you caught me lingering

So, after deciding not to do Honours because I didn't really feel comfortable for various reasons, I've just finished my application for the Master of Arts (Professional and Applied Ethics) at ANU. I spoke to the Course Convenor yesterday who said that despite the website saying that I need Hons or a Grad Dip to qualify for entry, I should be fine to get in, given my undergraduate major and the fact that I can argue a case relating work to the degree. Given she's the one who decides who gets into the program, I'm feeling vaguely confident. Now I just have to hope that same argument works as far as the company is concerned and I manage to convince them to sponsor my study, otherwise budgets will be tight for a while.

Still - hi academy, I'm back. It's actually quite exciting, and I really like the sound of the program. I'll be going in part time, which is about four years, coursework, plus a sub-thesis. The conversation I had with the Convenor yesterday was pretty cool, actually, in terms of tying work-stuff into my studies and intersections between bioethics/public health/business ethics that work stuff kinda bleeds around.

In other news, I'll be in Brisbane from this time next week, until about the 6th of January. If you want to catch up, let me know. Don't wait for me to call you, because it's highly likely I don't have your number. Also, what are Brisbane people doing for NYE?

So, yeah. Not dead, just distracted.

Summary.

Brisbane was great - twas good to catch up with the people I did see, others I'm sorry I missed you, but I should be up again around Christmas, so hopefully more catch-ups will be in order.

Graduation was long. In what I think is ultimately a good thing all round, neither the Vice-Chancellor or the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), who were largely responsible for shafting my degree, were at graduation, so I couldn't punch either of them. The Chancellor got very long-winded about how much the university supported us, and it too every inch of my self-restrain to not burst into bitter cackling onstage whilst he was talking. I don't think the eleventy-million health graduates would've got it. Meanwhile, a friend of mine, Scott, was student rep, and managed to get a lovely polite-but-well-placed barb about the importance of humanities in his speech, which made me smile. I'll have photos of me in silly hat later.

The meeting-of-the-in-laws went off without a hitch. Mother was on her best behaviour, which is what I expected. The only problem with mother being on her best behaviour is that I then have to listen to people babble on about how damn lovely she is and how much she obviously cares about me blahblahblah, to which the only coherent response I can ever think of is "That's great, doesn't excuse her being a violent neglecting harmful person. Please STFU and stop pretending like you know my family because you had dinner with them once." But, well, yelling at my mother-in-law is never a good idea, and I can do coherent or quiet, bit not both, when it comes to that.

Tori was glorious, and the difference between a just-Tori gig and a Tori+band gig is phenomenal. I like both, and the stuff off the new album is fucking awesome live, as is, y'know, everything.

Work is good, busy but not horrible; I've got all of my portfolio now, which is still weird because they had a much bigger standard portfolio size when I was last working here, so it feels rather small. It's good though. Review Meeting with one of the national clients next week, which should be interesting, but the files are all fairly well on track at this stage, and we're far enough away from renewal that they shouldn't get too snarky about estimates.

Home is good; honestly, part of my internet-abscence has to do with the fact that by the time I get home from work, curling up in bed with the Foxtel remote seems like a much more comfortable idea. Still, much of the good US TV started up this week, so I'll be spending at least some regular time on the tubes from now on. Plus, we've been training at the gym two nights a week, so honestly my internets-time is significantly reduced. I forgot how much full-time work cuts into tubes-time.

I'll probably do a quick skim of the f-list, but if there's anything major I should know, put it in the comments. :)

First week of work went well. They're good people, as far as one can discern after a week. I started the week with a law firm lunch (yay! wine!) and ended the week with a full-day team-building/training thing (yay! wine!). Amusingly, the guy from HR?Training who was facilitating the training thing on Friday was I guy I knew from when he first started as a Case Manager when I was last with the company. It was nice to see a familiar face and get a whole bunch of Sydney Office gossip/news. :D

'Kyrie (my PC, for the uninitiated) was picked up this morning, though she's not being unpacked until I actually have a desk to put her on. The rest of the unpacking will be done today/tomorrow.

