exams

well then, here i am again...two out of three exams are finished. next one is tomorrow...need to revise more, the fact that i studied already in the beginning of the month for this particular exam, thinking it was the first of the three exams, put me in a position where i'm not too worried about failing. however i still think i have to go over the material once or twice more and i still haven't learned how to interpret ANOVA (ANalysis Of VAriance, for those interested) output. I have tomorrow (wednesday) and thursday until 2.30 pm to read up on it! :D should be ok

other news, going home soon. mixed feelings about that. will probably miss the boys but it will also be nice to get away from leicester which i by now have come to associate with worrying (deadlines, exams), worrying (money) and binge drinking, and then some fun (everything else). once back home i can kick back and do nothing for most of the days. catch up on my japanese which i haven't done in ages!! music and movies are keeping me afloat at the moment.

world of warcraft is addicitive as always, can't wait to get started again.

want to be able to display photos here again but i have no webspace, should sort out that out with our ISP at home.

also found out where i can get boxes (for moving things), apparently morrisons (local supermarket) have some they give out for free, common knowledge, new to me. though this is actually the first time i've actually needed boxes and have had to get them myself. they fall into the category of things that just are there when you need them, until you're out of your parents' :)

.e

Is it just me?

Or is Blogger abit slow on posting your latest posts? It seems my new posts don't appear until a few days after i actually wrote them. Minor annoyance however since i don't often post these days. Good news though is that i've been trying to better myself when it comes to that. Things have been quite hectic here however, alot to revise and not enough to do it in...started cramming today as i realised i would never be able to "properly" memorise all this. Will have to rely on my memory to get my out of this fix. I will start reading all the journals tomorrow and finsih by the following night. The day after the day after tomorrow (?) i will have to start revising for my second exam which is on the 23rd, which in turn leaves me with 3 days to study for the last exam.

My willpower finally buckled under the pressure and i ordered WoW on amazon today (a bargain, they sell it for £10 less than what i think is the RRP [£35]). I will probably receive it on wednesday or thursday since i'm having it sent by first class mail. For an extra £2 i don't think it's so bad. Will make my third excursin to the great outdoors tomorrow to pick up a book (probably just photocopy a few chapters) from the main library for my reading. If i can get over the burning eyes i might get some reading done now.

.e

The most inappropriate times

to get a new hyper-addictive game is just before big exams. I blame ben (my housemate) for buying the game in the first place and thus dragging me down with him. The game is World of Warcraft, one of the most entertaining role-playing games i've played in a while. The game is what is known as a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) in which thousands upon thousands of people play warcraft (classic) with eachother doing various things, such as questiong and battling. The warcraft is not really like the previous warcraft games. Here you control one character which you take through numerous different places in search for, well...everything!
With every retail copy of the game you get a 10-day free guest pass which ben graciously gave me and thus for the past 10 ten i've been playing non-stop. And now i'm extremely eager to buy the game and it's taking every last drop of self-control to hold out until after exams. I just have to keep away from Amazon!
I also wish i had a slightly better computer to play it on. Playing it on my 12" Powerbook is not bad and considering the fact that i fell in love (ok maybe not fell in love, just a little crush :P) with the game using this computer i reckon it's not all that bad. Just imagine though, a massive 23" (grrr, firas!!) apple monitor backed by a g5 powermac. would worked wonders for those laggy raids that occur from time to time and reduce the game to a laggy mess of pixels! I try to stay away. Generally the computer performs surprisingly well under such stress and i'm glad, because it is one of the greatest games i have played to date.

On a more serious/academic note...my first exam is in 5 days and i have alot to study still. I really i hope i pass these exams. they are on "abnormal psychology and individual differences" and "Biological Psychology" as well as "practical psychology", though im not too worried about the latter. The abnormal is mostly about, u guessed it, abnormal behaviour...such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders as well as substance-related disorders. The problem is that there is so much information that i have to somehow or other cram in my poor mind. The exam format is as follows: two sections A and B, section A consists of two essay questions in which you have a choice of six different topics set by four lecturers. I've decided to concentrate my efforts on one of the questions only and on the second section of the exam (B). The B section consists of 50 multiple-choice questions based on the set reading material one was supposed to read during term. They are mostly journal articles and book chapters which u have to memorize. The B part is generally easier than the A section and therefore i'm assigning more time to the A section. The main problem with essay questions is that you have to know infinitely more than you have to know when doing a MCQ.

