who needs love when the sandwiches are wicked?

"When I was a student," I said, a lot, to anyone who wondered how I would balance the time between a full time job and a busy evening course, "at one point I had three jobs and a full-time degree AND looked after societies. I am all about time management. I'll be fine."

PAST COLLEEN WAS SETTING HERSELF UP FOR A FALL I FEEL.

Which is why I am procrastinating on LJ rather than doing any of the things I should be doing, like finishing off one assignment; starting the other; cleaning my filthy cesspit of a flat; preparing to go away tonight because I promised in August I'd go to a houseparty. In Nottingham.

I am not especially motivated to do any of things. This is because the first assignment to complete is dull; the second is just plain baffling due to poor teaching. I don't want to party tonight because our neighbours thing dubstep is appropriate at 8am on a Saturday morning, so I'm already kind of sleepy. And I don't want to clean because I really feel I shouldn't. I do the lion's share of the housework because neat freak but Richie solemnly agreed to cover more of it so I wouldn't get stressed by the state of the house when I was meant to be doing an assignment. Instead he is spending a lot of nights in the gym. I don't mind him exercising AT ALL but I do get peeved when I come home ay 9.30pm and he's watching TV or in pajamas and the house is a TIP and the excuse is 'oh, I was at the gym and didn't get in until 8pm.' Grrr.

Right. I am going to make a cup of tea, try to avert my gaze from the dusting, polishing and hoovering that is desperately overdue (already cracked and put on laundry, cleaned away old laundry and done washing up and that was AFTER I had gone out to the shops so we have food in for the week and booze for tonight) and do a personal development plan. Because that's a fucking useful way to spend my time because I definitely don't already have a comprehensive work appraisal system as it is. But at least then my first assignment will be done. Only seven more to go until June! They're Pass/Refer, at least, i.e. all I have to do is pass and if I don't I just get told how to do it again and pass this time. Good grief, it's like first year.

(I was in such a lovely mood, briefly. I went outside, the sun was shining, it wasn't too warm, the leaves were crunchy. Oh well.)

Not dead, despite the best efforts of my First Full Week At College. I am typing this in between breaks of reading and doing my homework. Homework, ahahaha. Mostly it's reading which luckily I am AMAZING at. The course itself does seem quite interesting, although the Thursday night teacher is chaotic. I also have to use Internet Explorer to use the college site, which is frustrating as that is where all of my sources are. Gah.

Anyway. Been a strange week, course stuff not withstanding. I have been mainlaining Defiance (only one season behind the rest of the world! Improvement, self!) which I am quite enjoying. The aliens could stand to be a great deal more alien, but I enjoy a good dystopia and world-building. Also, Stahma Tarr. Oh my god. Best character by a mile and oh my girlcrush is enormous. She sets off all of my Gul Dukat buttons, although minus the spoonhead thing.

Paying attention to fictional politics has been deeply preferable to paying attention to actual politics of late. For those not in the know, this week was the independence referendum in Scotland, where Scotland voted whether or not to stay in the UK. They voted to stay in the Union, which I personally gave a deep sigh of relief over. I wanted Scotland to stay part of the UK. Love Scotland, am married to a Scot, am personally English, like everyone else in the situation we sort of clung to our spouses and quietly calculated how we'd get to the visa office. THE THING IS THOUGH that it got quite nasty and personal, and a lot of the Yes voters are understandably deeply disappointed and unhappy. I get that, I do. And also? I want this to lead to proper constitutional change, with more powers for Scotland BUT ALSO Wales and Northern Ireland and England to make their own decisions. I also get quite antsy at the accusations that supporting the Union somehow makes you Nigel Farage, cackling over food banks and child poverty. It... doesn't. The whole thing just makes me a bit edgy and I've been trying to stay away from it on social media because I don't want to get involved or hurt anyone's feelings. Or, to be more precise, let myself take it personally.

I MEAN COME ON PEOPLE, I DIDN'T GET A VOTE, I DIDN'T CAMPAIGN IN IT, IT'S NOT ACTUALLY MY FAULT, PLEASE STOP SHOUTING AT ME, LET'S STILL BE FRIENDS.

Okay. Time for more Davis Ulrich, who apparently I basically need to accept as my new lord and master. LOL HR ACADEMIA JOKE *facepalm*

So. I'm a student again! How exciting. I enrolled on Tuesday, trying to damp down the voice in my head muttering 'in my day it was called matriculation' and 'for fuck's sake it's an undergraduate MA it is NOT THAT HARD to process'. Also my photo for my ID makes me look like a serial killer, but who cares because I have student ID with NO END DATE on it.

