Get Back to Work, Rory

Quite a lot has happened in the past couple of weeks, but I don't have much time so, in contrast to my usual filibustering over nothing, you'll now find me skipping over relatively important details in my haste to get everything out there.

We are now in the closing weeks of this term- I have 18 days to complete my dissertation, and from now on my supervisor is on Adoption Leave.
Fuck.
I wrote Lauren, my supervisor, a card to say congratulations, on the advice of my mother. I couldn't decide whether or not to add in a poem, which is my usual trick when writing people cards, but seemed oddly intimate for a uni professor. However, having a child is a happy occasion, and I really want Lauren to like me, so, after much umming and ahhing, I added in a little 4 line ditty, which went thus:

"Roses are Red

(And sometimes grow wild) 

Thanks for your help

And congratulations on your child"

 Not exactly Shakespeare, but then Shakespeare rhymed 'truth' and 'doth', so what does he know? Anyway, Lauren loved the poem and, even if I haven't improved our relations, at least I didn't ruin them.

In other news, I have found gainful employment working for EUSA. Not too gainful, mind you: only £6.31 an hour, which is exactly minimum wage for my age. This is, somewhat painfully, my first ever minimum wage job, and I was surprised to find out how much work you have to do to draw even the lowest wage legally allowable. Also, for something that's supposedly 'unskilled' you certainly have to do a lot of training and remember an awful lot of things. Oh, well. At least I'll have a job for when I leave university, and won't just have to return home to live with my parents.

Speaking of the end of uni, mine will occur on the 19th May, at 16.30 after my Sociolinguistics of Bilingualism exam. I cannot describe to you, dear reader, the feeling of an end date being attached to one's education, eighteen years after it began. It's a bit like when Frodo and Gollum start wrestling in Mount Doom, getting closer and closer to the edge, and you know that this thing, this massive thing that you've invested years of your life into, that has made you laugh and cry and think and bored, and now it's all rocketing towards a finale, suddenly, out of nowhere; the filler scenes are done- no more elves, no more Bombadil- and now you don't want it to be finite. You want to know it will go on forever and you can just continue on like this forever, a new instalment every year, with some things changing but no real progress happening but at the same time you just want the fucking ring to land in the fucking lava so you can leave the cinema and get on with your fucking life. And they teeter on the brink, and you teeter on the brink, and you're stressed and there are essays due and you don't know which way you want them to fall. It's overwhelming, it's tiring and, worst of all, I actually have no say over whether it finishes or not, so it's pointless to think like this.

I am up to 49 shows since I started uni, since I wrote another candlewaster- Boomerang/Nautilus- which is being directed by someone else, which has become sort of a thing with me recently, and am now involved Bedlam Reduced and The Fat Cat Cabaret, which isn't a theatrical performance in and of itself but is happening on the Bedlam stage, and I will be performing, so fuck it, I'm counting it. 49 is sort of appropriate thematically, being Bedlam's Fringe Venue number, but I do really wish I could reach the big five oh before graduating, but there aren't really any other shows to audition for, so I'll just have to make the best of it. It's still quite a few.

Poppy got me addicted to a quiz online where one tries to name all the countries in the world in 17 minutes, and, let me tell you it is difficult. The first time I tried, I managed to get 98 out of 197 (apparently, the total number of countries in the world is a somewhat controversial subject matter). I've been trying once a day every day since and managed yesterday to reach 192, which is pretty good, except that I missed out Belgium.
Some of you may point out that, instead of trying to name all the countries in the world, I should be writing my dissertation. In fact, some of you may point out that, instead of minutely and obsessively documenting what's been going on in my life, I should be writing my dissertation. Hence this post's title. Say it with me now:

GET BACK TO WORK, RORY!

Will do, gang. Will do.