#i haven't had a full day of classes on Friday since my first semester of university. Since then it's either been no classes on Fridays or

[morrigan-sims]

I’m taking the most credits I’ve ever taken during a semester in my life, including two of the hardest classes I’ll ever have to take, which both have a lab. So if I disappear of the face of the earth for a few months, that’s why.

My schedule is awful, too. On Thursdays I have class nonstop from 9am until 6pm, with the longest break between classes being 40 minutes. Idk when I’m supposed to eat… And then there’s my Fridays. Man, I am not used to actually having a full day of classes on Fridays. Like, what do you MEAN I have more than one class today???

[memento-morri-writes]

I'm taking the most credits I've ever taken during a semester in my life, including two of the hardest classes I'll ever have to take, which both have a lab. So if I disappear of the face of the earth for a few months, that's why.

My schedule is awful, too. On Thursdays I have class nonstop from 9am until 6pm, with the longest break between classes being 40 minutes. Idk when I'm supposed to eat... And then there's my Fridays. Man, I am not used to actually having a full day of classes on Fridays. Like, what do you MEAN I have more than one class today???

[knizmokat]

Life Update !!

this is so overdue but i've been crazy busy with college stuff (agh)

okay so you guys (probably) know that i'm in college getting a bachelors in social care and this whole semester (plus my second semester of third year) is work experience/placement.

for the americans and anyone else who doesn't know what that is: work experience is when students get a part-time or full-time job during the semester and shadow staff or professionals to get experience in their field.

my course has two work experience blocks, so i'm on placement for my entire first semester of second year (which is right now) and then also the entire second semester of third year, so i don't have any classes or lectures until January. we have to log 400 hours by the 6th of December so it's roughly 30 or 35 hours a week, for twelve weeks.

i started on the 9th of September and i'm working at a day service (or centre) for people with intellectual disabilities and mental health struggles (mostly the former). and it's actually pretty chill! my schedule is below

Mon to Thurs: 8.30 - 4.30

Wednesday: 8.30 - 12.30

Friday: 8.30 - 3.00

the place where i work always gives students a half-day so they can get more time for college work and lemme tell you, i was so hyped when i found this out because i thought it would be nine to five, monday to friday.

so like i said, it's been really chill, but adjusting to the new work routine has been really difficult because i finish at 4.30 but i don't actually get home until 5.00 and then i have to change and do stuff and it's been a little messy—but we're settling !!

the place is really chill, the service users (that's what the official term is for people who are involved with the social care sector) are all pretty nice. the majority of them are much older than me though, which is a little weird sometimes because i'm essentially in this position of leadership and 'authority' and telling a man who is a few decades older than me to go have his lunch 💀💀

the adjustment, again, has been a struggle because i've never had to create a work/life balance for myself? like when i'm at work i have to be present and focused, so i was on social media wayyy less and literally didn't message some of my friends for days outside of sending Instagram reels 💀 but like i said, i'm finally settling and finding some balance

my supervisor is also really cool, she's very flexible when it comes to missing days and says that i can make the hours whenever, like if i see an opportunity then i take it (if you don't have 400 hours logged by december, you fail placement) and she's always making sure that i'm comfortable and stuff because they haven't had a transgender student working for them before lol

outside of that uhhh not much? has happened?? i've gone through a lot of growth since August and i'm not really sure how it happened but like i'm just more confident now and i'm more comfortable in my sexuality (or should i say asexuality haha) and i've come to terms with a lot of things, been dealing with my anxiety really well (but i also got stress sick this last week because of procrastination and executive dysfunction kicking my ass)

also i got back into roleplaying bc my friend has this server and oh my God it's so good, i went ages without getting to roleplay anything because i didn't really have any partners (excluding reygn yes i see you gorgeous) and just ahh

also i'm back into anime, finally continued my hero academia and restarted jujutsu kaisen, slow going though because i'm fixating on other things simultaneously but holy shit mha season six?? goddamn

but uhh yeah so that's been my life :)

i have two fics in the works but when i'll get those finished is anybodys guess, could be next week could be next year, who knows lmao

i'm gonna try to post more on here—and i mean actually post not just reblogging shit lol

feel free to ask me whatever or leave stuff in my askbox

[allsystemsarenotgo]

What is the measurement of success and failure?

Friday night, I watched a dear friend graduate with a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and dual minors in Maths and Computer Science in four years.

