Exams

I just picked up the sociolinguistics take-home exam – I have to write two 1,000 word ‘essays’ by Tuesday afternoon, one on the subject of the German language in the GDR and the other on my Mastermind specialist subject, gender and language. I so cannot be bothered to do either of them. The euphoria I had after finishing the last proper assessed essay was such that it has seemingly rendered me permanently incapable of writing anything resembling an essay ever again, so this take-home paper is a most unwelcome interruption.

Anyway, yesterday I had my oral exam and the desk exam for Parzival. The oral went well I think – I managed to blabber on for a good twenty minutes and I think I engaged with all the questions and answered them properly, although some of them were pretty difficult. Parzival was hard, but I think I did as well as I needed to, so I’m not so worried about that really.

I booked my tickets to go to the Netherlands again at the end of May to celebrate the end of my student years. I decided to catch the Eurostar to Brussels, and then get an Intercity train (approx 3 hours) from Brussels to Amsterdam. It’s cheaper than flying, and doesn’t actually take much longer, either. And the train obviously leaves from shiny sparkly St Pancras now, which is only a ten minute walk away from my house, so no stiflingly hot Tube trek across to Heathrow either. So, over in the lage landen again from 27th May (the day of my last exam) to 3rd June. Leuk, hé?

Oh, and I found this on the Guardian yesterday, and now I’m seriously excited about going to Brussels properly in August.

Einfach kein Bock

Ugh, I just so can’t be bothered to face this week. Wednesday morning, German oral. Wednesday afternoon, Parzival exam. Thursday morning, pick up Linguistic take home paper (due next Tuesday). Friday, German essay exam. Can’t be aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarsed, bitch moan whinge. Especially not with revision for Parzival. I might just do a bit tomorrow and wing the exam. It’s a module all about one book anyway, and I’ve re-read it, and past questions seem to relate almost exclusively to the plot, so hopefully it’ll be sneakable.

I just saw Mrs Frau Rhian in London! The capital was graced by her presence this afternoon as part of her state visit to the UK, the first such visit since June of last year (correct me if I am wrong). We tried to go for a coffee, but I am lame and get lost far too easily in this city of mine, so we just ended up hanging out in my kitchen instead, talking about swine flu and national identity. Fun times!

So that’s what I was up to for the last five weeks

Four essays. Check.

To steal an idea from Knicola: here is the proof.

Right. Books back to the library, and may revision for Parzival commence.

Känn ingen sorg för mig

The last month of my life has felt a bit like having to go through a second dissertation – the workloads are equivalent as far as wordcounts go (10,000 / 4×2,500), and that familiar persistent guilt has been back with a vengeance, ensuring that I go to bed every night feeling guilty at not having got more/enough/anything done, even if I’ve written half an essay in a single day.

Oral and Parzival exams in ten days’ time, argh…. Grimmelshausen and National Identity essays are drafted, both just need editing to get them below 2,750 words and thus within the 10% leeway. I haven’t started writing Art yet, but I expect to have the research finished tomorrow, so writing should commence either then or Tuesday and will hopefully be finished by Wednesday. Giving me a week to re-read Parzival and hash together some half-arsed “ideas” about it in time for the exam.

That’s the plan, anyway.

Allow me to share a QOTD from an essay by Beth Lewis on Otto Dix’s paintings and drawings of sex-murders in the 1920s: “Another friend recalled Dix saying that if he had not been able to create these artistic sex murders, he could well have committed actual murder. Whether either of these reminiscences was accurate, Dix definitely chose to cultivate the myth of being a wild man capable of mayhem and murder. In 1921, he portrayed another fantasy vision of himself surrounded by prostitutes, including one marked by the sores of venereal disease. Directly in front of his face, he placed a female corpse, raped, bleeding, and disemboweled. He balanced [!] this with a castrated penis on the other side of the wardrobe. The following year, Dix created five more version of raped and violated corpses. He gave a watercolor of a woman with her throat slit, sprawled off a pillow on the floor, titled Murder, to his wife on her birthday.”

