, when I received an e-mail from Sydney saying that I had to take some papers to uni about my insurance, about how to get it approved and by doing so get a reimbursement from uni (I had to pay $520 for their own insurance in addition to the one I’ve already got with If… because I didn’t have all the papers they needed, and this is what I’ve been trying to tell the insurance company, but they just tell me that I don’t need any more papers than what they’ve given me, so it’s a hopeless situation really).
Then there was the matter with the phone bill. Apparently, I was expected to pay for some calls from the flat which I had most definitely not made (one of the calls from the flat which I was expected to pay for had even been made while I was in Queenstown in the South Island), so I rang up my leaseholder to explain the situation to her and ask some questions about the rocky internet connection as well, which disappeared altogether last night, just as I needed it the most for my essay writing.
After some trying and failing I managed to connect to the internet using the ethernet cable, but I couldn’t use the computer at my desk then, so I disconnected and sat down to write my essay. At which point the clock rounded 11pm. I was so glad I’d been clever enough to get two cans of Red Bull from the shop just down the road (which I’ll never be coming back to, by the way) earlier that evening, because there’s no doubt I wouldn’t have made it without those. To begin with everything felt so hopeless. I had no idea where to start, what to say, how to say it or how much I could say about each point on the “check-list”. After I managed to scramble myself through the first paragraph, however, it started running more smoothly (or maybe I was just so tired I didn’t care or realise what I wrote any more).
I forced myself to stay awake, having more Red Bull and Coke in the space of 4 hours than I’ve had in the last two months all added up. At about 3am I declared my work to be finished. Instead of jumping straight into bed I then connected to the internet again and checked my e-mails. How clever of me. After half an hour online I decided to go to bed, but when I lay down in I felt so strangely awake, so I figured I might as well read Atonement. So I read for about 30 minutes, before almost falling asleep with my face in the book. That was when I turned the lamp off and went to sleep. 4.35pm. Five hours later I was up, having breakfast. Time to go over my essay again, to see if what I wrote in the dead of night makes any sense at all. I really hope it does.
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