DM thinks I’m a rubbish student. He says I should be watching telly all day and going out with my student buddies getting drunk when I can be bothered to get off the sofa! I can say without fear of contradiction that I have NEVER watched an episode of Jeremy Kyle, Tricia or This Morning, even though I am well aware that they seem to be compulsory for students. Oh how I wish I could be that person. I must confess to enjoying working with the telly on in the background – I put this down to coming from a busy office and a carefully honed ability to switch my ears off.

OK, OK, so it’s not difficult for me to do that really as my hearing was “shot to bits” in the late 70s/early 80s by standing in front of huge stacks of Marshall speakers at gigs up and down the country. Yep – that’s me, the girl who spent about ten years of her young adult life in University student union bars watching bands, blagging my way into “closed” (SU members only) gigs and generally living in the nocturnal world of a student even though I was holding down a full-time job at the time. Ironic really that I had the pseudo-life of a student long before studying for a degree and now that I am a student, I live the life of a BOB.

So, now my life is one of working on assignments for roughly 12 hours a day, every day. I work relentlessly, seven days a week. I get up at 6.30am to work, without the aid of an alarm, whether or not I “need” to get up. Today my subject is the effect of marine pollution on seaweed. I’m rapidly becoming an expert in the toxicity of the different chemicals we pump out into our seas and how they affect marine life.

Now I have five more pieces of coursework to be handed in over the next five weeks and then it’s just (???!!!) a matter of cramming for my exams and then? Then it’s all over. In three months from now I walk from the “security” of knowing where I go every day and what I do to, er, well, who knows what? Do I opt for more education? Do I get a job? What sort of job? What sort of education? It’s another metaphorical abyss but this time I’m planning to jump over it instead of falling in.

It’s been my mission to do as well as I can in every piece of work to build myself a “buffer” with which to go into my exams. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking to slack off on the revision for them, I’ve worked too hard for that. I’m just giving myself a bit of an insurance policy in case they go horribly wrong on the day. I had another piece of coursework back today and so far, so good. I can’t afford to let it slip now though.

73% readability and grade 8…however, what that doesn’t say is whether it’s desirable reading. It is, however, a very bad return to BEIGE (and not in a good way)! Must try harder.