Kelly's World

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After a 6 month hiatus, I’m finally going back to uni.

Last year I had what I would think was a minor breakdown. I was crying a lot, I was unhappy and I was stressed. REALLY stressed. In the end I decided the best option for me was to pull out of uni for the term and give myself a break. As soon as I pressed the button to withdraw from the class, a huge weight lifted off me. It was a tough decision, yet I don’t regret it.

I finally feel like I’m back on top of everything again, and ready to conquer the world. 2012 is going to be my year, and I’m going to rock it.

I know I’m putting a bit of pressure on myself again – uni and a 52 in 52 list that includes a photo every day. But I think I have the support network around me to pick me up when I’m down. I feel strong and motivated again. I don’t feel like I’m going into this because I have to. I’m going into this because I want to.

Feb 28th is the start of classes again, and frankly, I can’t wait.

It is an absolutely stunning day outside today, which was pretty unexpected after the huge downpour we had yesterday. I was up early enjoying the weather outside doing a big workout with a mate and our personal trainer. It’s incredibly windy though, and at one point I was running head on into the wind, and it felt like I was trying to run through a brick wall!

Speaking of my training, I ended up deciding not to document my triathlon progress simply because I just don’t have the time. I’ve struggled this year to keep up-to-date with my Project 365 task (a photo a day), so to find the time to sit down and video myself discussing my training every week? Not going to happen. On the training front though I’m doing Saturday sessions with a personal trainer, and I finally got my mountain bike out and pumped up the tyres. I went for a ride early this week from C’s place with the aim of riding to work, but after cycling around for 20mins and not finding the underpass to get under the motorway I gave up, turned around and rode home. It turned out that if I had gone about 50m further I would have found it – d’oh! This coming week I’m aiming to ride to work at least once, but it’s a short work week for me given that I will be flying to Rockhampton on Thursday to go to uni.

Speaking of uni, I have just finished watching another lecture – snore! Earlier I noted how beautiful it was outside; and now I’m currently wasting the day by sitting inside studying. Wasting probably isn’t the right word when it comes to education, but I would much prefer to be outside down the beach, or at least somewhere outdoors. Yet I have a few more items to get done before my assignment is finished and ready to be posted off in two days time, and I have some more things to get done before I go to Rockhampton, so spending some time inside is definitely required. One of those items includes finishing some exercises on a CD we got posted at the start of the term, and unfortunately for me that CD is currently stuck inside my computer that decided to die. I have to pull out the power box from the PC and get a new one – I think that’s whats wrong with it, but given that my actual knowledge of the internals of a computer is severely limited, I may be wrong. Who knows, I guess I’ll find out when I spend money buying a part it doesn’t need. Let’s just hope it’s not the motherboard.

On an unrelated note, C just moved into a new house yesterday and it’s fantastic. It’s a big 5 bedroom place with a 3-car garage, and only a 5min walk from the beach. Win! It also has a spa bath in it, which I’ll be asking nicely if I can use one day, it looks incredible. He’s absolutely over the moon to be in the new place and with some new housemates, and is doing the final moving touches today. I offered to help, but he told me to rest up (since I will be getting up at 3.30am tomorrow to drive to Brisbane for a 10km run). From the sounds of it there’s not much left to go, and I’m hoping he’s not overdoing it since he managed to hurt his sore shoulder again, naughty C. Thankfully his next physio appointment is on Tuesday so he’ll get some more movement out of it again soon.

So how is your Saturday travelling? Having a day in like me or did you get out and about?

If you’re new to my blog, you should know that I work full time and study part time via flex at home at night. It can be incredibly draining. Also, this year I became newly single and began to discover myself at the same time. As a result my studies took a back seat and were neglected in a major way. At the end of the term and over the course of 3 days I attempted to learn an entire semester’s worth of content in preparation for an exam worth 60% of my overall marks.

It was a big ask.

Back at the start of June and at the conclusion of my exam I blogged about how thankful I was the term was over, and that even if I failed I really didn’t care. I had accepted that I had completely and utterly pushed my luck this time, and that cramming wasn’t going to pay off. I decided that I was destined to fail, and that it was payback for letting myself lose sight of my long term prospects. It’s quite possible that reaching this level of understanding and accepting responsibility for my actions saved me…if you believe in karma and that sort of thing.