I've booked my trip back up for Graduation+Tori, so I shall be in Brisbane from Sat 15th (thus shall be at Matt's Birthday Thingamy), to Sun 23rd. There may be drinks on the Friday night on account of me having done that odd-shaped hat and gown thing otherwise known as graduation. <strike>Also to celebrate having survived my parents visiting, since they're also heading up for graduation</strike>.

In other news, there is wrestling on this evening. Like, DOWN THE ROAD. Sadly, I get the feeling that live wrestling isn't quite as slashtastic as the stuff on tv. Still. I'm sure my slashy brain will try.

Short Version: I've just accepted a job offer in Canberra, and will be moving there to start on the 20th of August. This means that I will have, once I get back to Brisbane next Tuesday night, a little over a fortnight to pack up my house and move. Thankfully, the place I'm renting currently is fully furnished, [*returns from calling the landlady to give notice of moving out*] so the only big things I've really got to move are my drawers, my bookshelves and 'Kyrie (the PC, for those who haven't worked out that I name my machine). Everything else can be boxed up relatively easily.

So, in between frantically packing, I shall endeavour to see people before I leave. I'll most likely be flying out Sunday August 19th, so if you want to catch me in Brisbane, you've got between next Wednesday and then. I may try and do some kind of scheduling post once I get back Tuesday night.

I'm just swinging between utterly despondent and filled with rage, at the moment. The only real change from that general feel of the week has been the two assessment items I got back on Tuesday, one of which where I was told I'm a strong and coherent writer, academically speaking, and the other a comment from my philosophy professor on my midterm Feminism & Ethics exam wherein she praised my 'model paper' and calibre of philosophical talent. Which, honestly, were two things I think I really needed to hear at a time when the message coming from higher up in the chain is that I'm just not valuable. But aside from that, I'm still feeling really awful. Most of the rage is actually gone, and I'm starting to sink rather deeply into the quagmire of despair and helplessness. My motivation to even look at my assessment is minimal to nonexistent at the moment, and whilst I know I need to sort of drag myself out of that, I'm just not getting there right now.

I was talking to some of the academics who've been encouraging me towards Honours and postgraduate study about, really, what my options are, and I've got some difficult decisions to think about and make over the next few months that will have a really big impact on my future, and that's really scary, which is probably contributing to my feelings. I have gotten some really good advice and encouragement about my abilities, which is something, it's just then got to do with what happens over the next few months with regard to how I think about that advice and what I should do.

But it really is a lot to do with this thing of being told in really no uncertain terms that the Vice-Chancellor at least is saying that I'm not valuable, and what I'm doing isn't valuable, and I can only imagine what that's doing to the staff who are going to be facing redundancy and suchlike. I've been feeling sick to my stomach the last day or so, and there's just this churning that won't go away, and I'm not sure whether I want to cry or throw up. Or both.

And, I mean, most of this is just the selfish sort of reaction to what's going on. There's a whole host of wider issues that make this whole situation really troubling and dangerous and just horrible. And part of me feels bad for not concentrating on those issues and dealing with the emo later, but I just don't think I'm capable of that sort of compartmentalising right now. Which is not to say that I don't think the broader issues aren't important, because they are important, and I think they're more important from the perspective of wider implications and suchlike. I just feel like I've had something really important just kicked out of me. And I really don't know what to do about that. I've spent so much time over the last few years sort of unlearning this unhealthy compartmentalising, and learning how to let myself feel things and react to things, and those things are really being put to the test at the moment, because not only dealing with those feelings, but the guilt associated with them, is really fucking hard, at the moment.

I was going to make a post earlier in the week about whether people wanted to do something this weekend because my birthday is Sunday, but I'm just not even sure that's a good idea because I'm highly doubtful that I'll be anything other than really not fun to hang out with, because birthday or not, I just don't feeling like celebrating anything at all.

