The last post was a bit of a bomb-shell. It’s been really difficult deciding to publish the news. The whole thing has been a bit difficult, really. I have spent three and a half long and hard years working towards this summer, and now it has been put off for another year. The decision wasn’t made lightly, and I got a lot of support from everyone – the people who were more brilliant that I expected them to be were my personal tutor and senior tutor. As someone who is “going to get a first”, in the words of my tutor, going up to them and saying “I can’t do it this year” feels like a massive failure.

That said, if anybody is in the position I was in back in February – where getting up to go to lectures felt too difficult, in fact, getting up at all was quite a mission, and my project was just going nowhere – then I would thoroughly recommend looking at what I did. I realise you don’t actually know what happened, so cliff-notes version.

The stress of final year, combined with other, more personal stuff, started getting to me. I went to the doctor after a solid month of not wanting to get up in the morning (very unusual for me, I am usually up at the crack of dawn) and told them I thought I needed help. A few things were tried out, and in the end they recommended that I take an interruption of studies. In typical Corrie style, I hadn’t told my parents that I was having so much trouble, so after a very quick intervention, a couple of months living in a room in Tizard Hall, and a lot of advice from various people, the steps were taken and it was all confirmed at the beginning of May.

I’m now working as a temp, doing administration, filling my days and trying to get my head to a good place again. I’m also getting impromptu folk lessons from my flatmate, which is really cool. Quartet stuff is going very well, and I have a few posts about things I’ve done with my friends that have been incredible over the last few months still to write. For now, have some cake.

Carlos, Saj and I are the biomaterials students in our year, and during one of our many lunch-dates, someone (I can’t remember who) dubbed us the Golden Trio. Ha.

Lunch outside the QTR in the FREEZING cold.

Pipetting in the lab.

I love these guys. They are making fourth year good.

Statement made: evidence to back it up.

Last week, Nic came round for dinner and ended up staying the night because he was very tired and didn’t want to cycle home. I offered to take him home and put his bike in my car, but he refused my offer because he didn’t think it would fit in the car.

To cut a long story short, yesterday afternoon John and I went to High Street Ken to pick up his bike, where it was hiding after it got a puncture the other day. He got it all sorted out, but was running late for a train, so I persuaded him to try fit the bike in the car. The look on his face when I said “It will fit, I promise” was priceless (one of those moments where I wish my camera wasn’t currently suffering from major splodges on the screen).

The fact that this is one of the major achievements in my life tells you something about how well the last few weeks of basic silence have been going. I’m getting my friends to revoke my Facebook access, have a pile of samples taller than my combined lab books and lecture notes to analyse, and am counting down the days to the end of my degree in terms of “how long does it take to write up this lecture, how long will it take to memorise this list of facts”. The word “panic” doesn’t quite sum it up succinctly enough.

I don’t think I’m really panicking about exams/coursework/deadlines so much, though. It’s more, The End. What happens next? Who knows. You’ll be lucky enough to find out what happens at the end of a degree in the next few months. Watch this space!

(One of my other achievements has been writing an article for Felix. This brings me up to three!)