A good old LJ complain
So, if you haven't heard, I'm trying to complete my degree this year. Trying quite hard, actually, since this year's the last chance I get. Also this year I'm working full time, for the first time. Every year up to this one (since leaving home) has been a financial, stress filled hell. After accumulating scary debt last year (while trying to complete my degree), and given the changes to my work meaning I'd have to go full-time or find something else, it didn't feel like much of a choice.
Now the year's winding up, I've been working my ass off, and there's an extremely real, big, fat obvious chance I'm going to have wasted the last ten years of study. If I can't fit in over 20 hours of study a week - I've been told - between here and October 23rd, I don't stand a chance in hell of graduating. And that's real, solid, full-concentration type study. My supervisor looks despairing. I can get a week off work between now and then, but there's a problem...
I feel like I could vomit acid. I'm so utterly wracked with anxiety from the approaching deadline that concentrating on little things is a challenge, let alone the giant software system I've spent all year engineering. This, obviously, makes further programming extremely challenging. I'm clawing it out of my head but not nearly fast enough. I haven't had a real weekend in many months, so I'm being battered with fatigue and fear.
So basically I'm stuck. I'm going to keep clawing and probably snap on some deep level, as I'm sure I did around this time last year, because there's nothing else to be done. I can't get much more time off work, and I either write a passable dissertation or forfeit my degree. I don't even care about my degree anymore! I've just invested so much fucking time into it already.
Anyway, LJ-venting just sounded like a quick, neat alternative to the usual extended session of mentally berating myself in front of Xcode while my eyes dash back and forth over the same line of code, as if trying to drag the rest of my consciousness into the abstract models they want to see.
Looking forward to November. This whole mess will have fallen one way or the other by then and I'll be able to get serious about the simple task of starting my own software company =^.^=