Know your onion!

And God said: ‘Let there be madness.’ And there was exams.

Oh, sorry, did I get that wrong? From my point of view: No.

Fortunately, I’m not terribly affected by the pre-exam stress. Unless you count insomnia and fasting as symptoms, I’m doing pretty well.

I had my first study “group” today. Three of us girls got together in the library to study for the exam. So, naturally, we spent half an hour discussing the exam and four hours talking about boys. An afternoon well spent.

Spaghetti bolognese and a glass of wine goes a long way after a long day of – uh – gossiping. It’s such hard work.

Add music according to taste. Mix in someone to chat with on any kind of social media, and the night is almost complete. Casually round it all off with a couple of hours of studying, and you’ll avoid the madness.

(And if you happen to react to cutting onions like I do, pour a bucket of water over your face before you attempt to get any reading and/or note taking done.)

Well that went just like clockwork!

I won! My Alex DeLarge outfit won first prize in my film class’ dress-up do today. It was so cool wearing it to uni, I felt pretty awesome. Several people told me it was a cool costume as we waited outside the lecture theatre, and I actually started singing ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ in the foyer… Not in a shy mood today, in other words. Or maybe I actually adopted Alex’ buoyant behaviour as well as his clothes.

The people who had dressed up had to go up on stage and introduce themselves one by one, and when it was my turn I held up my glass milk bottle and said, after I’d said I was Alex from A Clockwork Orange, that ‘I’ve even got my milk!’. One of the tutors then repeated our “names”, and whoever got the loudest applause would win. Guess who was very pleasantly surprised when the tutor said my name and the whole room erupted with applause and cheers, after very polite applause for the people before me. There were a few other people whom I thought might beat me, but according to the tutor, after everyone had had their round of applause, it was pretty clear to him who the winner was: Alex from A Clockwork Orange! What a great feeling it was to hear those words. I made a few bows and spectacular movements, in line with Alex’s strange behaviour.

First prize was two movie passes, so now I have to choose what to do with the second one – be selfish and go to the movies twice, by myself, or go with someone and treat them to a free screening? The second one is more tempting, but then the question remains; who shall I share it with?

See any resemblance? (The lecturer and the tutors took heaps of photos in the lecture today, so if/when they post them online I will post them on my blog, so you can see what other costumes I was up against.)

I spent the rest of the afternoon running around town getting my grocery shopping done, battling the ferocious wind all the time. When I finally got home it was almost tea-time, and after some time trying to decide what to make (I bought lots of yummy foods today) I finally decided on burgers. (Mmmm burgers.) I haven’t had a burger that didn’t come from McDonald’s or Burger King in at least a year (or maybe like 10 months).

They were sooo darn good. (I was starving when making dinner, hence the large number of burgers. I was close to vomiting when I forced down the last bite.)

Now I’m about to have a shower, a glass of gin and tonic, and then set out for town to see what it’s like. Friday night, wooo!

Same old story, reloaded

 

Ah, the break is over. I’m not sure how I feel about this.

On the one hand, it’s great to get back into the daily grind, because I love being busy, but on the other hand lies the problem that I didn’t do enough work over the break, so now I’m going to be overwhelmed by it for the rest of the trimester. I don’t like the sound (or thought) of that, especially considering how I’ve got other things I’d rather do in my spare time than read my course texts and write essays… I’m going to give out my CV to several cafès in Wellington as soon as possible as well, so if I get a job that means less spare time and less study time. Eeek.

But hey! Let’s (always) look on the bright side of life. Maybe I worry too much? Today, the first thing that met me at uni was an A for the first project we did in Film101. Now that’s good news. But instead of celebrating, I spent the entire afternoon preparing the essay that’s due in on Friday, ‘cause apparently you can’t just write a philosophy essay like you can with most other essays. You have to understand the problem and actually state your own opinion, so instead of writing a draft today (which was the initial plan), I spent several hours just reading about public art and its purpose… When I felt like I was actually ready to write something, I realised that philosophy essays are written in a completely different style than what I’m used to, so I had to look up the guidelines online and read through them, which cut back another hour of my precious time. In the end I left the library without having written a single word for the essay itself, but I think I got all the basic preparation out of the way.

And did I mention that we had like 17 degrees outside today? It was pretty awesome.

I made my fabulous chicken and corn soup (with rice) tonight, it was better than ever, and it’s the first time in ages I actually cooked a proper meal that included meat. I’m so full at the moment. I’m feeling way too content and relaxed…