Drafted and Rewarded!

The last 48 hours have been some of the most exhaustingly intense research/writing/revising days of my time here, so far. Deadlines were looming (everythings HAD to be done by 7 AM this morning) and going into the weekend I knew parts of my argument still needed some reworking, plus my supervisor asked me to do some last-minute analysis of parish records to flesh out some of my demographic analysis concerning trends in the Ipswich poulation. To make things even more impossible, my college was COMPLETELY CLOSED on Saturday due to this insane bi-annual "College Ball" thing (basically the equivalent to a senior prom). Normally I wouldn't care if Balls were happening that I couldn't attend, but the shut down the whole freaking place INCLUDING THE LIBRARY for an ENTIRE 24-hour period without e-mailing college students to let them know. I heard even people who LIVED inside the college had to find somewhere else to sleep that evening. I'm sorry to be crass...but seriously, WTF is that about? I know how annoyed I was when I found out I couldn't use the Library at all, and basically LOST one of my last two days to do research, but if I was also living in the college and had to go crash on a friends floor on top of all this stress I probably would have lost it - seriously lost it - like in the "No walking on the grass, hmm - wait til you see what I can do with a rake!" kinda lost it. Ugh. But anyway, I wasn't in that position, and was able to come home, curl up in a ball of worry, and wonder how I was going to get all of the remaining reading/rewriting done in one day. Worrying was really unecessary since the answer to these situations is always the same one - stay up for 36 hours and do nothing but work, eat, smoke cigarettes, drink strong tea, and allow my life to become completely driven by the fear of failure. Not at all a healthy thing to do, BUT it does get the job done, and done well, I might add.

So, after a long day of getting final signatures on forms and quadrupley-checking that everything was perfect, my overwhelming stress ended at 3 PM when the Graduate Office receptionist absentmindedly reached out her hand and took my packet. I asked her a few questions to make sure that I had done everything correctly, and she just kept nodding in that "yes, you're fine, go away now, please" way, and I realized how drastically different our experiences of this EXTREMELY important moment were. It was weird enough that I could have philosophised on that for awhile, but I was tired and philosophizing just wasn't in the cards at that point.

This leads me to what I had decided WAS in the cards for me after everything was done with the transfer. As a reward for kicking so much a$$ this weekend, I shopped around at a few shops and bought new football boots and a football. I LOVE them both. I took a picture of them so you can bask in the awesomeness, too.