Overdue

At the beginning of every new academic year, there's nothing like the lack-of-internet-desperation/feeling to make you feel right at home, heralding the crazy start of a new year where in between lectures and hectic timetables, you keep wandering into the library to relentlessly check your email.

The advantage of having my lovely powerbook is I can lug it to the library rather effortlessly, and it almost feels like I'm surfing in the comforts of my own zone. I say almost because I still rather miss the surfing-in-bed luxury and mindless picking at random websites to look at while in between making dinner, having a shower, being on the phone and general thinking-I-should-do-work-but-I-really-am-not feeling that revisits me once in a... uh... few hours. (I will get room internet soon anyway)

So here I am, strolling around campus and various parts of london thinking I can take it easy - since it's only the first week. And then I get a text to say lecture time has been brought forward - I missed half a lecture. And then coursemates start fretting about the enormous amount of work to do - how they've already almost finished our assignment at the same time as it was beginning to dawn on me that I actually have work to do on the first week of first term. Oh the horrors. How can you be so laidback I hear someone say...

Well, why not?

But it's starting to creep into me, this sense of urgency and intensity - perpetuated by the fact that I have met two separate people on separate occassions who have had close friends who'd done the same course - who never had a minute of rest in the whole year and was constantly working.

I'm afraid I have to give up procrastination not really by will, but by choice.

Yet still, I'm mucking about online instead of going home to labour at my desk to bang out three reports due tonight.
Some things don't change?

Am also beginning to wonder at my choice of course - I'm doing right now, what I would have to do for the next six years of my life after this year. Isn't it stupidity or a matter of overdose?

but I find myself strangely glad, and slightly happy about what I'm studying now. (despite initial disparaging comments that i was doing a "useless degree" by some bitter-type people) There are some things you learn on the job - there are other things you learn by being both on the job and studying it.

What I would have completed in my coming term would have basically got me in on a level that's required for a higher skill-set-group - even before I've started my career. Everyday I'm learning things that would have made me so much better at my job if I had known this right from the start. There's just no substitute for proper training - and too many people underestimate the importance of professionalism in our industry. Learning on the job is too slow for too many.

It's amazing how much history is behind the media and how rich the resources available to you, and how incredible the stories you hear behind closed doors from profs who have been in the industry long enough to not be astounded by the astonishing stories they're tellling us.

Right now, I'm struggling between immensely excited and passionate about the prevailing subject matter and being slightly sian (there's no proper queen's english equivalent for this expression, is there) about the fact that there's no stopping in this world of deadlines and intensity - and the looming disillusionment I can already forsee which is going to besiege me in a year's time.

So the only hope I have right now is to prolong time and prevent certain attitudes from settling in my mind.

What happened to having a great time and doing nothing while breezing through my MA?

Sigh.

I am getting used to my surroundings, too. It's not exactly the prettiest area of London but it suffices and besides only being a 10min train ride from central London, there's the second biggest park (after Hyde park) which is only 5 minutes away to comfort me. I guess there is beauty everywhere and it is only up to you to open your eyes to see it.

So I'm getting used to the immensity of this urban landscape and thank God I have my escapes during weekend when I can take refuge in the english countryside and small town atmosphere. There's nothing better than having the best of both worlds...

Am also getting used to my L-shaped room - which I wasn't very happy about at first - but it is still quite spacious and I have added a few homely touches and got it feeling more like my own. I miss having a living room though - we have a bare kitchen replacement for that - which I share with 4 other flatmates.

And they make it much better too. I'm living with 4 guys currently - one Palestinian, one British-Canadian, a half-Thai,half-Scot and a uh... shit, I can't remember where he's from orginally but he's British from..uh somewhere. I had a German girl doing an MA in photography initially but she's left to make way for the Palestinian because she can't stand the noise from the roads coming through her window. My own room, thankfully, is blissfully quiet. Although I can hear R flushing his toilet, and the rest when they make breakfast in the morning in the kitchen.

Everyone's so darn arty in this college and I love it. In my flat alone, we're doing degrees in journalism, design, fine arts, film and photography. No efforts of making boring conversations interesting with math and morse students from around. (Although I have to admit I do like math sometimes) Two of my flat mates are doing second or third degrees in film and I love them simply for the fact they know what I'm talking about when I talk about films properly! Such amazing discussions and conversations and the great thing is everyone is intelligent - no one is stupid. I hate having stupid conversations. Trying to get someone to understand a complexity which most of the times, either you get it, or you don't.
When we went down the pub the other day, we actually had to make an effort to talk about frivolous things - but even the stupidest of things we talked about always found its way round to something interesting and intelligent. Oh how I love it!

so yes, trying to get used to a different rhythm in life is not easy to do. but I'm slowly finding my pace.

And I'm savouring it.