don't want too long to come home / I will leave the front light on

[raven]

In the latest from Ithaca's dizzy meteorology, twenty-five degrees and a summer storm. It was minus five last week. I will never understand this place. But I appreciated the t-shirt and sandals. My toes hadn't seen sun since New Orleans.

Shim left this afternoon, in a flurry of incompetence, none of it ours. My boy never has the best luck with flying out of Ithaca, apparently. Last time they tried to deliver him to Schipol rather than Heathrow; this time he was taking a flight at 3.20, and I had class till just gone twelve, so I said, I'll come home and we'll have lunch and then we'll call a cab. I called at 1pm; the cab people said it'd be twenty minutes. Half an hour later I called back, they said it'd be fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes after that they said it'd be fifteen minutes. Then I called back and the guy wasn't exactly intelligible but I heard something about "police". I called Ithaca's only other cab company and we got to the airport a mere hour and a half after planned. And then we stood in line for twenty-five minutes - Continental's computers were all down, apparently - and then when finally he'd checked in they announced the delay.

It was a delay for an hour, so I stuck around, and we watched the turboprops landing and taking off (it's a very small airport) and then he went through security. Just as he was crossing through to the other side, they announced the next delay. He did, in the end, miss his connection through Newark, though luckily there is not exactly a shortage of transatlantic redeyes. I just seem to have a very low tolerance for other people's incompetence today. (My own, now, that's a different story.)

So, it's now April 11th. I graduate, theoretically, on May 15th. In the next four weeks and six days I have to: write 14,000 words; sit two exams; deliver a half-hour presentation on research I have not begun yet; go to class; leave the house; eat, sleep and take showers.

(I also need to keep telling myself that I do not need to take the bar exam. I do not need to take the bar exam. I was going to, originally. Here are the reasons I am not taking the bar exam:

-bar review begins the week after graduation;
-and goes on until the bar exam in the last week of July;
-my visa expires long before that, I'd have to go to Canada and back;
-and besides, I do not need to take the bar exam;
-though it would be nice, and a good thing to have on the CV;
-I am perfectly qualified to practise in England and Wales;
-and speaking of which, will be in practice in England and Wales from the start of September;
-and need to find a place to live, move all my possessions there and also learn to drive before then;
-and I have been in full time education since I was four years old and I am twenty-four now, and I have been in various stages of academic burnout for oh half a decade and I need a damn holiday THAT IS WHY I AM NOT TAKING THE BAR EXAM.

And yet I still feel guilty about it.)

I am already looking around my apartment at the washing-up and the coffee mugs and empty fridge and the clock and making myself hollow promises about decaf and early nights and oh hey remember you almost missed an exam last semester because you can't wake up before one in the afternoon oh yeah. Wouldn't it be nice to be the sort of person who can deal with her partner leaving. Yes. I am feeling very rubbish indeed and dealing it with through the magnificent gambit of ignoring it entirely and abusing italics goddammit. I made a revision timetable. It's not colour-coded.

(As an old friend of mine would say at this point, sometimes you just stand there, hip-deep in pie.)

This entry is just so much alphabet soup. Don't mind the crazy girl in the corner. Go on with your day.

Comments

[silverhare]

*big hugs*

[raven]

thanks, honey.

[petra]

I would very much like to take you out to dinner, sometime in the 4/23ish weekend. Are you up for that?

[raven]

Hello hello! I did get your email and am just being a loser about replying to anything in a timely fashion. The problem, you see, is I may or may not have agreed to do something that weekend, and I am trying to find out which at the moment! I very much appreciate the offer, and I will reply for definite soon, promise. *flail flail flail*

[petra]

No worries. Schedule fuckery is why I assumed a 2-week warning would be helpful. Let me know when you know.

[eglantine-br.livejournal.com]

Well, you seem cool to me! I admire your getting things done thing. I seem to lack that myself...

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I lack it most of the time! It tends to kick in, oh, 24 hours before vital deadlines...

[speccygeekgrrl.livejournal.com]

At some point in the next four weeks and six days we really need to meet up for at least a cup of coffee or tea or something. Provided we both can find the time in between all of the papers and projects and presentations and exams we have to deal with in that time, of course.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yes yes yes this. I want to meet you finally and hear about your new lady friend. What sort of times are you free? Maybe we could do a weekday evening or something?

