many whiles
I've been really busy! And terrified. And paranoid. And now I look like a (approximately although I have no evidence because all the dragqueens I have come across appear immaculate and practised as hell) rookie dragqueen. Several things have happened in the past few days.
So I passed my exams -
the night before the results came out I was really, truly bricking it. I'd asked my housemates out to the pub and everything was fine until about midnight - possibly because I was successfully blocking out the fact that Results Day was tomorrow and 5 years worth of work was suddenly going to mean something or not. Yeah. At about 2am I was in the bathroom at home, throwing up, with poor Ned trying not to get freaked out and holding my hair back. What a drip I am. I have to say that the throwing up was out of sheer terror of thinking of results, not alcohol. Anyway, the next morning I was so worn out by the previous night's activities that I was all cotton wool/zombie-like in the actual collection of my results. And they were fine - yay.
However, my best friend did not pass.
Ugh. Our exams aren't such a great way of sizing up how worthy of being a doctor you are. She and I revised together and as far as I can tell, there's no difference between what she knows and can do and what I can do and know. It's just a question of her having had one bad day at the exams. Anyway - her job's going to be 'held' for her for next August so she doesn't need to reapply. Meanwhile she can pass the retakes, perhaps do some locum jobs, and pass her driving test, and travel and be free for a while longer. On results day we went away from the general celebrations to London Bridge, which is a peaceful place. There was a lone black swan on the Thames, who was swimming really quickly up and down and around the river and looking lost. We felt sorry for it. I hope it got home in the end.
Graduation happened, some tears were shed.
My mortarboard was not stable. I wasn't expecting to be - you know, moved - or anything at the ceremony, but it actually was pretty good, this feeling collectively proud of the 250-odd people in my year. Maybe proud isn't the right word - more like, a feeling of coming through something together, though perhaps I haven't still figured out what this 'something' that I've been doing for 5 years is. Maybe it was just that it was a really hot day and we were all gowned up and sweating and therefore emotional.
I did miss certain people: most especially my friend who will retake, as well as opalfruit and Ned and Nando who have pulled out of our cohort to do BSc's this year and will graduate next year. They've been such an integral part of the past 5 years for me, that it was bizarre not to have them there in the 'celebrating' of them. It felt more like a celebration of final year - I was hanging out with some people I'd become close to only in the last few months. I guess they've been an intense few months.
And . . . I realised people are good, for the most part. During graduation dinner I was found myself in tears in the bathroom (perhaps it was the red wine, red wine makes people carried away), not from sadness - because I'd had fun - just from thinking that Papia should really have been there, deserved to be there as much as I did. And strangers - complete strangers (which is possible because of the BSc shuffling; it's true that before exams and graduation, there were certain people in the final year I hadn't set eyes on much less spoken to) - also present in the loo, came round with consoling words and such. It lasted all of 5 minutes because thankfully I pulled myself together but it totally was faith-in-fellow-man-restoring. I was being silly obviously: she'll be fine, the retakes will be fine and I'll go to her graduation dinner when it happens. Therefore, my graduation dinner comprised: having fun with my final year friends, becoming carried away, and receiving the kindness of people I hadn't ever spoken to. Bizarre. Anyway. The food wasn't great, as predicted, but hey ho.
I've developed celebrity crushes on people from the Royal Shakespeare Company, one of whom almost spat upon me.
UGH, what am I, 13? My mother was in town for graduation, and after the dinner and stuff we went to Stratford-upon-Avon for some culture.
(We'd had some previous culture in between the separate events of the graudation hoo-haa. We watched Cave of the Yellow Dog, a Mongolian film that has won the Palm d'Or and was on at the Barbican. It was ok, but the relationship between the dog and the little girl wasn't developed very well, even though that relationship seemed to be the entire basis of the plot. My mum complained that it was Chinese government propagandising because an election kept being mentioned throughout, even though it had no bearing on what happened. The images of Mongolian countryside were really pretty, though.
We also managed to score really great seats for "The Life of Galileo" on a the National - there'd been cancellations and the seats happened to be just in the right distance from the stage. This was amazingly good. See it if you can, really.
We then went to a Mozart and Beethoven concert, again at the Barbican performed by these guys. A very good pianist was with them and did Mozart's Piano concerto no. 20 which I'd heard but not seen happen before. It was good. He was all crazy, moving his fingers and body round everywhere - my piano teacher would not have approved.
What super reviews they have been.)
So. John Light doesn't look that great in Google Image Search, but I promise you he is magnetic and amazing on stage. We watched Julius Caesar and he was Brutus. Our seats this time, karma or what, were RIGHT in front so we had a good view of everyone's face and facial expressions. My mum and I are both short so our necks hurt loads. Also, boy do RSC folks spit out their lines. We had to duck a few times. I felt sorry for the man playing Caesar - he had to lie down dead while people made speeches over his corpse and he was getting truly DRENCHED. Also, one of the actors looked remarkably like Ben Kingsley, and it later transpired (on Google - no I'm not turning into an RSC stalker, promise) that he is his son.
The rest of Stratford-upon-Avon was pretty nice. It's a small town with a market on Sunday that can give Spitalfields a run for its money - or maybe it's even better than Spitalfields in terms of unique stalls. I bought cool earrings for a pound, which is always a good thing. One of the stalls was Tom Lewis's. I didn't buy anything from him because everything cost a lot. We looked around some tiny hole-in-the-wall art galleries and drank lots of tea. I bought a device by which you can poach eggs without them disintegrating! (So it promised, anyway - on trying it out, I think there's a skill to it which possibly needs as much practice as bareback poaching). We did do the open top bus tour thing too, but sadly Shakespeare's houses were kind of a rip off. For rich American tourists, it seemed. It was all on the lines of "This installation is a representation of what his grandparents' bedroom may have possibly looked like . . . "
Anyway. John Light is engaged to Neve Campbell, lucky her.
