Study Frustration in Days of My Destiny

This whole study thing is just..... a saga.

It's a simple course. It's one of those things that a few years ago, you did not need to do a course for, but now you do. So the booklets come in the mail, the information is spoon fed to you and the questions are basic as anything.

I've had good grades, but the general feedback is that I need to show evidence of a use of a wider range of research. So for example they want to see that I've read (and quoted) scholarly articles, magazines, books and the internet.

My question is.... where is the room for research?!?!?!?!?! When you are asking me to complete a sentence that is IN THE BOOK, or asking me to fill out a chart and fill the gaps which are found IN THE BOOK, or to match column A with column B which is IN THE BOOK..... where is there room for research? WHAT research, anyway? I kid you not, out of an assessment piece containing 20 questions, there might be ONE or TWO open-ended questions that could POSSIBLY, MAYBE, JUST MAYBE call for research. I am not. kidding.

I find it..... offensive........ to ask that of me when it's straightforward shit. Like dude, I have studied at university level. I have had to do REAL research for REAL FUCKING ISSUES, okay, I've had one sentence given to me and been told to 'discuss' - which really meant, find out what the fuck this sentence means, research everything about it, decide on what angle you want to focus on, find the main sides of the fences and detail those arguments and come to a reasonable conclusion from all of it in about, oh I don't know, maybe 3,000 words. So you know, don't come to me requesting this crap here in this bullshit-artist course. (But they do.) Don't try to make something challenging when you don't even have the know-how!

So........ this slows down my whole study process a lot more, but fair enough. It wouldn't annoy me so much if it weren't for the fact that our internet is slightly haphazard. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The best time for me to do any serious study is when L is on afternoon shift, because it means that once I get the girls to bed, I have the whole house to myself, I have the correct level of SILENCE that I need. Now, L is on afternoon shift every six weeks. This means that I get a month of no study, and then I have a window of two weeks where every night after the girls go to sleep, I can really maximise my studies.

However, things get complicated, because the girls don't go straight to sleep every single night. Some nights they are awake in their room for a few hours after I've done story time and song time. I don't mind that, I think it's bit of bonding time for them - as long as they keep it to a reasonable noise level. Some nights they get carried away and squeal and jump on their beds and keep coming out to ask me anything (like, they'll look around and go, "Ummmm................... why is there a bug on that light bulb?" GRR! Lol.)

Other nights, everything goes smoothly. The girls are exhausted so they fall asleep while I'm still in their room with them (most nights they really do settle well), and then I walk out to the rest of the house to find that the kitchen is in disgusting order. Now, we're pretty casual about the housework most of the time, but the one thing we do not really back down on is the kitchen. I think L is more like this than I would've ever been if I'd never met him, but I've really learned to prioritise it. (Especially in this house on these two and a half acres, where attracting mice is oh so easy......) Also, I think about L - would he really want to walk into the state of the kitchen as it is at 1 in the morning? No, he wouldn't. It would not be pleasant for him to walk through the door, tired as hell, to a pile of dirty, crusting dishes. (You have to walk through the kitchen to get to any other part of this house.) So I think about his perspective and choose between washing the dishes or studying. Sometimes I say, ah fuck it, my studies are more important than a pile of dirty dishes, so I ignore the dishes and try to jump on the net, except it won't work, so after half an hour or so of fucking around with that, I end up washing the dishes anyway and then falling into bed in an exhausted, frustrated heap. I might read a book for a while in bed just to get my mind off it. Most of the time my intention is to wash up as quickly as I can, to get some study done. So I wash up...... and then I'm just exhausted. Some nights, I'm not, so I'll jump on the computer to do this so-called 'research'.... and whaddayaknow, the internet is fucking up.

Oh my goodness it is the one running theme in my life that frustrates me more as time goes by. I know it shouldn't frustrate me because I can't do anything about it, but it just DOES! Like how difficult must this be!!!!!!!

And then, other nights, I just can't care. I'd much rather read a book, or watch TV, or play my guitar.

Sometimes, when the internet IS working, I have a serious go at researching the thing that there is no research for. Or there might be, but not in my field. Now as I mentioned, I've researched shit before, so I know how to research. So when I say it's not in my field, it's not just because I'm not looking far enough.

The other thing is...... I can't access a lot of online journals in the way I might've once been able to, because even though I'm an Alumni, my student number and password that I was told would last forever is NO LONGER VALID. Thanks, fucking university. Oh that's right, I never actually COMPLETED my degree because life circumstances dictated that I should move AWAY and therefore for reasons beyond my control, I was unable to finish, even though I only had 6 subjects to go. Well fuck you, academia.

(I had 6 subjects to go, in a degree that was being fazed out - I was the last student to ever do that degree - and so the online university I transferred to did not have those subjects. My old uni said, 'Hey, we'll let you graduate if you can find substitutes for these subjects, doesn't matter where in Australia the uni might be, just find the courses. We'll give you a month to do this, we'll approve it and you'll have your degree." But turned out, this all happened JUST AS WE WERE PACKING AND MOVING AGAIN - and when we moved to this new place, we found out that internet here was SHIT, and we actually had NO internet for about a month - so I missed that window. Now all I have is an official transcript with a list of subjects to show that yes, I did study once upon a time. Sure they'd count for SOMETHING, SOMEWHERE, but fuck me, sometimes this whole ordeal REALLY shits me. I was so close. I'm just so glad that this realisation did not happen at the time. Well I think it did, I was just numb about it because I knew there was nothing I could do. Okay tangent over.)

So now I'm stuck doing a SIMPLE AS FUCK course, that is requiring MORE THAN THEY NEED TO from me, while I have SHIT INTERNET and SMALL WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITY and SHIFT WORK to work around.

Sigh.