differentiation

I'm so tired I'm dizzy. This is the result of, as zeta_of_s has recently remarked, belonging to a university that works its students into the ground. I'm in the ground. Somewhere below the topsoil, where the earthworms are waiting to feast on my unresisting corpse. I don't think I've been as tired as this for a long, long time. Claire rang me this morning and asked how I was. "I feel like something has died inside my head," I said, thoughtfully; I didn't realise until later how gruesome my spoken imagery is becoming.

I was doing Politics the other night - I can't remember when, I can't think - until late, and it's pretty crap (and in addition, I've just got a nice long email from my tutor listing the various ways in which my essays this term have exemplified my crapness, which is nice), but I went over to Pat's after I'd finished and stayed a while, and then it was six in the morning. And yesterday, which I think was Sunday, I got up early, at eleven, was good, did maths, and reached dinnertime having achieved nothing very much. I think I need to make it clear that I can't do maths. I CAN'T DO MATHS. But that's what I love about this place; they give you two years' worth of A-level maths to do in six weeks and make you believe that you should be able to do it; it's expected, therefore you can do it, veni vidi vici and all that jazz. I am quite laughably awful at it. Last night I got Sky and Pat and any other mathmo I knew to try and teach me, and bless them, they all learned a lot. I don't know how to differentiate. I think I know how, but I don't. It's like knowing the grammar rules without knowing the language, stumbling through the darkness with a roadmap and no light. (Edited to add:Just noticed this: p_1. What FUCKING WANKERS.)


So we watched Shaun of the Dead, curled up in Sky's room eating oranges with the scent of them drifting through the dark, and I thought it would be funny, which it was, but it was also really sad, which I didn't expect, and I went off at midnight feeling blue and did maths until four am. Having again not achieved very much, I got up in the morning and tried to be good and actually, y'know, do some work. I did a day's worth of reading for a Mill essay on integrity, and everything was fine until I found out that there's been a change of plan and it's not integrity, it's proof we're doing. Yay for being good, and yay for a wasted day.

So here I am again, re-doing the maths I tried to do yesterday with no success, with less success this time (yes, less than no success despite its non-negative nature, I told you I couldn't do maths), and now I think I shall have to drink how ever many cups of coffee to get through the proof reading with enough time to write the essay tomorrow and do the maths long questions, which I haven't touched yet, and I think the whole lot has to be done by Wednesday morning, but I don't know when that is. I have to pack. I have done no work, but I can't remember doing anything else.

Oh, yes, note to self: do washing. You have no clean clothes left.

And have lunch at some point. Or dinner. Or something.