So I passed my exams -
the night before the results came out I was really, truly bricking it. I'd asked my housemates out to the pub and everything was fine until about midnight - possibly because I was successfully blocking out the fact that Results Day was tomorrow and 5 years worth of work was suddenly going to mean something or not. Yeah. At about 2am I was in the bathroom at home, throwing up, with poor Ned trying not to get freaked out and holding my hair back. What a drip I am. I have to say that the throwing up was out of sheer terror of thinking of results, not alcohol. Anyway, the next morning I was so worn out by the previous night's activities that I was all cotton wool/zombie-like in the actual collection of my results. And they were fine - yay.
However, my best friend did not pass.
Ugh. Our exams aren't such a great way of sizing up how worthy of being a doctor you are. She and I revised together and as far as I can tell, there's no difference between what she knows and can do and what I can do and know. It's just a question of her having had one bad day at the exams. Anyway - her job's going to be 'held' for her for next August so she doesn't need to reapply. Meanwhile she can pass the retakes, perhaps do some locum jobs, and pass her driving test, and travel and be free for a while longer. On results day we went away from the general celebrations to London Bridge, which is a peaceful place. There was a lone black swan on the Thames, who was swimming really quickly up and down and around the river and looking lost. We felt sorry for it. I hope it got home in the end.
Graduation happened, some tears were shed.
My mortarboard was not stable. I wasn't expecting to be - you know, moved - or anything at the ceremony, but it actually was pretty good, this feeling collectively proud of the 250-odd people in my year. Maybe proud isn't the right word - more like, a feeling of coming through something together, though perhaps I haven't still figured out what this 'something' that I've been doing for 5 years is. Maybe it was just that it was a really hot day and we were all gowned up and sweating and therefore emotional.
I did miss certain people: most especially my friend who will retake, as well as opalfruit and Ned and Nando who have pulled out of our cohort to do BSc's this year and will graduate next year. They've been such an integral part of the past 5 years for me, that it was bizarre not to have them there in the 'celebrating' of them. It felt more like a celebration of final year - I was hanging out with some people I'd become close to only in the last few months. I guess they've been an intense few months.
And . . . I realised people are good, for the most part. During graduation dinner I was found myself in tears in the bathroom (perhaps it was the red wine, red wine makes people carried away), not from sadness - because I'd had fun - just from thinking that Papia should really have been there, deserved to be there as much as I did. And strangers - complete strangers (which is possible because of the BSc shuffling; it's true that before exams and graduation, there were certain people in the final year I hadn't set eyes on much less spoken to) - also present in the loo, came round with consoling words and such. It lasted all of 5 minutes because thankfully I pulled myself together but it totally was faith-in-fellow-man-restoring. I was being silly obviously: she'll be fine, the retakes will be fine and I'll go to her graduation dinner when it happens. Therefore, my graduation dinner comprised: having fun with my final year friends, becoming carried away, and receiving the kindness of people I hadn't ever spoken to. Bizarre. Anyway. The food wasn't great, as predicted, but hey ho.
I've developed celebrity crushes on people from the Royal Shakespeare Company, one of whom almost spat upon me.
UGH, what am I, 13? My mother was in town for graduation, and after the dinner and stuff we went to Stratford-upon-Avon for some culture.
(We'd had some previous culture in between the separate events of the graudation hoo-haa. We watched Cave of the Yellow Dog, a Mongolian film that has won the Palm d'Or and was on at the Barbican. It was ok, but the relationship between the dog and the little girl wasn't developed very well, even though that relationship seemed to be the entire basis of the plot. My mum complained that it was Chinese government propagandising because an election kept being mentioned throughout, even though it had no bearing on what happened. The images of Mongolian countryside were really pretty, though.
We also managed to score really great seats for "The Life of Galileo" on a the National - there'd been cancellations and the seats happened to be just in the right distance from the stage. This was amazingly good. See it if you can, really.
We then went to a Mozart and Beethoven concert, again at the Barbican performed by these guys. A very good pianist was with them and did Mozart's Piano concerto no. 20 which I'd heard but not seen happen before. It was good. He was all crazy, moving his fingers and body round everywhere - my piano teacher would not have approved.
What super reviews they have been.)
So. John Light doesn't look that great in Google Image Search, but I promise you he is magnetic and amazing on stage. We watched Julius Caesar and he was Brutus. Our seats this time, karma or what, were RIGHT in front so we had a good view of everyone's face and facial expressions. My mum and I are both short so our necks hurt loads. Also, boy do RSC folks spit out their lines. We had to duck a few times. I felt sorry for the man playing Caesar - he had to lie down dead while people made speeches over his corpse and he was getting truly DRENCHED. Also, one of the actors looked remarkably like Ben Kingsley, and it later transpired (on Google - no I'm not turning into an RSC stalker, promise) that he is his son.
The rest of Stratford-upon-Avon was pretty nice. It's a small town with a market on Sunday that can give Spitalfields a run for its money - or maybe it's even better than Spitalfields in terms of unique stalls. I bought cool earrings for a pound, which is always a good thing. One of the stalls was Tom Lewis's. I didn't buy anything from him because everything cost a lot. We looked around some tiny hole-in-the-wall art galleries and drank lots of tea. I bought a device by which you can poach eggs without them disintegrating! (So it promised, anyway - on trying it out, I think there's a skill to it which possibly needs as much practice as bareback poaching). We did do the open top bus tour thing too, but sadly Shakespeare's houses were kind of a rip off. For rich American tourists, it seemed. It was all on the lines of "This installation is a representation of what his grandparents' bedroom may have possibly looked like . . . "
Anyway. John Light is engaged to Neve Campbell, lucky her.