So, VC Coaldrake's banging on about how high attrition (dropout) rates are for the Arts degree. I shouldn't be surprised, but attrition rates include students who transfer to other degrees in the university. Which is fairly common for an Arts degree, since it's often used as an entry vector for those with lower entrance scores. Hell, I was originally going to be one of those, until I decided Arts was much more fun than Creative Industries. It's pretty much standard practice for other high-entrance-level-degrees like Law to advise prospective students with lower entrance scores to apply for entrance to the BA and transfer after a year (provided their GPA is acceptable). If you take out those students, the attrition rate for Arts sits pretty much on par with the University average.

WTF, Coaldrake.

Yes, I'm going to be talking about this QUT thing for a bit. If you have a problem with me caring about my future, feel free to let me know so I can tell you to shove it stop reading.

So, all of that right-wing bleating about how Humanities students are all crazyradical pomo socialists who do nothing but have protest and kick puppies all day always boggled me because the bulk of the student protest-type activity goes on at the campus that's largely the realm of Creative Industries/Education/Health.

So, what's that got to do with amusing me? Well, I've spent most of my day with other humanities students organising a protest/rally/meeting thing about this whole dissolving my department crap.

There's something that strangely amuses me about that.

Mark at Larvatus Prodeo (who was actually a tutor of mine wayback in first year) has a much more coherent post about QUT closing down its Humanities school and degrees (Arts and Social Sciences, basically) than I can manage at this point. He covers well how this whole affair really contradicts the right-wing culture-warriors claim that humanities and universities are overrun with "brainwashing po-mo socialists".

Incidentally, I wasn't previously aware of UQ's vice-chancellor labelling those who want philosophy and classics to maintain their vibrancy as "sentimentalists". I mean, sure, I was never going to touch UQ with a ten foot pole, but when Griffith is your last bastion of humanities*, I really do start feeling like I'll need to move back to Sydney, or to Melbourne or Canberra, to actually get the education I want, and the kind of academic work I want. And aside from Canberra being an attractive option whilst $tephen is there, I don't want to leave Brisbane. I moved here for a reason, and I don't want to have to choose between my career and a city I love. Not to mention the sick feeling in my stomach that this shit's going to spread to the rest of the country, and what that will mean.

And honestly, I'm feeling really bad, at the moment. When there were just rumours of them selling Carseldine campus, and shifting everything to Kelvin Grove? Yeah, I was cranky, because I'm rather fond of my nice small campus where I know everyone even if the food is kinda shitty. But when they're shutting down the entire fucking school, and rendering my degree non-existent, it's like, this is the place in which I learned how I'm actually rather competent, and not stupid. And now the institution that gave me a place in which to learn and be encouraged to think and be challenged in ways I never had is basically saying "We don't want you, because you won't make lots of money when you graduate and make us look good, because we don't actually care what YOU want."** And maybe it's irrational for me to look at it like that, but that's honestly how it feels. I've spent the last four years having various academic staff hover around me and ask me about postgraduate study and want to know what I'd like to do and make me think about academia and make me realise that hey, I think I could love doing this. Whilst I know it's not the fault of those staff members, because I hardly think they're behind a plan that renders them jobless, I honestly feel rather betrayed more generally. It's like I've had this thing waved under my nose for four years until I really really want it, and it's been yanked out from under me when I'm just so fucking close. I mean, seriously, my last undergraduate class is in like 6 weeks, for fuck's sake.

I also feel bad for the students who have much longer to go than me, because I don't doubt a whole bunch of the teaching staff will start securing work elsewhere, which will likely result in the learning opportunities for those students diminishing considerably.

Incidentally, a bunch of us were sitting around campus being generally angry and sad and so on about the whole affair, and at one point those of us considering postgrad were talking about where we might go, and someone asked if I might consider going to Bond if I got a scholarship. And the thought hadn't actually occurred to me, but when I thought about it, I realised that I really don't think I could. Bond U is one of the few private universities in Australia (I think we've got two?), and whilst I've heard some good things about it, I just believe too much in public higher education for a scholarship to convince me that Bond U is a good idea. Honestly, as I said to the person who asked, I think I'd just feel kinda dirty.

