Work woes...

I can't wait for my reading week to come around (one more week to go); and if you ask me, it can't come any sooner. You might ask me why and when I tell you, you'll probably end up telling me to man up and just get on with it rather than making a mountain out of a molehill. But to me, I feel like I am slowly being buried alive with work stress. The final nails are being pushed into my coffin and it'll only be a matter of time before the dirt gets thrown on top of me. They say that the final year is the most stressful and although for my degree, it's of equal importance  as last year (the weighting of year 2 and 3 is the same; 50/50) it still feels like there is more pressure on top of me. And I know that more people out there have loads more coursework due in with less time until their deadlines but the fact is I get one shot at coursework that comprises 50% of my entire module grade without a draft and so it makes me go crazy. And subsequently makes me turn to my trusty, always there blog.

On top of that, I have to face one of my biggest fears in a couple of weeks and present an oral presentation to my seminar group that I am petrified of. I hate speaking in front of large volumes of people when the focus isn't 100% put on me let alone the fact I will be standing in front of the room, 100% on show, full attention on me for a full 20 minutes. It is possibly one of the things my nightmares are based around. And if that wasn't bad enough, I know I'm going to go bright red, get embarrassed by my blushing and then be self-conscious and more than likely fluff up my lines making me MORE embarrassed and making me go MORE red resulting in a big, fat, ugly, evil and embarrassing cycle of Nicole horror :( AHH!

I'm pretty sure this is the way I look right about now!

Anyway, I seriously just wind myself up more when I write these blogs but it feels good to let it all out. At the moment, I am working on another piece of coursework that is based around language learning and methods of teaching; and I couldn't care less about it. To make matters worse, I have to spent hours transcribing, word from word; (adding in the stress markers, lengthening, word emphasis, pause length and non-verbal information etc.) of what each teacher/learner says and it also is sending me mad. It takes forever to have to rewind, play, rewind, play, rewind, check and move on for every utterance.

Now that I have successfully ranted to you guys, once again  I am going to make a brew and shut my bedroom door behind me so I can scream and cry and nobody can hear my pain.

(I'm only joking, I'll probably just go back to my work again but that's less dramatic and boring ;))

Love you all, my wonderful readers who bring joy to me by simply reading my rants,
I wouldn't be able to stay sane without these, and you so thank you! Nicole