Burning Out

Man, I'm tired. Term is drawing to a close, far too slowly for my liking. The 16-week semesters here are much, much more gruelling than anything I did as an undergraduate - about 1/3rd more time spent studying and reading than at Oxford. And of course, Oxbridge does have rather shorter terms than most other, lesser, institutions...

Looking back on it, I probably should have taken the opportunity at Spring Break to actually go somewhere and do something. In all of the time I've been in the US, I've still not managed to get outside the states of New York and New Jersey. Mostly a matter of money, partly one of idleness, but a break would have done me a lot of good. New York at this time of year is pretty bleak even at the best of times, but right now we're experiencing an unusually cold spring; it's barely managed to get above 7-8℃ the whole time, and the weekend had, I think, the heaviest rainfall in a 24 hour period ever in the city, or at least something close to it. Not that I noticed, though - I had my head stuck in my books at the library for pretty much the entire weekend. Kate was out of town, doing what I should have been doing and taking a trip away, in this instance to Canada. So while the cat's away, the mice will...study. Yay me.

So the weather sucks, it's gloomy and miserable, and the world seems like it's going to hell in a handcart, as detailed in yesterday's post. Of course, no Englishman's depression would be complete without a quite incredibly inept and spineless series of performances from the England cricket team, a subject on which we will not dwell.

I really can't wait for the summer, not only for the more cheerful weather but to get the grind of classes to go away for a while. I don't know quite what I'll be taking in terms of courseload next semester, in the autumn - I may also have to TA, which will mean a whole load more stuff to consider. And of course I will likely be working pretty hard throughout the summer itself, though luckily the grant I got earlier this month ought to make things a little easier and reduce the amount of time I have to spend on doing paid work.

But it could be worse. JETAANY is taking up a lot of my time right now, though it's mostly fun stuff - dinners, drinking etc - and I'll get to go down to Atlanta this summer for the JETAA national conference, which ought to be a lot of fun, not least because I'll get to see what the South is like in the Summer. And I'll also be off home again for a few weeks, just to get my regular dose of Blighty and cricket. I'm just really, really tired right now...I've spoken before about how graduate work feels like doing push-ups half the time. Never more so than right now.