Something I long dreamed of doing in high school. I wanted to go into Mechanical Engineering. That's what my grandfather had done and partial of what my father did.

But when I got to college, despite being an A/B student in high school, I was woefully unprepared. I couldn't do anything right. I couldn't academically pass even the basic classes.

There was a point in my second semester of freshman year that I locked myself in my dorm room for a solid week, just stuck in a very deep depression. My peer counselor had to use her master key to do a welfare check on me, and take me to the on-campus counseling center.

And it got bad enough after four semesters that my GPA hit a point that I had to change majors. So I changed from mechanical to computer science. I passed the basic classes there without issue - and one of them I was told to shut up and stop answering questions because I already knew the material but had to take the class just to have the credit on my transcript. I even had no issues with the couple of 3,000 and 4000 level courses I took in the program, but then ran into hurdles in the later classes. But there was just one specific professor that did not like me, I'm not even sure he liked anybody, and just really tried to make my life miserable. Two semesters I took his class trying to get a passing credit and failed to do so; I took the class as a condensed summer with a different professor and got through it with no problem and a high B. But the damage had been done.

I was expulsed from the engineering department as a whole after my 8th semester on campus (10 semesters counting two summers).

I ended up graduating with a bachelor's in University Studies after another 6 semesters (4 full and 2 summer). Where I went, it was basically their fast track program to get out of the college, allowing me to count three minors worth of accreditation towards a generic bachelor's. Considering I had accrued enough hours that would otherwise count for a master's degree, it was all the more depressing too have a generic bachelor's that wouldn't really mean much in life.

Does that mean I was an academic failure?

I've never been much of a social bug, but many of the friends that I made over those 6 years for the only friends I had in life. The only social life I knew was the one with other students.

It wasn't much longer than a year after I graduated that I no longer had most of those friends, and in subsequent years that number dropped more and more.

These days I only have one friend I still talk to from college, but we haven't gotten together in a few years. He is a high level executive at a firearms company now while raising two daughters on his own after their mother relinquished her rights.

My social bubble has only minutely increased since then. The title of "Best Friend" has bounced from person to person as they painfully came and went. My social bubble at this point only consists of the girlfriend on a weekendly basis and K and D (whom I just saw last week for the first time in months but text daily).

I text J and M at least once a week, sometimes daily. But I just saw J for the first time in at least a year as she walked for college graduation, and I have only seen M once (last year) in the last decade.

But outside of Facebook, that's my social/conversation bubble.

Does that mean I am a social failure?

I've never held a "good" job; I'm always lived more or less paycheck to paycheck. The "extra" things I've accrued in life have generally been purchased with my savings account of my mum's inheritance. I've spent 75% of what I inherited in the few years since she passed; granted a chunk of that was eliminating my student loans.

Does that mean I am an employment and/or financial failure?

What is the measurement in success and failure? I feel like so much of a failure when I am surrounded by "more" successful people.

I feel like there are some things, like my friend's graduation, where I had small contributions and share a bit in the success-by-proxy. Is that wrong?

It's hard not to be mad at myself about things of the past. When it comes to "What would you tell a younger self?"... So many things.

Reflecting back on the progression of J and our friendship, it just doesn't make me feel good about myself. During the ceremony, a student spoke about how she is a first generation college student/graduate from an immigrant family, and all the effort that was required for success.

Seeing people go and do and complete the things that I wished I could do but didn't...it hurts the self-esteem.

There are so many things I wish I could time travel and fix so that I could be a better me.

But I can't. I'm just another random bloke with a meaningless degree that can't get any jobs that my knowledge could otherwise maybe get me into...or that I could have gotten myself if I would have been better at university.

Yay for those that can apply themselves and be successful.

Depression for those that have failed in life.

🙋‍♂️

[porcupine-girl]

Update on my covidness. Covidity?

I'm at 4 weeks since I got sick.

I count last Monday, July 25, as the first day I wasn't actually sick anymore, so I was actively sick-sick for like 17 days. But the fatigue has barely let up - I've had a couple good days but they're usually followed by really bad days. I can basically do One Thing a day, such as helping with dinner or going with my husband to the grocery store (which turned out to be a mistake and wore me WAY out, but I hadn't left the house in three weeks and was desperate).