I'm angry about the fact that it took The Courier Mail running articles about it for people to decide that letting students know directly might be a good idea. At four in the afternoon. It's telling that Coaldrake's happy to shoot his mouth off to The Courier Mail without considering that they might publish his comments before someone told the fucking students what was going on. And really, the staff don't know a whole lot either, given they're going on what happened at a meeting that occurred on Friday, which, from what I've heard today from folks who were there, wasn't particularly enlightening. But mostly I'm just feeling really sad and awful and betrayed.


Oh, in other news, I do have a linkspost coming. I was going to get it done tonight, but I just needed to get a lot of this off my chest. There'll probably be some more about this during the week as I get the chance to talk to some more of the academics and other students, but I promise a linkspost is coming.

*Because honestly, I know ACU has a Brisbane Campus that's Northside to boot, but I suspect that my interest in feminist, queer and critical race theory is hardly going to be nurtured as research output at Australian Catholic University. Maybe that's a little harsh, even aside from that, I'm far too lapsed a Catholic to feel comfortable there.
**This is actually one of the things that bugs me about this 'poor graduate outcomes' bollocks. I'm working on gut intuitions here, so anyone who has data is welcome to challenge this, but aside from the fact that humanities by nature is much less vocational-outcome-driven than other degrees it's being compared to, it seems plausible to me that there are more students in Humanities degrees that just aren't seeking the kinds of outcomes those in other degrees want.

It's highly likely that Tuesday afternoons will be periodically spammy around here. I've got a 10am-1pm class, followed by a 6pm-9pm class. Yeah, that's 5 hours on campus. The theory is that I'll use that time to do reading and stuff, but Tuesday is also Feminism Day*, so it's likely some rambling and occasional rantiness may ensue**.

So consider yourselves warned.

In other news, I'm a peer academic adviser again this semester, which means my Mondays are now being spent on campus (because someone else got the Tuesday afternoon shift), doing some metaphorical hand-holding of (mostly) first-years. *shrug* It's not bad work, plus it's extra money, and looks good on the CV wrt my ability to deal with students.

*10am is Sex, Gender & Society, 6pm is Feminism & Ethics. Thus, Feminism Day was born. Or something.

**I have a "has been stewing in my head for a while" rant about the complete lack of attention paid to race/sex intersection and the like across the gender studies subjects around here, and the minimal attention paid to race issues in general outside global/international studies and indigenous studies, and the former only occasionally deals with race issues within Western societies. Of course, the fact that I can count the gender studies subjects on one hand doesn't help matters either. I have a distinct feeling I'll be doing my PhD elsewhere, when I get to that point. (Yeah, I said when. shutup.)

It started with me waking up from a dream. Yes folks, a dream. Honest-to-gods, fangirl-mary-sue-dream. I don't recall details, but I recall there was a TARDIS, a Tenth Doctor, an exploding church and lots of exploding other things. It was awesome. If my subconscious can come up with some more of those, I'd be quite happy to do this whole dreaming thing.

On the less pleasant side, I've had the precursor to a headache all day, which is really not much fun. I tried water, food, caffeine, stretching out my spine and neck, and anything else I could think of, but to no avail. So it's a painkiller before dinner to stave off an actual headache, because headaches are no fun.

In rather more pleasant things, yesterday I managed to track down the already-aired (in the US) episodes of Eureka, which I watched today. It's fun and quirky and I rather like it.

Also, in grumpy news, I missed my connecting train in town this evening, and the next train to therapy didn't leave the city until I was supposed to *start* therapy, and would've meant getting there over halfway through the session time. So I called B to cancel, because the idea of making the trek all the way out there for less than half a session really didn't appeal. Annoyingly, he's away next week, so no therapy for a fortnight. But I shall cope.

