Don't let the cave-in get you down

2015! Hello!

2014 wasn't the terrible ordeal for me that it seems to have been for a lot of people. I took a year-long class I adored at a Proper Fancy Drama School, made a small amount of actual money doing actual theatre things, and then spent three months being driven across the United States, sleeping in tents and having encounters with wild animals. We saw herds of wild bison at Yellowstone, a family of wild moose in Glacier National Park, baby bears in Sequoia (and a few other places!) and, traumatically, tarantulas.  During TARANTULA MATING SEASON. When our tent zip was malfunctioning and wouldn't zip properly. 

Of course now it's 2015, I'm unemployed and back in Scotland and about to move flats.  We'll be living in the Mean Streets of Glasgow, something I am very excited about since we will no longer have stupidly long commutes into work and/or to see shows, or both, since L continues to get free tickets to the students' performances from her work. 

So I plucked up my courage and went to my exam review session and it was TOTALLY worth it. Since I don't know whether I'll have the opportunity to attend review sessions for my very last exams in May I'm also going to count this as my first success in my 101 Things list. \o/

My only taught class last semester was Gender and Terrorism, and the one-on-one review sessions were yesterday. After umming and ahhing about it for a while, I plucked up my courage and went in, to be greeted with this conversation:

PROF: So someone, at the end of their exam script, wrote me a little note saying 'sorry this is so bad, but I really enjoyed the class'...
ME: *CRINGE*
PROF: ... which is strange because that person got the highest exam result in the whole class.

AAAHHHH. :D :D :D :D

Now obviously this isn't the greatest news in the world; my essay marks were good-but-not-great and dragged the overall mark down a bit. BUT STILL. There were some scarily clever and well-read people in that class; every tutorial was like in Mona Lisa Smile or something, with people putting up their hands and saying 'ah well yes but in V. Spike Peterson's 1993 response to Pape's rational-suicide-tactics thesis with particular emphasis to the blah blah blah'.

She also asked if I was going into academia and told me that I should. And then she recommended me some books and told me I was welcome to sit into her critical approaches to counter-terrorism class.

YAY A TEACHER LIKES ME :D :D :D :D

The other night was a lovely and awesome 21st at a friend's house. We played party games! The first hour or so was spent making piñatas (L and I made a spider because our house is just FULL of them right now. D: Others included a fish, a pig, what was supposed to be another guest's face, a space alien, a boob, and a balloon).

I was then introduced to the American invention, 'smores'. Our host, an Actual American, shipped Actual American Food to herself for this very reason; as a result, we had Gram Crackers, Jetpuff Marshmallows and Hershey's chocolate.

SCOTT: Oh my God, I love Hershey's. It's better than Dairy Milk or Cadbury's by far.
ME: ... get out of this country.
SCOTT: It's true!
ME: You're no longer a Scot. You're no longer even a Scott! From now on I'm calling you Steve.
SCOTT STEVE: :(

Then we went searching for bananas, which had been hidden all over the front garden. It was a really fun night despite having to leave before eleven. It's made me very, very excited about finding Freshers to adopt, because it's traditional to play party games with them before getting them very, very drunk and dressing them in silly costumes for a giant foam-fight in the quad.

HURRY UP UNIVERSITY HURRY UP.

Life is lovely. That's pretty much the summary of this post, actually.

I have a relaxed and easy job in a guesthouse with lovely people - it's owned by a married couple and they give us biscuits and chat and are perfectionists but don't mind if you take forever to get a room looking lovely. PERFECT. The reason I hated bar work is that I like doing things well and I like taking ages over them. FINALLY A PART-TIME JOB THAT CATERS TO MY NEEDS

And it's only four or so mornings a week, so I have afternoons to myself: I can watch Lost, dick around online, make cake and write. My love is working full-time (and getting paid a TON, seriously) so our evenings have been pretty chill so far - watching the football, walks on the beach, forcing all our friends and new housemates to watch ATLA and so on.

It's basically ideal. Lazy, and sunny, with just enough money to get by on comfortably and plenty of company.

I am happy. :)

Man. The end of the year is always so sad. I haven't finished exams yet but the weather was so gorgeous the other day that we wound up sitting in the beer garden of a nearby pub drinking pitcher after pitcher of pimms, before grabbing a home-made pizza meal at our friend's place and heading out for pier-jumping and a bonfire. We didn't pier jump, but L did get me up on her back before running full-speed towards the edge. I MIGHT HAVE DIED.

Luckily, thanks to some golf championship or other, just about all my friends are staying for the summer! \o/ EVERYWHERE is looking for staff, and I have one official job and two potential jobs lined up already.

The last exam is political philosophy. It's a first year module and I am feeling dangerously confident about it. Oh well - it's political philosophy, and some of the questions should be quite interesting, although I need to focus a little more on economics than I'd like. Oh well.

INCIDENTALLY, THIS TIME NEXT WEEK I WILL BE IN JAPAN. Which is exciting.

What a lovely day! :D I am just wonderfully happy.

1. It is the last day of the Easter holidays! This means that everyone is back in town.

2. The weather is absolutely gorgeous.

3. I spent the morning making lasagne! The last time I attempted making actual food was at the end of November. I don't know if it'll be any good but my woman and I had an awesome time making it anyway.

4. Free cakes in the facilities room! Another consequence of everyone coming home.

5. Frozen grapes at Academic Sister-in-Law's place earlier!

6. Delivering free cakes to friends who've been on long plane journeys today!

7. Party tonight.

8. Classes tomorrow! I like classes, okay.