Into the Home Straight

Week 9. That doesn't mean very much to people other than those at Edinburgh Uni but to me it strikes equal measures of fear and anticipation into my heart and mind. In essence it means that there are only a few more weeks until the exams are finally upon us and that scares me a little. It feels like only last week that we were dusting off our pens and word processors as the first lecturer of the year stepped up and declared the law in our general direction. Having said that, it feels like the summer was a very long time ago - I suppose we are closer to Christmas now than we are to the summer (ouch!). I'm now at that awkward time of the year when I can't quite start to look forward until Christmas but everything around has slipped into festival season mode - kinda sucks.

The thing is that I can feel something rumbling deep inside me - it's not my dinner repeating on me just for the record. No, I feel like something good might be just about to happen. After more or less coasting for the first 8 and a bit weeks of 2nd year I think I'm just about to move up into a new gear that I've either not used for a long time or not used at all before. I tend to think that the former is the truth because I've been here before and I know how it feels to be working at full pelt - it's a nice feeling when you're out of the other side.

All I'm trying to get around to saying really is that the lot of us might well be on the home straight to Christmas (although I would whisper that word very quietly around me) but we've all got a few hurdles to get over before it's holiday time again. I've got 4 sizeable hurdles to leap over and then on the 21st of December, all things being well, I'll get to say that I'm on holiday for a few weeks which might well be the best present that I get this year.

Thanks for reading and I hope I've not dampened any early holiday spirit that you might have had about 10 minutes ago!

Martin