Tuesday 21 December 2010

Coursework and related musings

Coursework bites like a Jack Russell. Firstly, you know it's going to do it, but there's very little you can do to dissuade it (and any kicks attempting to do so will just make it worse). Then it'll clamp its jaws onto your calf and cling on for dear life. The pain will be extreme at the time, and it'll ensure you're incapacitated for hours on end.

Whilst that was a somewhat tortured simile, I think it gets my point across. Even having Kerrang Radio on in the background blasting Biffy Clyro isn't doing anything to null the throbbing ache at the front of my head as a result of spending much of the last couple of days laying the foundations for my Sentencing coursework essay. The good news is that I finally have a skeleton for the essay and that it shouldn't take much above two or three days to write. The bad news is that I have another 3,500 essay to write after this one, and once that's done I have a dissertation to work on.

All this coursework is getting in the way. It means I'm going to spend a grand total of 5 days off in my 3 weeks away from Newcastle. It means I don't have the time to focus on the two short stories I'm writing. Perhaps most irritatingly, it means I don't get the time to play Football Manager 2011 as much as I'd like to. I really want to have at least a season done in my developing world leagues game (MLS, A-League, Russian Premier Division), but if I'm beyond pre-season with Melbourne Heart then it should be regarded as a success.

On the other hand, it's nice to be away from uni. Once again, I'd got to the stage where the library was becoming more a prison than a place I could look forward to going to get some work done. The SLO was slightly better (it has natural light), but the building in general was starting to feel oppressive. The weather was hardly helping. Snow on the ground, silver building, grey skies; the world painted in greyscale. At least here I have the view of blue skies, skeletal trees out back, the houses on Church Lane, very Scandanavian with their caps of white.

Oh, and there's the PS3 behind me if ever I really need to get away for a few minutes.

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