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I'm happy at the moment because a miracle happened and because of a moment's worth of concentration, I've managed to almost finish my last ever essay. Not only that but my special man is coming to see me on Thursday. I didn't expect to see him again until Sunday because of his hectic job hours =/ so it was a surprise and I became stupidly happy =] he's forever surprising me with his spontaneity. 

So actually, I'm mainly happy because my workload is going down, after this last essay is submitted on Thursday, I'll have my dissertation draft which is only 1600 words and then my final project to finish which is about 2000 more words and then I'm doneeeee. Until exams. GOODBYE ROYAL HOLLOWAY. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel... I"m going to have such an awesome summer. Going HK, graduation, coming up with a research proposal for masters (not that it'll be fun but at least it's something to do, ONE thing to do, rather than 1000 things I don't want to do...), spending lots of time with my man, lazing around in the sun. Ah, can I just graduate already? 

The only depressing thing about right now is that my work is going very slowly and painfully, it's always the last essay that takes the most time because I'm at my limit with the amount of work I've had recently. As well as juggling a new relationship, making sure I do enough work before I go out has been especially hard, although I've just about managed it. I think this is the first essay I've been cutting it close on. I remember I used have plenty of time during the week to tweak my essay and reference but tomorrow will be a full day of finishing the essay, proofreading, tweaking and referencing *cries* but at least I'll have Thursday to look forward to where I can just chillax with my man without having to think about when the next essay deadline is. 

During this week I haven't spoken to Mum or Dad much. I found out the other day that Mum got a fever in HK and I was worried for a bit. Dad texted me at 5am about it when I was about to head to bed so I was kind of like "=____=" and couldn't sleep because I kept wondering if Mum was okay. Today, Mum called me when I was having lunch and she said she's fine now which is good... But Dad is ill with a fever now. Good lord... What are my parents like? I swear at least one of them becomes ill at some point when they go abroad. My Mum was saying how the weather in HK is hot in the afternoon and cold at night so they're not used to the sharp temperature changes. Sigh. They fly off to Taiwan in a couple of days, I hope they'll be okay. I can't believe there's only 2 and a half weeks until they come back. I miss them but at the same time, when they come back, life will be a little more chaotic! 

CURRENT GOAL = FINISH THIS STUPID ESSAY. 

3rd week of parentlessness.

Blah. I miss my parents. 

I think this might be an effect of listening to slow music and attempting to do this essay.

But I actually miss my parents, they were away for 3 weeks last time and I didn't miss them this much. There's another 3 weeks to go until they come back and I actually really want to see them. Even though my Mum annoys the heck out of me, even though my Dad never stops asking questions, even though I can hear their conversations from outside the house because they talk so loud... I miss them. 

For some reason I'm feeling really sad at the moment because I miss them. This essay is driving me insane as well because even though it's the last ever one I have to do, I don't feel motivated to do it, I don't know what the heck phonological awareness is I don't know what the link to reading skills is, I don't know where to begin, I don't want to do any reading, I don't want to search for literature... I've been searching for literature and writing about it for the past week solid and I'm kinda just sick of it now. Plus I have that dissertation draft to do and hand in sometime within the next couple of weeks. Derp. 

Life.

Deadlines doing my head in amongst other things.

So as it stands I have so much work due in I just don't even know which piece to work on everyday. As you might know, I like to have things planned out - this applies to aspects in life as well as my workload. I'm almost like okay Monday I'll do this, Tuesday I'll do that etc etc. But now it's like a whole giant mess with WHERE DO I BEGIN? I've been lazy these past couple of days, went out celebrating on Saturday for CNY, didn't get home until Sunday morning because of getting lost and wandering around London for 3 hours. Spent Sunday being cosy, warm and a lazy shit in bed with another lazy shit next to me <3. I must say though, I really enjoyed my CNY for multiple reasons.

I failed at pretending I didn't go out as well. I promised Mum I'd Skype her on the Sunday at 1pm but my brother ended up Skyping her first as I took almost an eternity to get ready and then I realised I just had to leave my make up on and go on Skype. First thing Mum asks is "so where did you go last night?" DOH. Spent the rest of Sunday sleeping and then preparing CNY dinner with my brother when I woke up at 7pm LOL. Oh deary.

