I closed my eyes and found an answer I hadn’t noticed

This week has been quite hectic. Exams started on Monday, with my first being Mathematics. It was perfectly awful. The paper just wasn’t nice. And I know I completely messed up one question, not because I didn’t know what to do, but because I messed up my basic integration. The worst thing was that I had gone over my integration the very night before in preparation for something like happening, but I had skipped over this particular method as I did not expect it to come up. Of course, it came up. I went back to my room, grabbed my purse and headed out to Tesco on a quest for Ben and Jerry’s, and spent the evening wallowing in my misery – on the internet, and reading a hilarious book(The bro magnet, which was not entirely realistic, but hilarious with a lot of heart!), instead of revising for my next exam the next day.

My next exam was Electrical Engineering, which was at the awesome time of 16.30. I planned to take advantage of the late time and get up early to spend the day doing last minute cramming, but ended up oversleeping and spent only the afternoon doing so. This exam also went terribly wrong. The paper was OK, apart from a few of the wordier questions that I couldn’t do (of course the wordier questions I could do weren’t on the paper) I instead made the stupid mistake of mistaking a components value, therefore doing a good page of calculations and half of one question entirely wrong. Thankfully I spotted this, and I went through and corrected it. Only to check it through again and realize I had messed up my calculations. So by this point it was getting a bit messy, and after going through it again it only got worse. I am terrified that I did it wrong the third time ( I only got 61.5% efficiency for the transformer/ So either it’s a really crap transformer, or I did it wrong. My money is on the latter :( ), or that I won’t even get method marks because it is so messy!

That stupid component threw me out entirely and I messed up on the one part of the paper I could do in my sleep. I came out of the exam wanting to cry- it was so bad! I mean, how awful would it be to fail an exam because I misread a component value? Lame!

I am disappointed and annoyed with myself that I messed up both papers over such stupid, little things.

Then on Wednesday I had to go the doctors for three vaccinations. I overslept and was nearly late, of course, but I did make it and I ended up getting them done, two in one arm, and one in the other. It was painful, although the nurse was nice. She spoke to me about my course and Malaysia, and gave me further travel advice. I have to go back for more doses next week, and two weeks after that. Fun! I am really getting stressed with preparing to move abroad to Malaysia, there’s just so much to do, and I am really worried about it not working out- after so much has been done in preparation for it!

After the doctors I grabbed something to eat, and then headed back to halls to pack and get ready to travel home, only to realize I needed money for the bus. Cue me throwing together my stuff, rushing out to the ATM (the closest is 30 mins there and back!), rushing back and throwing the rest of my stuff together before rushing off to catch the bus. Amazingly or the first time ever I didn’t have to run to catch my train, and I was on my train a good ten minutes before departure. Of course, I was badly packed, and I had left behind my laundry which sucks as with this glorious weather it would have been nice to be able to hang it outside. The train journey was long, and my arms ached, and I felt ever so slightly nauseous. I was glad when the journey came to an end and I was home.

It was strange being home, at first. Although badly packed, I have most of what I need as I have a lot of stuff still at home. It’s just, popping home sometimes it really feels like I am a visitor. It hit me as I was making lunch yesterday, which was a struggle, as the food available is no longer targeted to me. And yesterday morning there wasn’t any soap in the bathroom for me, and my room doesn’t have all my things. I felt a little unsure of myself yesterday, and as to why I came home. One part was for a quiet place to study as the library is getting busy, but another was because I wanted the comfort of my home. It’s not really my home anymore though?

But although yesterday was strange as I struggled to settle in, today proved to be much better. I attempted some revision, although the warmth is distracting, and then my dad came home and announced that we would be having a braai, which turned out to be chilled out and nice. For the first time I really felt like I was home. I felt settled and relaxed. And I am looking forward to taking a break from revision tomorrow, to make milk tart and then to spend my afternoon lying in the garden reading and sunning myself. It’s quite nice being back I suppose and I am dreading having to go back to uni because it means having to face that fact that I still have two more exams! After my first two awful exams I am quite ready to be done with this semester. Mathematics and Electrical Engineering exams were the ones I felt fairly confident about, compared to Electronic Engineering and Fields which I really really really struggle with. I also haven’t even started revising for Fields, which doesn’t help matters.

It took all my willpower not to use even more exlcamation marks in this post than I already have. I am a wierd mixture of feeling lazy and relaxed, and totally stressed right now!