riPPLed iriss

I got seventy-six per cent -- a B+ -- in my four thousand word politics essay about MMP. All I can say is the tutor must be a very easy marker because I was convinced that that was one of the sloppiest essays I had ever written. It was all padding. Considering the C mark I got for my foreign policy analysis essay which was one thousand five hundred words (the conclusion has been reached that the tutor for that paper was a comparatively hard marker), this actual good mark is quite surprising. The essay was worth fifty per cent of the course marks!

It's strange to think that classes for semester one are over already. On Thursday I will be sitting my first exam, and the one that is the most important to me -- ethnomusicology. I could be studying for that right now but I think I deserve a break after the massive, consistent effort I've put into my assignments over the past couple of weaks (chortle chortle). In less than a month, it will be the holidays proper. After those, it'll be back to uni, which will be very different. The current paper line-up is:

• Politics 222 Public Policy: Power and Processes
• Politics 237 Security Studies
• Latinam 201 Latin American History and Culture Through Film; and
• Sociology 208 Work and Leisure

The former two are under question. The only reason they came first in the list is because they are the most important to my degree, which includes a politics major. It is bad that Paul Buchanan has pulled out of Security Studies because he was a significant motivation for my enrolling in the paper -- in fact, practically the only motivation. There is much deliberation ahead.

I have bought two albums in the past two weeks, at a total cost of twenty-four dollars and ninety-five cents (they were bargains, but that is beside the point). This is not wise behaviour considering I do not have a job, and at the same time have a car to run and a weekly contribution of forty dollars to pay to my parents towards uni fees. I now have forty dollars to last myself until after the exams, when I will finally get back into work. The reason I'm not doing it now is not because I need time to study, but it's because I wouldn't want to piss off my new employer by requiring leave for exams virtually straight away. In other news, my mother continues to reiterate that if I change my minor from media studies to anthropology, she will pull funding from my degree and I will have to get a student loan. She can't see me getting a job in any other area, besides the media. She doesn't believe I could be an academic. Pfeh.

I still haven't showered today yet. It would mean I'd have to wrap a plastic bag around my foot.