Wednesday 11 August 2010

Happy tinged with uncertainty

I'm not really sure how I feel at the moment: sort of happy but unbelievably sad all at once because it's all going a bit wrong. Firstly, the rubbish things I think. My anaemia got really bad last week. I wanted to go home from work but I was shaking so badly I didn't think I could drive. I got home from work, ate tea and fell asleep on the sofa at 8.30pm, half woke up at 10 to go to bed properly and slept through until 8.45 (was briefly woken at 7 when the cat decided she wanted breakfast so scrabbled on my door). Luckily I haven't felt that bad again since. I got new pills from the Dr, exactly the same as the old ones, but inexplicably they seem to be working.

Secondly, student finance. Sigh. Student Finance are taking themselves to court so they don't have to pay. They are claiming they were incompetent when they wrote the rules and so the rules are wrong. They want the independent assessor's report overturned. A grad starting PMS with me in September that I met at interview sent me a link to their student finance online calculator. She said she filled it in and used what it said to get them to fund her. It says I should get full maintenance loan (£4,950), a long course loan (£249) and the fee loan. Win! Sort of. If they're dealing with this court case they aren't going to stall as much as they can, and they still haven't given me a proper first assessment yet, so it's not like I have anything to appeal against. It's such a mess. I wrote down everything and sent it all off to my local MP half heartedly, but within hours had an email from someone in his office asking for contact details and my student finance number, which might be promising. I'd be happy with just the maintenance loan for now as that would cover fees and then they can back pay me the fee loan later. I just want to know I'm getting something, anything, and I can't get the PMS bursary if SFE don't give me anything.

Finally, it had been suggested a couple of years ago that I could continue my full time job part time working from home. I asked to take them up on this offer and was told it would be fine, they just had to make sure they had the budget for it. Now they've told me they have the budget but I can't do it because I wouldn't be coming into the office. I tried to sign up with the part time jobs agency at the uni, but can't until I get a uni email address, and I won't get that until after 19th, by which time everyone else will have one too and that scuppers my plans of getting in early to be sure of a job.

Now for the happier stuff. I saw Les Miserables at Bristol and it was amazing and I cried :) I love musicals. On a slightly stranger note, in the vein of being brutally honest and spilling what goes on inside my head - I have friends! In my home town! Friends who do stuff and want me to do it with them! I've never had that before. I went to small schools where most of my classmates lived out of town, so I never saw them outside of school. I keep myself to myself, and if I'm not asked to join someone doing something I'll assume it's because I'm not wanted and would never dream of inviting myself along.
Because I'm trying to say yes to more things to try and be a more open and friendly, happy, bouncy bean for uni, I said yes to going on my first ever girly night in with some girls from work and their friends from outside work. Now I'm much more of a boys mate than a girly girl. I don't do pink, screaming, giggling, going googoo over boys - it just grates with me, but I went and we did facemasks and played uno and drank wine and gossiped and I actually had a really good time. I went to see Inception with a couple of them, which was great and there's rumblings of going to pet civets, see Hayseed Dixie play and go camping in Padstow. I don't know if that will actually happen, but it makes me happy that there are people that want to do that sort of stuff with me. I just wish I'd met them all at the start of the year and had been able to do this all year, instead of just before going back to uni.

This weekend I'm going to watch mr passout of Sandhurst. I'm very proud of him and so pleased his beasting is over. He moves on to Stage 2 training slightly closer to me than he is now. On Tuesday we jet off to sunny Mallorca for a week, so it might be a while before my next post, but I shall endeavour to return tanned, warm and happy, and hopefully with more encouraging student finance news. I only have 15 working days left. Uni is fast approaching :)

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