I just hope i 1) don't have to do more resits than the two i'm already doing 2) don't get kicked out!

.e

too late to go back

to the way it used to be, been thinking alot about the past lately and how weird it feels (in a good nostalgic kind of way) to walk around places where u spent alot of time as a kid. Wondering how it would be like if i went there now and what it would look like. Feels like the place i grew up in (a small town on the outskirts of Gothenburg) is frozen in time and everytime i go back, not much has changed. Only the people, and sometimes not even them.
You see friends you haven't spoken to or seen in ages and it all takes you back to 10 years ago when you used to play with them along the river, at their houses, doing what kids do. Would be unreal to be out there again! Don't know why i feel like this...maybe i'll go there for a quick visit in summer just to check things out. And it being summer all the emotions will probably be enhanced brining back memories from those times when the days seemed everlasting and summer would never end. Summer passes way too quickly nowadays. Just hit me that every generation since like ever has probably had this same thought, every generation feeling time passing slower, things being better and generally more trouble free back in the day. I suppose that is what they call the circle of life.

Now my cicadian rhythm tells me i should sleep and that i shall...lookign forward to a good day filled with lots of revision tomorrow (never thought i'd say that did you!) :D

.e

let shit happen

i wish i had something more interesting to talk about here but the fact is that my life seems to be at a standstill at the moment. nothing of any interest to anyone (including myself) has happened or will happen in the near future. concentrating on passing the exams in a few weeks and hopefully have a nice summer sprinkled with more studying for the resits in september. and also perhaps a short holiday in the south of france with sandra and her broher, and my brother ofcourse.
have been rethinking the whole architecture plan. will just let stuff happen from now on, on the academia/job front that is. until i graduate i won't make any plans for what i want to do afterwards. atleast not when it comes to career choices. if i find i really want to do someting related to further studies then i will otherwise i will assume that i will (somehow) spend a year away in Japan. been looking into the whole english teaching and it seems it would be the only thing that pays reasonobly well (about £12-15/h+). just getting a job and sponsor from abroad seems to be quite a difficult thing to do so i might have to go there on a tourist visa and get a job while i'm there. all these things are shit i busy myself with so i won't have to think about studying.
the boys and girls just came back from Life/Creation and making a fuss as usual so i will retreat for the night, in hopes of falling asleep rather quickly.
Hopefully i can start playing some World of Warcraft tomorrow aswell. ben bought it last week and it arrived today in the mail. speaking of mail, the textbook i bought the other day from amazon should be arriving any day now.

peace

Need some space

here we go again. felt i needed to change the template again. i don't know why i get these urges but i just do and i have actually learnt to live with them. as i have many other odd stuff i do, i've just stopped trying to find explanations for them. right now i'm giving a no-capitalisation approach to writing a try. wonder how annoying it is. i guess we will find out soon enough.
on a lighter note i have started revising, thank heavens. i think im starting to feel the pressure but it's still not apathy-bad yet. when that apathy hits man you're a goner. all you do is stress. i have another 17 days until my first exam and 20 til the second one and 23 days til the last one. after which i have one week off in which i have to pack the contents of my room (and believe me there is ALOT of content) into small boxes to be moved to my new student room at oxford court. that week is also there to allow me some time to gather all the things i need for the revision i need to do for my re-sits in september. if i do pass my re-sits i will have a whole month free to do whatever the f** i want. might catch up with my japanese. don't want to become fossilised! as i was saying...will hit the sack today for a hopefully good day at the books tomorrow. remind me to take food and drink with me. i forgot today and by the end of it i was really struggling to keep everything in. studying while having..umm...a lack of food is not a very bright idea.
sleep is also good, especially when you get it. until next time we meet!