Sunday 27 October 2013

And then... life happened!



Dear readers,

Well life pulled another fast one on me not long after I posted the last update. First of all, I was informed that my deadline for submitting a draft chapter of my dissertation had been moved up…. By three freaking months! So instead of the end of autumn it now became the end of September. Can you imagine how stressed/ freaked out I was? In the same week I was also informed that I would be teaching first year students for one hour a week. I was to teach a coaching session, in which students can ask questions regarding the reading they had to do for two different classes and in which I, together with another teaching and research assistant, have to teach them the basics for academic writing. So basically, you have to do the preparations for three classes, rather than just one… And they informed me of this 6 days in advance. In the same week I was also appointed as the webmaster of the UvA centenary website... I believe that at this point my stress level went through the freaking roof. By some miracle, though, I was able to meet the deadline… But not surprisingly, I was so tired after this month had passed that it took me a while to catch my breath.

Luckily, things have quieted down a bit. I am currently doing research for my next chapter, which will be about penny bloods (not to be confused with the penny dreadfuls). As very little research has been done surrounding the penny bloods I will be going to London in January for three weeks in order to do archival research in the British Library. Although I found this a little daunting, since I am not very good at the whole “going somewhere by myself” thing, my three weeks of being alone in London have become my three weeks of not being so very alone in London hahah. Both my best friend and my parents will come and stay at the apartment I rented for a couple of days and I will be visiting a friend (who is almost done with her PhD… gosh I really take my hat off to her) who lives in Leeds for a few days. So now I am actually really looking forward to it. There is something exceedingly appealing about the thought of sitting in a library whilst looking at old and obscure texts… I wonder if I will still think this way after I have spent nearly three whole weeks in library hahaha.

Due to all the stress and fatigue afterwards, I have not been able to start swimming once a week, as I was planning to do. I simply decided to put the entire diet on a hold for those 1,5 months. I have started again since last week and thing are going pretty well; just 3.2 kilo’s to go. Hopefully, I will finally find time to do some actual exercise though, but we will see how it goes.

Another fun thing which is coming up is that my best friend and I are actually going to launch that webshop next year. We were planning to do it mid-November, but as she is working 6 or 7 days every week and my life isn’t exactly laid back either (*cough* understatement of the year *cough*) we decided to postpone it to early February next year. Hopefully, things have settled down a bit by then for the both of us.

Well that’s it for now. I hope you will all have a wonderful weekend.

Love,
Blacky