1 day left

If all goes according to plan this should be my last day of studying (for this degree, at least). Of course there is no guarantee that things will go according to plan.

By lunch time tomorrow I will be free to anxiously await my results.

And for the first time all week it is actually appropriate weather for studying. Rather than a beautiful warm, sunny day beckoning you to leave your desk and go outside, today is grey and rainy and perfect for making you not feel so bad about the fact that you have to stay inside and study.

2 days left- and 3 exams down!

Well, I am now 3 quaters of the way through my exams so you might think that I should be happy about that, but I'm not. Well I would be happy about it, but I didn't have a very enjoyable experience in the exam.

This was probably the hardest exam I have ever had over the last 3 years of uni. The lecturer insists on not asking questions that relate to major concepts that he spent more than 5 minutes of a lecture talking about - instead he asks questions about things he spent 1 slide and 2 minutes on and expects you to be able to write a 30 min essay on it. And some how he managed to completely forget that the guest lecturer from the IWC wasnt able to come this year and asked a question about the IWC in the exam anyway.

Thankfully there was some internal choice in the exam so you could choose questions that you knew a smidgen about rather than having to do questions you knew absolutely nothing about. I actually did one of the 3omin questions based entirely on knowledge from 2 of my courses last semester as we only covered it for 3 minutes this semester. My friend Tori did one of the 3o minute questions purely from a course she did in first year because, again, we didn't cover that topic in class.

I should have passed the stupid thing, though. (should being the operative word in that sentence).

Of course it does not help that I feel really unwell today. I don't know why. I felt quite a bit unwell yesterday when I was trying to study but I pretended that it was only going to last for a day and so I tried to convince myself that it wasn't going to be that bad.

Now I feel like during my exam a chemical reaction occured in my brain turning it slowly into a viscous substance not unlike marshmellow. Then this strange viscous greyish, marshmellow ran out my ears and dripped quietly on the floor. I now have only a remnant of brain left to function with. In short its like this:

Figure 1. MRI scan of my brain before exam



Figure 2. MRI scan of my brain after exam. Doh!

3 days left

Its kinda strange waking up this morning and not having to do an exam.

4 days left- and 2 exams down!

Had my second exam today - it went fairly well but as always it could have been better.

And yes, I am again annoyed at how much I learnt that was not on the exam.

I have a whole day to study for the next one which is fantastic because it means that I can actually go to bed early tonight instead of desperately reading over my notes again, and again, and again trying to remember that EMPCA stands for the Environmental Management and Pollution Control Act of 1994 and that EPBC stands for the Environmental Protection Biodiversity Conservation Act of 1999 and that the real name of the Madrid Protocol is the Protocol of Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty 1959 (as you can see it obviously worked because I can remember all these things even after my exam).

5 days left- and 1 exam down!

Now I'm counting down and counting up at the same time : )

I had my first exam this morning- Freshwater Ecology.

I made the comment to a couple of friends yesterday that Freshwater Ecology is deceptively harder than it sounds like it would be and they informed me that it actually sounds harder than I thought it did. So now I much prouder of saying that I did a Freshwater Ecology exam today.

As always I'm annoyed about the volume of information I worked really hard to gather and memorize that wasn't on the exam, but that was to be expected when you boil a semester's worth of work (and a lot of course content) into one morning's exam. I'm glad I learnt the whole course rather than just the previous exam questions, though, as they asked some completely different (and for most people completely unexpected) questions.

Now I have to continue (I would say start, but I actually did a couple of days worth last week) studying for Environmental Impact Assessment which is tomorrow morning's exam. I really hate doing two exams this close together, but it could be worse, technically its possible to have two in the same day. Yuck! that would be awful- serious brain mush!

6 days left

Aaaaargh!! First exam tommorow!!!!

Help!!!!

7 days left

For those of you who are mathmatically challenged that is exactly one week.

One week is all that stands between me and graduation - yay!!

8 days left

9 days left

Which is quite scary because it means there are only 3 days left until exams start.

You know, I don't remember swotvac ever requiring this much coffee before.

And I'm definately going to run out of chocolate before exams are over, after that visit from Tiani the other day.

10 days left

11 days left until I finish forever!

Yay!!