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

omg, so SOON! Also, my mind is still kind of boggled that you're going to be a practicing professional before the year is out. IONA, STOP GROWING UP, THE REST OF US CAN'T KEEP UP. ;)

...are you secretly friends with Casey McCall?

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

yeah. Yeah, Casey McCall is totally the old friend I was talking about there, you banana. :P

(ALSO YES TOO SOON I CANNOT KEEP UP EITHER!)

[icepixie]

Heh. Your pep talk about not taking the bar exam sounds very similar to the ones I gave myself when I didn't apply for a PhD after the MA. (Still one of the best decisions I ever made, FWIW. Every couple of weeks, I randomly think, "I never have to teach a comp class again!" And I clap my hands with glee.)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

It is a great pep talk. *nods* It is ITEMISED.

(srsly, that is reassuring! I have all this inexplicable GUILT.)

[icepixie]

Itemized pep talks are the BEST.

(I had a lot of guilt at first, and still do occasionally when I'm not feeling so great about my employment situation, but then I think "freshmen" and it vanishes. You just need to boil your reasoning down to a soundbite you can repeat to yourself when necessary. :D)

[the-acrobat.livejournal.com]

*hugs* to all this.

making myself hollow promises about decaf and early nights

Yess... That is where I am right now, too. Hollow is the key word at this point in the game, though. (2,400 words to write tomorrow)

Best of luck getting through the month. Good things are on the horizon. :)

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

All of this to you as well, my dear! :) We are awesome, we shall prevail.

[marymac.livejournal.com]

Bar exam guilt is Very Silly and should go away and leave you alone. Hit it with a textbook.

Can't help with the getting up thing, but proofreading is totally available in this corner should you hit the wall.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I'm tryyyyyyin', I really am. (And thank you! Much appreciated.)

[stained_glass]

*HUGS YOU*

And those are all totally decent and reasonable reasons not to take the bar exam. I remember when my dad made me do a ski instructors' course. NEVER AGAIN. Exams that you do not need to take should, generally, not be taken!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I am nevertheless very impressed that you are a ski instructor. :P thank you for hugs, my dear!

[stained_glass]

Haha, I'm not! I had a breakdown at the top of a mountain on the penultimate day of the course and never took the exam. XD *HUGS!*

[tau_sigma]

*hugs* Do not feel guilty for not taking the bar exam. You will come home, and have a summer of relaxation, hopefully, and feel all the better for it in September.

I am somewhat bemused that you graduate on May the 15th. That's rather soon. My exams don't even start until the 18th, so I shall consider myself lucky, for a brief moment, before I go back to flailing 'omg I have SO MUCH TO REVISE I will never know all of it ARGH'.

Abusing italics (and capslock, I find) is a wonderful way of dealing with it. *hugs*

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I AM BEMUSED BY THIS ALSO

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Also there was meant to be more to this comment, stupid keyboard, mouse and self. It makes intellectual sense, given that we started in early August, but still argh so soon.

SO MUCH TO REVISE. This is a good time for a support group. I cannot be very helpful with physics but I can wave pom-poms and do "Tali is awesome" dance routines, if that will help at all.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

Not taking the bar exam sounds very, very sane - twenty consecutive years of full-time education warrants a large break, definitely - but I can see why you still feel guilty about it. I would (because I am insane, mainly). But I think it's definitely the right thing not to do it.

I hope Shim made it home okay eventually, and that you are coping okay with everything. Well done for making a revision timetable! I haven't yet (oh god, finals finals argh). That is the Plan For Today.

[fyrdrakken]

All very good reasons to refrain from taking yet another bar exam. And you may have a very lot to do in a very short period, but then again that means it's not very long before you're on the same side of the Atlantic as Shim again, either.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Yeah, part of me feels lazy because I never did take a bar exam - you don't have to, in England - and so I kind of want to get that done as something I've done. Which is possibly crazy.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

You are utterly awesome, and the bar exam would add little to that awesomeness in the way that a chance to relax before the next stage would.