You Better Run, Better Run, Outrun My Gun

Right, so since I haven't been very diligent in updating my blog, it's quite obvious that school has started back up again and although it's only three weeks in, the first semester of my final year at Nottingham is in full swing, what with numerous assignments already being thrown into my lap and a meager eight weeks to complete them all. In my first week I was more than a little shocked when I was calculating the time I had to meet the multiple deadlines for presentations, project outlines, proposals & reports. It was apparent that my life, for the next nine months, will solely revolve around my dissertation, the title of which I have yet to really decide on. It took me the past month or so to actually come up with subject areas that I'm interested in - I've realised that my initial topics were much too business-based to be appropriate for an applied psychology research paper - and I have finally settled on two topics that I'm quite satisfied with. I'm a tad bit lost as to how I will exactly conduct my research, but I've been assured that my qualms about it are unnecessary at this stage of the game.

Besides the start of the new semester and having to adjust to a whole new sleep cycle after a tumultuous one caused by the summer break (which is evident in my previous postings - I tend to blog about whenever I can't sleep right) I've kick-started this half of the year with a few things that I haven't been able to do in a long time, the most major being able to perform with THREE again, this time for Fresher's Week. It was quite a last minute do, but it was an excellent way of getting back together with the old crowd after months of not catching up. Nadia is finally back from China, as well as her numerous travels, for the final year, so we thought it a great idea to resurrect our little musical trio that had been shelved for far too long. It was especially exciting for me since I'm in a completely different course (thus having a different timetable & no shared classes whatsoever) with the rest of them, so whatever time I get to spend with them, no matter how brief, is important to me. Our performance that night was not our best, but neither do I think that we were all that bad. It was surprising how nervous all of us were while we waited our turn - the swirling of emotions were evident on our faces - though not having performed for more than a year tends to do that to a person. I am, however, proud that we managed to work through our nerves and gave it our best, and I'm also very thankful to those in the crowd that supported us throughout our performance (:

Another good thing that has come out of the past few weeks is my schedule. Although I have more than just a fair share of assignments to hand in in a short period of time, due to a majority of the modules I'm taking are heavily assignment-based, my timetable is wonderfully forgiving in that respect. My classes are scheduled to only span between Wednesday and Friday, and I have luckily also been able to arrange my tutorials around those days; which gives me a solid four days off from classes. I know those days are meant to be spent slaving over journal articles, but last weekend a few of the APMSers and I took advantage of the time on our hands to head off to Bagan Lalang for a BBQ by the beach. Due to unforeseen, yet humorous, circumstances, what was supposed to be a night spent over in Sepang, ended up in us racing back to Semenyih at four in the morning for a good night's sleep. Despite that little drawback, I had a great time 'bonding' with my course mates. Two years ago I never expected to be close to any of these rambunctious kids - it was only after spending more time with them did I discover that these would be the people I would want at my wedding (and that it saying something!), but these would also be the same people who will be going through the same, demanding process that I will be enduring in the next few months, and they would be my shoulder to lean & cry on when the going gets tough, as I, theirs. It's going to be a whirlwind, definitely, but it's a ride I'd enjoy taking, and I'll be sure to admire the view while I'm at it.

P.S.: I've also added labels for easy browsing. I haven't labelled all 500+ posts, and neither will I even attempt to label all of them, but I will try to do so for majority of them. It'll take some time because I have to edit each post individually, but I hope it pays off.