Spent Monday in uni trying to get the analysis part of my project done. Turns out our results are NON-SIGNIFICANT ASLKDJFJSDKFNSDF. I guess this is probably every psychologist's worst nightmare huh? Non-sig = less chance of publication = WASTE OF TIME. I might be wrong because I'm not a psychologist, just a psychology student but... man, all that time coding videos... NON-SIGNIFICANT???? But anyway, you just have to work with what you have I guess. So in trying to make sense of these results, took another 2-3 hours. I had to stop by Tesco on the way home and do the weekly grocery shop. Most of the stuff on the list wasn't even for me, my brother had added a whole ton of ingredients to cook ONE THING for dinner. He's lucky we didn't exceed our budget. I got home and literally fell asleep again, I think Saturday night was catching up to me so I took a 2 hour nap and then well... you know, once you have a nap and wake up to a warm cosy house, the first thing you'd want to do is eat and last thing you wanna do is work. Hence no work was done on Monday (apart from opening and closing the document about 5 times...)

So now it's Tuesday, I was up at 9am despite sleeping at 5am because I got too emotional for my own good and almost ended up saying things I shouldn't say to a certain someone. I SHOULD NEVER SHOW MY WEAKNESS, RAWR. I fell in and out of sleep until 2pm and then I finally got up and started to do some work. About 2 hours into doing work and I've managed to do a miserable 400 words. I really should stop looking at the word count because working according to your word count makes life 100000000x harder and progress is much slower. Go away word count.

I haven't been able to work recently because of too many complicated thoughts in my head. Why do you do this to me?

Life Update.

I know this is like, a week late but, my parents are gone.

I miss them.

Mum gave me an especially long hug at the airport when I drove them there, I couldn't walk in with them because I was in drop off (so I didn't have to pay for the short stay car park). I'm not really one to be close to my Mum with hugs and all that so it felt weird. I guess you could call me weird for feeling weird hugging my Mum but yeah, my parents aren't really the affectionate type, well, Mum isn't anyway. My Dad would shower me with kisses if he could but it's damn embarrassing at my age. We got to Skype for the first couple of days they were there, I love how my parents do really miss us but they don't show it. It's a cultural thing, Chinese people aren't really the emotional type of people. Deep down I know they miss us though. A few days later in the weekend when my brother was home, we Skyped and they looked so happy to see us, my Dad looked fatter which obviously I pointed out, he looked really happy though. They both did. I'm glad they're both enjoying their time out there, there's no one more deserving to have time to relax than my wonderful parents. If I had the money to, I would send them everywhere around the world because that's how much they deserve it.

So in other news, I got rejected from City University. I was a tiny bit gutted but I wasn't depressed about it (even when they felt the need to send me TWO rejection emails, one at 10am and one at 5pm, like what the hell? One not enough?) It just means that my plans will change a little now, plan B was to do an MRes at UCL in Speech, Language and Cognition as you might have heard me go on about before. I went to their website and had a look at the procedure and I need to submit a research proposal by the deadline (August) so I think I'll spend the summer going over what I want to research into. There's actually multiple areas of speech that interest me, on the developmental side, I'm really interested in evidence based therapy - this is also a reason why I would want to reconsider becoming a speech and language therapist - there's so much research around the effectiveness of therapy and interventions and you know, a lot of the time, they don't even work. I don't know if I could get into a career administering therapy that doesn't work or doesn't have scientific evidence to support its effectiveness - it just all seems like a giant con doesn't it? It's all very controversial. It's the same as saying medicine works but does it really work? Are your painkillers actually doing something to your body or is it just psychological effects? Blah.

I'm also getting interested in the neuroscience behind speech and language from my module this term. If you know me, I hate anything neuro/biologically based because I'm a big fail at biology and in neuroscience there are just too many components to study. Though for language, it's interesting to see which parts of the brain are responsible for certain functions related to language. But yeah, I'll have to teach myself a lot about the brain before I could come up with a research proposal for this. But at the moment a research proposal regarding evidence based therapy seems really nice and interesting to do.

So yup, at the moment, my plan is to finish all pieces of coursework, get my arse sat down for revision over Easter and get my dissertation written up within a month. Graduate, go to HK to see my relatives, spend my summer free as a bird and then come up with a research proposal before August.

Life isn't so bad after all.