reflections of sorts.

Aside from a couple of long days at work marking, printing and finishing off more marking, this has been where I have taken up residence. From the comfort of my cold, cold study, I have seen hot days, raging winds, rainy afternoons and people walking past in all such sporadic Victorian conditions. I don't mind that much. I am happy on my own. The peacefulness of the darkness between dusk and dawn in particular is the perfect time to collect my thoughts, jot them down and slowly, ever so slowly, make some form of progress on my thesis.

This year has been hard in a lot of ways. Learning to teach first year university students that are only a few years younger than myself has been trying, exhausting and thankfully, at times, rewarding. Marking their assessment has been a huge learning curve, which has made this last week in particular kinda rough. With much delight, essay marking is done for the year, my last class was taught last week and aside from a pile of exams to mark in a few weeks, I can happily say, I have survived my first year as a baby academic.

In February I can {hopefully} say the same for my first year of my PhD. I have struggled the whole year to find some happy medium between research and teaching, unsuccessfully. So it is here I imagine I will continue to sit over the next couple of months, watching the world move on past as I try so hard to be more disciplined, tick some more boxes, write a lot of words, and get to the place where I can say, I successfully survived the first year of my PhD.

Wish me luck.

But for now, as an afternoon treat, I am off to be a hair model for a project khayaam and lou are working on together. Head massage - come at me.