It's especially bad in my arms - some days my legs feel like I could probably take a walk (I haven't dared yet) but doing almost anything with my arms is exhausting. After the trip to the grocery store, where my husband did most of the work, I was reduced to playing games on my iPad one-handed, switching out hands as each one wore out.

So that's where I am now. Four weeks in I'm not sick, but I'm also hardly capable of doing anything. If this happened during the semester IDK what I would do - I have video lectures from when we were remote that I can use, but I couldn't even fucking grade in the state I'm in.

The only thing I can compare it to is when I was undergoing chemo 18 years ago. It feels so much like that sometimes it's creepy. The way I would be doing okay and then suddenly go way downhill in a matter of minutes - that happened the one time I tried to eat at a restaurant. (Our anniversary was while I was still sick-sick, and the kid was at camp for a week so since I wasn't sick-sick last Friday I was like okay I can sit in a booth and eat for an hour. And I did, and was tired but hanging in there, but around the time we ordered dessert I just crashed.)

The arm tiredness is also similar to chemo. The way some days typing or holding a book is too much for my arms, and holding a video game controller in my lap is the best I can do (I have played a LOT of ACNH let me tell you).

Anyhow. In case anyone was wondering. I really hope this lets up a bit before classes start in 2.5 weeks!

A full recap of the past four weeks under the cut:

I think my husband & son picked it up at the July 4 parade, which was a Monday. They got sick Wednesday/Thursday. Thursday night I wasn't quite sick but I felt the way I always do right before I get sick so I knew it was coming.

Friday, July 8 was the first day I was definitely sick, fever and all. (I will note that although 100.4 is technically the "fever" cutoff, my baseline body temp tends to be around 97-97.5 instead of 98.6 so I consider anything above 99 as a fever, and even though my immune system is messed up and I'm sick way more than my husband or kid it's still pretty damn rare for me to get a fever even by that measure.) Saturday my temp got up to like 101.5, when I still had a fever Sunday I tested and was positive for Covid.

At that point I thought to test my sense of smell and realized it was mostly gone. My husband realized that the problems he'd been having since his brief sickness Wednesday/Thursday were all due to covid brain fog.

Monday, July 11 I went to a grocery store clinic and got a positive test there and a prescription for Paxlovid. Took Paxlovid like a good girl for five days, but by the time I was done with it I still had a fever and was still testing positive (I tested 24 hrs after my last dose, so on Saturday July 16). I'm assuming it prevented me from getting worse, at least, but I did NOT have the miraculous "I started feeling better two days into Paxlovid!" experience that I've heard from so many others.

Finally that Sunday, the 17th, my temp dropped below 99 and stayed that way. So I had a fever for about 9-10 days straight. I was still very definitely sick, though. My bones still hurt all the time, my sinuses were a mess, headaches on and off, and I had the general "sick feeling" that is often the only symptom I get. My sense of smell and taste were still off, though smell was at least returning. I finally tested negative on Saturday, July 23 but I was still sick for another day or two.

[theninjasanctuary]

Uncharacteristically, went out yesterday, first to see a museum we'd not been to with the boyf, and then to dinner with a couple of friends (they were supposed to join us at the museum, but spent the day waiting for someone to come and empty their septic tank, oh the glamour of having a house out of town). It was great but it wasn't, too, as in, I have missed hanging out, but the place was very noisy and stuffy, even if the food was ok. And heavens, socializing takes practise, and I feel so boring these days. As is to be expected since I've focused on trying to keep up at work and getting basic chores done for idek how long now (it's been particularly bad since Dad died, but it's been pretty much in the same vein ever since Covid, so going on full 2 years of that now, and I was working myself to shreds in the pre-Covid fall semester to make ends meet). Which makes me worry this may be just who I am these days, a boring person who can hardly relate to anyone and is focused on (barely) coping. The hobbies I keep these days, same old skincare, same old weekly physio sessions, same old obsessively browsing for second-hand finds, are boring even to myself. Even if I am pretty pleased with that latest sweater, and wore it yesterday. Oh well. Got enough sleep, did laundry, had an ok meal, and now need to prep for tomorrow's class and get to bed asap. The pay is really not enough for this. OTL Also, I haven't looked at my emails since Friday, and it's giving me anxiety. This past week, I kept having headaches and also had what I think is an anxiety-related issue, the feeling like my diaphragm is cramping up (this also kept happening during that pre-Covid fall semester, definitely overlaps with teaching).