So. I am officially a member of the Management And Higher Education department of Barking and Dagenham College. Alumni include Idris Elba. Whilst I doubt Stacker Pentecost ever did a diploma in HR Management, I CAN DREAM.

First day on 9th. So, woo!

Dad sent me a text saying he had a new job. (Dad is retired now. Or, well, perhaps he is now un-retired?) It's the job he's wanted for years on the mental health board checking that patients needs are cared for. It's absolutely zero pressure, only about four days a month, and using his many many years of expertise to do something more than 'prevent very ill but very dangerous people killing colleagues'. (Dad worked in a hospital for people who used to be known as criminally insane. Being a steady, level-headed sort of guy, he worked for about 30 years on the wards with the chaps who were genuinely quite dangerous and in many cases had killed a few people. Nine times out of ten he actually spoke highly of the people he spoke for, and that when they got the treatment they needed they weren't too bad. The one out of ten was generally the problem.)

Between me being a student again, and Dad getting a new job for the first time in 30 years, I spent twelve hours in work today doing graduate recruitment. Things have come to a pass when you are vaguely excited just to go to work at nine AM. Weirdly, getting up at 6.15am just feels like being a student again although admittedly this time I didn't have to go and clean toilets before going to lectures. CAREER PROGRESSION YOU SEE.

So apparently I was worrying for nothing. Not necessarily because I'm awesome either, but hell, I'll take what I can get.

To start from the beginning:

Today I left work at 1pm, cursing the very name of the District line. I had clear and concise plans and timings, but instead ended up going to the interview via Romford. Now, I am entirely sure that Romford has many wonderful places and people, but none of them were particularly in abundance between the train station and high street at 2pm on a Monday afternoon. One street with a Yates, a Wetherspoons and a Lloyds Bar. Gosh.
Not being entirely sure how long the train took to Romford, I arrived with loads of time for the bus connection, so hid in Costa and had a cup of tea instead.

After successfully catching the bus and making it to the college with lots of time to spare, I cheerfully wandered in. Aha. It is but one campus of the college as a whole and I still think the overall square metreage was probably more than St Andrews had in its entirety. Blimey. "Go right to the back," the chap at reception told me. It would have been helpful if he had mentioned 'go right to the back of this building, go through the garden, go right through the back of THAT building and THAT garden, and THEN go to the back of the last building'.

When I (eventually) arrived at the room, I was told by the very nice lady that the admin people had made a mix-up and that the CIPD lady wasn't even in on Mondays for interviews. "I do business management," she told me. Now, perhaps it was all the nerves, perhaps it was leftover Romford, perhaps it was sheer exhaustion from my walk through the building, but I pulled myself up to my full 5'3" and a half and said, very firmly, "I have taken half a day's annual leave for this," I protested. So she interviewed me, for all of about ten minutes. It turns out that finally, finally, my clutch of A-Levels has finally come good.

"Do you have any HR qualifications?"

"No, but I have an undergraduate MA in history and five A-Levels," I said.

"Ah," she said. "So you're fairly bright and I can see you're articulate."

In the end I had to insist on showing her a certificate ("Look, this bag is heavy and I've carried it from central London,") and when she spotted the A in English Language she gave in and told me I had an unconditional entry to the college. I am paraphrasing slightly, and there were a couple of questions about what I did for a living, but that was it. I had spent AGES that morning printed off some of the company policies I've developed and carefully redacting names from communications with staff but apparently this was not necessary. ("I've bought some case studies?" I offered when I did eventually pull out my certificates.)

Within 15 minutes I was sailing back down the endless corridors, and came home with so much time to spare I've managed to clean the house and get a load of laundry on too!

So... come September I will be spending two days a week in darkest Essex, getting some shiny qualifications. They'll even take an invoice from work rather than me having to dick about with cheques. It's basically REALLY AWESOME NEWS and is something of a relief but after all the build-up from my brain it actually feels a little anti-climatic!

Oh, and it's a lot shorter route from my house than TFL would have me believe, so that's good?

(Coming up soon: Star Trek Live HONESTLY, tau_sigma's visit and also the tale of the murderous sparrow outside the bathroom window!)