Another 10% Bites the Dust!

Today I had to give a presentation of my dissertation topic to a small group of students and staff, and it went tolerably well. The last few weeks have been horrible, with a mounting pile of work and dissertation reading and seemingly achieving nothing more than a severe sense of impending doom. Now, though, the majority of the reading has been done, and I gave a passable presentation on ‘The Early Music Revival Movement: The Rediscovery of the Baroque Violin’. I also haven’t slept for the last 40 hours, but that’s beside the point – though it might explain why I feel slightly groggy, despite the exhilaration that has kept me awake thus far.

The presentation could have been better, but I managed some fairly intelligent-sounding answers to the questions and covered quite a lot of ground in the allotted time, so I’m not too worried. I also managed to write the first 1,000 words or so of my dissertation, which was a big relief and surprisingly easy.

I got my bibliography and outline back today, marked. I only got 64, which is disappointing, although I can see why. The irritating thing is that the items that were missing were added within days of me submitting the work to be marked. I know it’s only worth 10% of the (double) unit, but it does set me firmly at 65 after exactly 50% of the year, which is hardly the first I should be expecting from myself. The remaining 50% this year consists entirely of subjects that I should find easy, so no excuses now. I’m going home on Saturday and will spend four weeks at the desk in my bedroom at my parents’ house, completing my dissertation and the other four assignments that my lecturers have seen fit to set over Easter. At least if the rest of the dissertation goes as painlessly as the first 1,000 words, I may get a few days’ break at the end of the holiday. At any rate, my cousin is getting married the weekend after I go back to uni, by which time it’ll all have been handed in, so S and I will use that as our weekend break together, and get to spend some time with my not-so-new cousin Jasmine, who will be a year old soon and whom I’ve never met.

It’s time to brave the two days’ worth of junk on my bed and attempt to find a way into it (the bed, that is). After all, tomorrow I have to go and listen to other people’s dissertation presentations, go to the library (again), plan and run a care home session at the least inspiring of the two places I go to, and generally clean and tidy ready for packing and leaving on Saturday. I’m sure there’s something else I have to do tomorrow, but I’ve forgotten it and don’t have the energy to try to remember…

…I’ve remembered it. In the evening we’re holding a joint Jewish/Christian bible study. Not entire sure if anyone from either side will be turning up, but at this particular moment in time I really don’t care a monkey’s armpit.

Night night!