A lone female figure sits hunched over the old oak desk, wrapped in blankets to make up for the lack of heating. Having given up on the previous pursuit of staring into space, she now taps away in an apparently productive manner.
Time – 2:47 am
Cups of tea – 7 (and counting)
Times I’ve checked Facebook today – 6 (very good!)
‘Oh no! A chipped nail... better file it’ – twice
Meals – 1 ½ (poor nutrition, tut tut)
Cans of ‘Mother’ (a fantastic Red Bull substitute) – 1
Below this growing list is another compiled a few hours earlier, nestled in amongst an essay titled ‘The economics of immigration in a global context’:
Things I have discovered today that have nothing to do with political economy:
• If you put your eye really close to the tea in your cup it fogs up just like the mirror after your shower.
• The Latin origins of the word vagina are the same as the word vanilla.
• You can, for around $200, get eyelash (!) extensions, that last “up to” two months
• According to Google I share my first name with a professional dominatrix in Leeds
This figure behind the typed revelations and documentation was me, last week, with just over a thousand words to write on my last essay for the semester, proving that uni certainly does offer a well rounded education!! It really was the ultimate procrastination: documenting procrastinatory activities. Whilst it may have taken a little longer, I did get my essay done, and had to applaud myself for not going as far as one friend who had in her study desperation apparently found “new and interesting ways to use those tab things law students use to mark summaries”, and now had her own original set of false eyelashes!
This essay was in fact my last one EVER, given that second semester of honours for Political Economy means no coursework, just a thesis. (I say ‘just’ a thesis... which is really five major essays put together in some kind of succinct way... but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it). This year has already begun to be a series of ‘lasts’, with the essay following on from my last class. It passed rather un-climatically, with the class stretching on to the pub after as usual, although this time most members of the faculty were dragged along too. Yet after four years of tutes, lecturers and seminars, a beer with the lecturers didn’t seem to cut it! I wanted some kind of fanfare to mark what is the beginning of the end of my university career. Well for this degree anyway.
Nevertheless, fanfare free, I now officially have 20 000 words between me and graduation. This landmark semester has been achieved with an amazing support network. Though it includes interested friends and family, it consists mainly of fellow honours students, who are the people who understand my ideas, issues and thought processes. Together we have been flitting between periods of stress, confusion, frustration & reckless abandon (well you’ve got to have fun sometimes!).
And (hopefully) together we will knuckle down over the next few months to produce the most substantial piece of work of our lives to date. That is I can wean myself off an overwhelming and growing repertoire of procrastination. But for now I’m off to post (no) class drinks.... I’ve got to keep that support network happy now don’t I?!