Well, the past two weeks or so have been quite stressful. Grad school is officially hard. I am questioning a) why I thought going back to school would be a good idea and b) how I managed to fool the university into accepting me. The midterm papers seemed to have crept up on me and now I am struggling to get them completed by this upcoming Friday (and here I am blogging and wasting time!). I only have two and neither are at all long so I guess I passed them off as easy. However, I am a bit nervous about grading here since the scale in general is different than in the U.S. and the expected level of writing is pretty high I have gathered. We also found out that if we get below a 60% (not the same as a U.S. 60%!) on any piece of work, we are not eligible to do an internship at the end of the programme. So much pressure! Needless to say I am spending a lot of time on these papers! My first one is a policy brief on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in the Cape Winelands for my Development Research Methods course and the second is a critique on those 'save a child with $1 a day' infomercial type commercials for my Cultures of Human Rights and Humanitarianism course.
And to make things worse, I made the mistake of letting myself listen the Christmas music the other day even though I usually try to wait until after Thanksgiving. Now I am in the pre-Christmas/race to break productivity slump and have no motivation to do any work besides look for holiday dresses online and pinterest yummy recipes. I think I subconsciously associate cold, dreary weather with Christmas time and, well that type of weather has arrived here in Edinburgh so I feel that it is only fitting that I let myself get in the Christmas spirit. Listening to Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas' at least makes the walk to class a bit more cheery!
Anyway, I forgot to update you on a mini trip I took two weekends ago. I went for the day to Culzean Castle, which is about 2.5 hours from Edinburgh along the western coast of Scotland. It was liberating to finally get out of Edinburgh (it was my first time outside of about a 2 mile bubble). The castle is apparently 'modern' though it's still a couple hundred years old. Again, they didn't let us take pictures inside but to be honest it wasn't that exciting. I loved much more just being outside along the water. Got to love chilly, dreary beaches! Beautiful in their own way!
If I manage to make it through Friday alive and get everything turned in, I will be going up north to the Scottish Highlands Saturday and Sunday and hopefully have a relaxing birthday up there! Look for pictures Sunday night!
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