The Way I Feel About Studying for Exams

You know how people always say “The tree jumped out in front of me. It wasn’t my fault, really it wasn’t” and you never, ever believe them?

Well prepare yourself to actually believe it for once.

I’m not lying - a tree really did jump out in front of me when I was driving up to Mum and Dad’s last night.

I had been driving for around 2 and a half hours and everything had gone fine. I was paying attention, and I wasn’t even speeding and then a tree (very rudely, I must say) jumped out in front of me.

This is how it happened:

I was about 4 minutes away from Mum and Dad’s house (a little before the Supply bridges for those of you who know the area). Oh, I should mention that it was dark- really dark because there was a lot of cloud cover so there wasn’t much light from the moon either. I was coming up to a part of the road that got a little narrower and a car was coming the other way so I dipped my lights down (and consequently could only see a tiny way out in front of the car). I was travelling around 80km- a perfectly acceptable speed- and suddenly in the small area that was lit up in front of me in the middle of my lane I saw a tree (Well, half a tree that had jumped off the back of someone’s trailer after they had been trimming trees that were too close to powerlines or something).

Obviously, I hit it.

Hard.

And Barry is a little sore.

When I got to Mum and Dad’s I pulled branches out of his nostrils and from underneath him.

Thankfully, the tree (despite all its best efforts) didn’t do any major damage to either Barry or myself, but there is damage to his plastic bumper thing.

So this morning I was still feeling quite down in the dumps about the whole experience (and about exams and having to find a job and my lease running out on my apartment and everything) and I felt as miserable and gloomy as Eeyore (and I suspect Barry wasn’t feeling real great about the whole thing either).

But its amazing how much better I feel after a little sunshine, a proper check over Barry finding no major damage, choosing a new photo for my desktop background and having a haircut. Having a haircut is the best stress buster ever. Pity you have to wait for your hair to grow back before you can do it again.

A song to be sung at the end of semester

Our Very Last Lecture
(to the tune of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow")

For its our very last lecture
For its our very last lecture
For its our very last lecture
And we all say hooray!

And we all say hooray!

And we all say hooray!

Oh, that was our very last lecture
that was our very last lecture
that was our very last lecture

As long as we don't fail!

Everything hates me...

Well, first my computer ate my homework- 23 pages worth of writing, graphs, tables, and figures gone.

Then my phone decided it wouldn't deliver any of my text messages for a week and hoarded them up and sent them all on Sunday afternoon so I had quite a few confused friends wondering what I was talking about because everything was completely out of context.

Then my watch died.



The good news is that I have technical support on retainer and it is proving to be very useful (but only when he answers his phone!) so my 23 pages worth of work were recovered (well actually 22 of the 23).


On other news- apparently this is my 100th blog posting! I'm wondering if glitter and streamers will fall out of the ceiling or something when I upload it.



Also, last week of uni!!!!

Well, it has been sometime since I updated you all, but at least the last post gave you something pretty to look at if you have been checking and waiting for the next post.

The thing is- I really don't have a lot to say.

My life at the moment is completely devoted to university work. I handed in 2 more assignments yesterday and this morning, which means that I only have 3 more to hand in this semester- unfortunately 2 of those 3 are going to require a lot of work.

I now only have 4 contact days (days when I have lectures and tutorials and practicals) left of my Marine Science degree. I can't believe that I am this close to finishing.

Anywho, I'd better get back to it- I have a pile of research to do and thousands and thousands of words to write for my assignments (which sounds easy, but they all have to be sensibibly thought out, scientific words), and I am determined to do something completely different tonight and actually get some sleep for once.

Spring has sproinged!

Well, the very last of the snow is disappearing off the top of the mountain, and as always in spring my thoughts are taken up with "I wonder what is happening in my garden today."

For those of you who were wondering the same thing here you go-

Jonquils

Daffodils

I don't know quite what these are- I can tell you they are definitely a member of the Fabaceae family

Pink ones of the same thing.

Geraniums

These also came in the mixed seed packet- they seem to be paper daisies.

And anyone who has payed any attention to me at all during any spring will know that my absolute favourites are TULIPS.
For the first time ever I actually grew some. Disappointingly all 4 turned out to be the same colour, but they are still beautiful.

Not bad for a garden patch the size of a bed (a single bed that is, not a double).