It occurrs to me that I haven't really talked about therapy much, but the short version of the story is that whilst B isn't perfect, I still don't hate him (which is quite an achievement, given my history with therapists), and I've been much more grounded and comfortable with myself in the last few months, and I don't have that paranoid feeling of it being fleeting, the way I always used to. Nor do I get all defeatist about minor setbacks. Plus, it's 4 weeks into semester and I'm still keeping up with readings, and already starting researching for major assessment. So, this therapy thing seems to be doing me some good. It's kind of awesome. Well I think so, anyway.

In other uni news, I've been offered (and accepted) a position as an Academic Learning Peer Advisor, with Teaching and Learning Services at uni. Basically, I spend about 4 hours a week (paid) sitting around in the Library dealing with students coming in who want help with understanding how to analyse assessment questions, deal with deadlines, study for exams, etc etc. The pay's pretty good, and it fits in fairly easily with my schedule, so I figure why not?

Tonight I shall attempt to get to bed early, for I have to be at KG campus at stupid o'clock tomorrow morning for training for abovementioned position.

1. Have officially finished work now.

2. 6 Bloody Marys (including 2 doubles) in the space of 3 hours makes for a jen who is a wee bit intoxicated.

3. Food makes one be more sober.

4. The DC Comics messageboards are full of whack.

5. My boyfriend is awesome.

6. I want an attack-womb, because gee whiz, I'm not doing much with mine, and having an attack-womb sounds like a much better idea. It could fight crime, even. With my powermove; Cervix-attack.

7. Okay, so I might still be a little pished.

8. I meant to wash my hair this evening, so I could take my bouncy-wavy-hair into the hairdresser tomorrow and go "Okay, this is what my hair looks like dried naturally. Instead of blow-drying my hair straight, how about we find me a cut that will look halfway decent without maintenance I have no time for?" Ah well. I shall have to attempt to convey my sentiment with pesky words and flamboyant gesturing to indicate what my hair normally looks like.

9. Yay! Uni next week!

10. I'm in Sydney next weekend. Neafz0r, I'm assuming your mobile number's still the same (if not, lemme know), I shall msg you when I land, and probably head over to your work, where I shall probably arrive just as you're finishing up. Is that a useful plan? If you've a better idea, lemme know that too. :) Also, le yay! *flails*

11. Sleep now.

I still have owies, but they're betterish than they were this morning. Managed to get a dentist appointment at lunchtime, which was handy. The verdict is that the wisdom tooth is essentially growing sideways into my back molar. Most of this morning's pain has to do with a pointy bit of tooth pushing further up and preparing to break through the gum, but I got x-rays done to see just how much pressure's being put on the molar. The fact that I didn't get called in for an urgent consult this afternoon is a good sign, whcih means that it's doubtful that the molar's being chipped away yet.

The short of it is, though, that I'll need to have at least one of the wisdoms out soon, and the dentist expressed a desire to do all of them at once. Thankfully, Dad has said he'll cover the costs, which is handy, because I really don't budget for dental. But we'll see when that has to be done. For now, as the subject line indicates, painkillers are my friend.

Tomorrow, more dentist, followed by therapy. And work in there somewhere, too. But I've managed to work an extra hour over the last few days, and I managed to catch up and be mostly back up-to-date again, so I should be orright.

I also realised this week that next Monday is a public holiday (Labour Day, for the southerners and internationals), which means I can have birthday weekend of dooooooom. Speaking of which, hopefully, the pain will be further dulled by then.

Day one of work was good. The people aren't awful, and the work's not overly complex.

DOS-based systems with linear progression are still a pain in the arse, but it's less painful than the POS I was working claims with at QBE in the beginning. Plus I have fairly detailed procedures for once (as opposed to being asked to write the freaking things two months into my contract), which is great.

I'm always thankful at places like this for my ability to pick up procedural activities really quickly. Show me a procedure once and I'm pretty much set unless it's an unusual scenario with complex variables. The chica who started two months ago was in awe of my ability to actually get real work done yesterday.

They seem to not care what actual hours I work, as long as it's between 8-5, and I work a 7.5 hour day. Which is highly useful, and means I can work therapy in relatively painlessly.

