Londonward

I am physically and mentally exhausted. I also managed to hurt my foot (again, though this time the left one) by falling down my own stairs while obviously preoccupied with some high-flying theory or something. My ankle is swollen but I did manage to walk (hobble) on it all day. I have finally made it back home and having it horizontal does feel pretty good.

I didn’t even realise how completely worn out I am until yesterday, when receiving less-than-stellar feedback from my tutor about something I’d sent him sent me careening into a spiral of tiredness and worry. I’m mostly over the worry with a healthy dose of que sera, sera. I was hoping I’d get a really good night’s sleep tonight as I’ve been tired every single morning. Going to try for 8.5 hours. Not that it’s going to cure anything, but maybe it’ll keep me going through tomorrow.

Plan for rest of week: Work tomorrow, write essay, plan debate for Friday, try and clean this pigsty of a room before my brother gets here. Oh, and try and get this ankle fixed. Damn ankle.

Absolutely exhausting. That’s what university terms are. And to think that in 5 weeks I’ll (supposedly) be ready to do it all again!

I went to see Alexander Stubb give a lecture at the LSE. Afterwards a lot of the Finnish Society members went to a reception and then we all piled into a pub for a few more drinks after the Minister had left after having done his handshakes and photos with the most sycophantic fans. I was pleased to meet a few new Finnish people last night, though the whole thing wasn’t organised as well as the emails prior to the event would have had it.

Of course coming home past midnight and then sitting in the kitchen listening to my housemate detail her date with a new man means that I haven’t slept enough and am having a hard time keeping my eyes open even just thinking about my essay topic on the shift from government to governance… zzz…

It’s been a ride, the start of term. I’ve been all over the place, with work, with reading, with classes, with lectures… I was getting really stressed out, feeling that the difficulty and expectations had really been ramped up from last year until a friend of mine told me that no, it was still the same. I just didn’t allow myself to feel that last year. Truth be told, despite already being swamped with stuff, I’ve done more reading than in the first two weeks last October. I have to keep telling myself things are probably ok.

Certainly I need to do more independent reading than last year. For some reason, the LSE in all its wisdom has decided to allocate two Fellows (that’s non-academics, basically people researching their PhD, to all you non-LSE people) as the lecturers for my two core courses. While the other is pretty good, the other… isn’t. I hate to compare education to a market, but I’m really not getting my money’s worth at the moment from my own department.

But it’s not just about the reading. Applying myself to apply to the postgrad courses is a whole other hassle, requiring final decisions (course? college?), writing (letters of motivation/research aims, funding applications), as well as finding and pestering people to write me references. It’s all quite a bit of stuff to be had on a plate.

It’ll get better, I’m sure. There’s fun stuff planned for the near future, including a trip to Cambridge this weekend and to Paris (Eurostar, wow!). If I can just make the cash last long enough things will be just fine… I hope.

Had a meeting with my personal tutor today. He congratulated me on my results and said to strongly think about Masters’ programmes, specifically highlighting Oxford and Cambridge as having a possibility of funding for EU students applying, which really is the only way I could manage to afford one. It would be another year of hell but on the other hand it would be Oxbridge and it couldn’t possibly hurt job prospects, right?

The only problem is that I have, like, a week to decide if I want to apply this year. I had already thought that I’d try to get a job for a year or two and go for a master’s after getting some money and experience, but now he recommended going to it directly.

I also handed over the reins of our student society to a new generation of (mostly postgraduate) students. They seemed really keen on making it a good society, which will benefit everyone. In a way, I feel almost sad to have passed on the torch but I will hang out at the first meetings at least, and get them up to speed.

Now I just need to get up to speed on the reading.