I passed.

Just barely, but I passed. I got a grade of “P”, and after spending some time googling grading levels I discovered that P was indeed a pass. Initially I thought “p” for “pass” was a bit too obvious and therefore couldn’t be right. But alas, it proved to be the case, and I immediately celebrated my results on twitter.

Since then, after chatting with a fellow classmate I found out that the subject has a fail rate of 40%, which makes my achievement even more formidable in my mind. I know wholeheartedly the reason I didn’t do better in this subject is not because I found the content beyond me. It’s purely a case that I left everything to the last minute, I didn’t apply myself, and I was incredibly lazy. In my mind, learning a semester’s worth of knowledge over the course of a long weekend combined with passing a topic with a high failure rate proves that my mind isn’t too shabby at all! In a sick and twisted way, I’m almost proud of myself.

Let it be said though – this is the scare I needed. I’m not ever going to put myself under that same amount of pressure ever again. I didn’t enjoy it, and I reached breaking point.

Never again.

Today I sat down for my end of term chemistry exam, worth 60% of my overall grade for the term. I’m pretty sure I failed.

I should care, but I don’t.

This term has been bloody hard on me. Chemistry at the best of times is a tough subject, and has an incredibly steep learning curve. It demands time and dedication to simply grasp the concepts before you even begin to expand upon them, otherwise your brain will explode. I’m sure of it. No doubt there’s some way to explain that the covalent bonds in your brain would be severed due to the excitement of other atoms that then cause the entire thing to simultaneously combust.

That’s probably why I failed. I just tend to make it up and hope for the best.

I have probably gone through my biggest life change in the last few months, all while attempting the most difficult subject of my uni degree thus far. As a person I have grown tremendously, and I have learned a heck of a lot about myself. Unfortunately, the other side of it was that I had no motivation or desire to dedicate the time to chemistry that it deserved. Not to mention the fact that I work on computers for 8 hours a day for a full time job, coming home to sit in front of a computer again is often the last thing I want to do.

At this stage I’m not sure what I’m doing next term. I’m seriously contemplating giving myself a term off and just taking a break. I know I’m not good at the “break” thing, I”ll be bored within weeks, but that might be exactly what I need right now in order to build up the motivation and desire again to sacrifice so much of my time towards uni again. It’s definitely something I hope to achieve at some point, but personal development could quite possibly be more important right now. After all, I’m not going to succeed if I’m not happy and settled, am I? I don’t want to find that in 6 months time I’m in the exact same position again and I haven’t learned anything. I’m not a fan of the whole “failure” thing, it doesn’t look good on me.

Plus it doesn’t match my eyes.

Tonight I’m seeing a friend who I haven’t seen in a LONG, long time, and I’m totally excited. We’re simultaneously toasting the combination of seeing each other for the first time in years along with the conclusion of my uni term. Needless to say, there will be plenty of drinks consumed tonight. After spending almost 24 hours studying chemistry in front of the computer over the last 72 hours instead of having a weekend, I definitely need to let my hair down.

I think now is a good time to turn on the stereo and open my first drink. Why wait?

Just like that it’s over.

Thank friggin god.

After 4 days of mind-raping chemistry work, I’ve handed in three lab reports and finished with my lab manual. I have learned about covalent bonds, titration, using pipettes, d, s and p-orbitals, and many other exciting things that will put you to sleep. I wanted to sleep  just learning about them.

Today we managed to finish just after lunch, so a few friends from class and I decided to head down to the tavern for a bite to eat and a few beverages to celebrate. They will actually be here for another 5 days as they are doing their degrees full time and have some more classes to do (separate degrees from me though). As for me, I’m free to go home. Woohoo! I did toss up the possibility of driving home this afternoon directly after class, but given that it’s a 6 hour drive I didn’t really want to push it. The drive gets tiring, and mighty boring after a while, not to mention the fact that I had already paid for tonight’s stay, so I may as well use it rather than fuss about trying to organise a refund.

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