A reminder, meeting people after 6pm at Southbank cinemas for the 6:40pm session of V for Vendetta. I'll probably be about a good hour before that, so if early, call, cos I'll probably be bored.

And now? To work.

So, in case it wasn't clear in this morning's post, I have in fact decided to take the semester off. I handed the forms in this afternoon; leave of up to a year is automatically approved, so it's just a matter of processing paperwork and all that jazz.

Also? I already have a job. I'm impressed liek whoa. I called the agency at about 9am; after various calls sorting out details, I get the call at 2pm which says "Yep, you're in. You start this date, finish this date, so many hours a week." The thing I love about this agency is they work fast. For the record: IXP3 are teh awesome.
So as of Wednesday of next week, I shall be working at Suncorp in their Superannuation Division, doing Data Entry/Admin-y things, and I finish before the start of second semester (which agency managed to wrangle for me, because the original contract was until about Week 2 or 3 of Semester, which would've been bad). A nice clean little package of a temp job, which fits perfectly with what I need at the moment. I'm most pleased with this, and I'm definitely feeling much better having made the decision, and very much like I've made the right decision for what I need at the moment (which is the best you can hope for, really). The only thing I need to do now is figure out where to slot therapy into the new timetable, and deal with Centrelink in terms of (I suspect) putting my benefits on hold until I go back to uni. Which, after thinking about it, I may leave until after I get this fortnight's pay, otherwise I won't be able to make rent and bills this fortnight, and that would be bad. I'll have to pay the money back, of course, but I'll be able to do that once I've gotten paid from work.

Very successful focus group this evening. Thankyou to littlenell, debs7, enriquefellatio and claritysan. Turns out the original room *was* correct (the first one we checked that had people in it), so I'm assuming the timetabling people fucked up. Apologies again for having to trek through Z and S Blocks looking for a free room. Silly University Admin. Well, it all worked out in the end, so hurrah and stuff. :)

Got a call back from Aunty Cath after I got home. Aside from messed up plants and a current lack of electricity, she and the rest of the Clan are all okay, which is a definite relief.

And now, my muscles are kinda achy, which I believe is a sign that it's time to curl up and bed and get some sleep. Goodnight, friendslist, from your much less stressed and more contented Jen.

I'm feeling considerably less emo this morning, which is always a good thing. I'm also feeling much more decided about things, including realising that yeah, maybe this whole thing is a subconscious attempt to prolong and avoid all the things that go with graduating, but ultimately, if that headspace is there, much better to take the semester off rather that try to plod on and turn that headspace into a frenzy of self-sabotage and ruining my GPA in the process. Thankyou to everyone who's let me babble at them about this for the last week, especially $tephen, for being (as always) annoyingly good at playing devil's advocate, and Tara, for understanding much of my self-loathing/perfectionist headspace and thereby helping me solidify my thinking about it all.

The other thing that's helped is that I spoke to my old temp agency earlier; apparently there's a veritable buttload of work out there atm, and the award's changed, which means my payrate's gone up. More money is always useful. Largely because the main thing sitting against taking the semester off is/was money and sorting out stuff with Centrelink. Centrelink are always going to be annoying, but being assured that there's a fair bit of work out there (including a fairly large possibility of working with the guys I was temping with previously) helps to assuage the money-stress.

I'm still vaguely worried about disappointing people, but my head currently feels clearer than it has for a good few weeks now, which at the moment is good enough for me.

Dad made the unhelpful suggestion that maybe it would be better for me to just go get a job, until I pointed out that not having a degree doesn't really work with my intended career path. I don't think he'd completely comprehended my intended career path until that point. Or, he'd just forgotten. Given his memory, either scenario is likely. I love my father, but he can be a bit daft.

Worryingly, I can't get in touch with Aunty Cath at the moment (who is up north near the blast area of Cyclone Larry), but I'm trying not to stress too much. But Dad's said he's going to try and get in touch with the Northern Crew later today. Hopefully, everything's fine, and Aunty Cath was just out somewhere that requires a switched-off mobile. *crosses fingers*