Exhibit A: Otto Dix, The Sex Murderer: Self-Portrait, 1920

Note the particularly tasteful bloody handprints on poor Woman’s dismembered body parts. I’d quite happily write the whole essay on the crackpot man, but I can’t, cos I did that in my last Art essay Hmph. Käthe Kollwitz is awesome too though, and I didn’t mention her last time, so I might talk about her this time instead.

Where is Rita Verdonk when you need her

I’m in shock! I just found out the starting rate of income tax in the Netherlands!

THIRTY THREE AND A HALF PER CENT!!!

!!!

My life long mantra of “I love tax” may be about to die a quick death.

Voor vorst, voor vrijheid en voor recht

I am feeling slightly less unhinged today, which makes a pleasant change. I got the first draft of my National Identity essay finished last night, and now the task ahead of me seems completely different. I still have one essay to write, but I have (in theory) twelve days to do it and it only takes me about five days in total to do them.

So today has mainly involved a bit of deck-clearing in preparation for the start of research for MY FINAL EVER [BACHELOR'S] ASSESSED ESSAY EVER, which I should really start tomorrow. Books back, other books located, assassination plans drawn up against those hogging all the books I need and so on and so forth. As a sort of bribe to force myself into doing it as soon as possible, I am planning a day trip to some as yet unspecified town or city outside of London, as long as the weather’s nice and all my essays are done.

John the Ami and I have decided to go on tour through the nether lands at the end of July and the start of August. It was originally going to be Haarlem-Leiden-Nijmegen-Aachen-Luxembourg-Brussels-Bruges-Gent-Antwerp, but now it’s only going to be the last four, because otherwise it’d have cost £900 on accommodation alone. He’s got a grant from NYU to go and look at paintings and is really interested in going to all the medieval churches and chapels. I just want to drink nice beer. It was my responsibility to book the beds in all the Belgium places, so I sorted that out this afternoon. It’ll be a fun celebration of the end of studentdom after four years, as well as a month’s work at the exam marking centre (probably the last ever stint there).

State of play

Grimmelshausen essay: 2747/2500 (with 10% leeway)
National Identity essay: 1606/2500
Art essay: 0/2500

All due on the 27th. No idea how I’m going to do the Art one because all the books are out and have long waiting lists and/or are in use at the British Library. I might have to go back to Nottingham, we’ll see.

This is probably the most depressing and lonely academic ‘break’ I’ve ever had. It makes me want to never do a Masters, ever. I just want to go home.

9th best university in the world?

Today has been a nightmare. I knew that UCL was closing this afternoon for the Easter break and wouldn’t be opening again til next Wednesday. What I didn’t know was that all the libraries would be closed as well – not even open for research access, just totally closed. It seems that most other universities are only closing Friday-Monday inclusive (like the rest of the civilised world, probably). My initial slight irritation at the fact that this university, which smugly cites its secular tradition when it suits it, would just shut down for almost an entire week then turned into a full-blown panic when I realised that I had three hours to get my hands on ten different books from four different libraries, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to write my two remaining essays due in in a fortnight.

Now I’m really stressed out and I’ve got a splitting headache.

April malaise

These essays are robbing me of my sanity. I’ve slipped back into the laissez-faire sleeping pattern that overcomes me every time my body is left to its own devices, so I’m never in bed before 2am and never out of it again before midday. I spend the afternoon slouching around because I can’t pluck up the energy to think clearly enough to work on the essays, then I go to bed feeling lame for not having been productive enough during the day.

I’ve almost finished the Grimmelshausen essay, but haven’t given any thought to the other two yet. I’ve got twenty days from today to get them both sorted, so it’s manageable time-wise, but the thought of what I’ve got to do to get to the other side is daunting.

And then exams start. Revision is such a vague prospect that it’s pretty much non-existent.

Anyway, to try to break myself out of this funk I went for a walk on my own up on Hampstead Heath this evening, just as the sun was going down. It was a bit chilly, but not too windy, so I sat up on Parliament Hill watching the city in the dusk. I had grand ideas of sitting there watching the sun set over the city, but it didn’t really work, because the angle of the sun in relation to my bench was all wrong. It was a nice couple of hours though, in any case.

Right, 300 more words and I can put this essay to sleep. Onwards…

Bloody finals.

—
[edit: 22.34] Rejoice! For the essay is finished. I think. I hope. As a reward I get to pick which essay I want to write next.