Brief summary, last few days

[taimatsu]

went shopping to Primark. bought good gothy skirt and several t-shirts and things. Good.
bought wardrobe. plan for today involves putting it together. Hmm.
have new bedlinen, hurrah hurrah! it is purple and stripy and only cost £16 altogether. And it looks like king-size fitted sheets will fit our queen-size mattress, which is Great News.
had nice evening and special meal with Robert yesterday, very good.
finally we have decent plumber, he came on saturday and we feel very confident this will get sorted out. British gas seem to have given us a quote for the replacement boiler-part which is four or five times what it should have been.
I have to finish my job application for the RACC post (closes tomorrow) but i am still nervous about the whole lack of car thing.
Played various games with the Feng Shui crowd on Friday night, was fun. Give me the Braaain!
am currently eating pasta with butter and fresh sliced tomato. Tonight there will be beef/veg/noodle stirfry and we're going to watch 'The Princess Diaries' which is on TV at 6pm. Great incentive to get the sofa cleared off :)
Tomorrow is Monday and i have to get myself off to job agencies. Meep!
I am going on a brief family holiday in a week or so - home to London on the 13th, then off to a hotel for the 14, 15, 16 and back on the 17th. Should be good - i get to see my brother who will be back from gallivanting round Europe, also my godmother and her sons, and then spend some time in a nice hotel somewhere just Relaxing with a capital R, and catching up with well-travelled-brother's news before he goes to Leeds to start university.
That's all, folks.

Comments

[sheda.livejournal.com]

Hello. I stumbed across your livejournal somehow. It seems you're an interesting person. I enjoyed reading about you and your experiences moving. Also, cheers to you for attending Oxford, a dream of mine, being only in highschool right now.

[taimatsu]

Hello! It's nice to bump into new people - thank you for visiting :)

Oxford is a lovely place to live and work, and there are many good points to the academic system in place at the university. I just found the academic environment didn't suit me, and when I ended up in a mess of personal and emotional difficulties, I just fell through the cracks in the system. The timetable is such that if you fall behind there is no time to catch up - there's just no spare space in the week. There were times when I had only one hour of compulsory contact time per week, which meant that the authorities were very slow to pick up on the scale of my problems (that it was more than me being late every week) and I was really trying to hide from the problems, so I didn;t go and get help myself.

In the end, though, I think even if I hadn't had the troubles I did, I would have had great difficulty getting through the course. I picked the wrong subject, and I need a structure with more contact with other students, more opportunities for discussion and sharing of ideas. That happens in some subjects at Oxford, but not in mine.

So, do visit Oxford, and do aim to study there if it's your dream. But consider your decision carefully, and remember that a first degree there is much more like a research degree (particularly in arts subjects - sciences are a lot more structured and controlled). Be sure your subject is something you absolutely love. If you can do that, and you can cope with working on your own quite a bit, you'll love it :)

Don't be disheartened by my ranting - I just got the short straw when it comes to Oxford, and quite a lot of it's my fault. (I *so* should have taken a gap year!) I look forward to reading your journal more often. What school year are you in at the moment? (I may have trouble translating it into English, I warn you :)) Favourite subjects?

[willjsm.livejournal.com]

let's have a photo of the skirt then...

[taimatsu]

Don't have a working digicam right now, sadly. One won't transfer to the computer and the other won't flash.