Saturday 4th April 2009
Well I'm getting sort of used to the idea that I'm not going to be at Women's Aid for very much longer. For those of you who don't know I'm hoping to go back to Uni, initially to do an MLitt, and then hopefully on to a PhD. I feel a bit weird writing this, because I've only just sent the application form off, and whilst everyone keeps telling me I'm going to be fine, I still feel very nervous about it, and it's a don't count your chickens thing. Yet at the same time, I'm so excited about it! I want to be up and at it, get it all started - but if everything goes according to plan, it's only going to be a couple of months before I really do start getting started.
My plan is to leave WA at the end of May, nip up to Glasgow and find somewhere to live, shoot back and get myself moved - and then (obviously!) to find some work, and get settled. It's going to be sad as well - leaving everyone down here. It's really odd how now it's getting closer I'm getting very jittery about the family - not being able to just nip over to see them. We've sort of done the whole 'oh but you'll come and visit' thing, but you know how it is. When people are further away, you have to plan stuff, and fit things in - it's more difficult and complicated. And then friends! It's almost the same as with the family. But I'm pretty good at keeping in touch with people, or I hope that I am, and I'm going to be using this blog and the old Facebook thing to keep people aware of what I'm doing - hopefully they'll still be interested!
So, as I said, I've uploaded the old application form. This happened on Thursday, and almost gave me a heart attack - my form's all completed and I'm going through it for a final check, and before I was properly ready I hit the submit button by accident, and this legend pops up to say withdraw now, or you can't withdraw this at all, and having moved from calm to frenzied panic in about 2 seconds, of course I hit the withdraw button. It's at that point I discover that it's obliterated all of my uploaded documents and I then have to spend about two hours uploading the whole lot all over again, and double checking everything - bloody internet. It's revolutionised life all right, but things happen so blasted quickly!
So having to do all this made me late going to bed, and then I didn't sleep properly, I was too 'Oh God do you think it's all there?' not to mention the 'They're going to look at this and just laugh at my temerity in suggesting I'm a fit person to do this!' - the whole gamut of well let's just give up now and crawl back into my hole. But it seems it has arrived after the millisecond or so journey through cyberspace, and they say that it only takes 3 weeks to hear something, so well fingers crossed. Needless to say I was then absolutely exhausted by the time four o'clock on Friday arrived, and I could go home - yep, another trip to the post office, but after that I went home and sat down with a cup of tea and drifted off to sleep and before I know it, Channel 4 news is on. So I obviously was very tired, and needed to sleep.
Happily I'm now back to my normal self, and yes, coming to terms with these things that I've planned to do. It's not as simple as when you're twenty and you think oh yes, I'll just go and do X, Y or Z. At my age, you have to accustom yourself to the idea and plan for it, rather than pack a backpack and go! And it's sort of almost an out of body experience to be doing these things and thinking to myself, we're in the middle of this big recession, and you're voluntarily giving up your job to go to university???! What are you doing Woman??!! But I know it's the right thing. It's that internal thing that says yes, you do feel comfortable with this. It's not fear keeping you awake at night, it's excitement. The itch to get started. And that's got to be good.
