why did my last entry mention shooting deer? a short story with extreme alacrity
Happy 2019 ladies!
It's 2 and a bit weeks in and I already have stress pimples popping up all over. This is how you know it's gonna be a hell of a year! It's good to be pre-warned, though if this is my stress level in January, I'll be writing from beyond the grave sometime around May.
Probably.
It's been literal years since I last posted an update, and LJ I feel has gone from a dying format to a dead-dead-dead one, but logging everything down was the best sort of therapy the last time things were exploding around ear-height when I was in the UK, so what better time to start it all over again because life is a circle and 99% of the time I don't know if I'm coming or going. Let's go over the things I've neglected to detail in the past almost-two-years:
1. My dumb ass completed my undergrad, which was so strenuous and long and difficult a journey that I think I could get awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing World Peace to the world and I wouldn't feel joy and relief so palpable it literally leaves me light-headed (though I am also spectacularly anaemic, so!). Somehow I graduated top of my course but I didn't realise that I had, so at the graduation ceremony they said everyone give a hand to Yu who couldn't make be here with us today. It was nice getting a bunch of messages from friends going ??? Sis we literally saw you???? What is going on???? And me responding with ???? Same, to be honest. My outfit was lip-smackingly adorable and I'll put a picture once I find a picture, and wandering around in it to go get lunch with my family had kindly ladies randomly congratulating me because everyone knows if you're in a hakama you've just gone and graduated something, so well done!
2. I did a short internship with a branch of ASEAN, which is theoretically like the UN of Southeast Asia but we can't even get 1. Myanmar to give us visa-free travel 2.Stop genociding Rohingya muslims, so it's not the most powerful of inter-governmental organisations. It was mostly office busy-work and while it made me get better at driving because I was commuting into the city every day, the work was so tedious and fundamentally meaningless that a part of me died during that internship and we will never get her back.
3. I started my Master's.....in the UK. Because I'm a glutton for punishment!! And a little because my whole Japan experience felt like I was operating from Beyond The Veil. My body was in lecture theaters but my soul was playing elevator music in the Astral Plane, and I thought this would be a good idea. Master's are also only a year long here, so it seemed like a good way to play catch-up, you know??? The age range is pretty nice, but there are some literal children here who are like 21??? Or something equally absurd in age, and everyone's graduated from Oxford and they're good-looking and friendly and work out a lot, and human relations is often a lot more overwhelming than my studies.
Not to say that my studies aren't overwhelming, but trying to go over forest canopy cover has never agitated me enough to occasionally turn off all my lights and lie down on the carpet, trying to phase out of existence because there are people in the communal kitchen and I am Not Up For It.
4. This course comes complete with lotsa fieldwork, which is just really good fun, but I'm also older and physically in questionable shape, so I'm not looking forward to endurance treks in shite terrain against younger, fitter, cuter coursemates. That said, I'm going to learn so many skills!!! Even in things I'm not particularly interested in!! But interest in a fickle miss, so that's not too much of an issue. February, March, and April I will be away to Do Things in Exotic Locales, and mostly I just hope I don't get Malaria and I Get Good at a bunch of things.
5. I'm looking for funded Ph.D. positions, because my dad is retiring soon and if I'm not gonna find employment, I'm gonna need to find someone willing to pay me to keep learning. On rough days I wonder if I'm at all cut out for academia, but then I look back to my internship where my duties included, memorably, a man asking me how I got his phone number when his phone number is on the website of his company, and figuring out why no one wanted to charge me for parking, and suddenly a Ph.D. doesn't look too bad. Do I think I'm gonna be hireable at the end of this?
Who the hell knows. What is hireable even??? Most days I don't even find myself bearable, you feel me???
Ph.Ds usually accept applications till Jan or Feb, but I am way too untrained and unexperienced to want to throw myself into a 3 to 5 year commitment, so when I graduate (hopefully lmao) in September I hopefully can then get a short-term job while I apply for Ph.Ds to start in 2020.
What's gonna be your research topic, you're maybe asking.
I don't know myself, at this point. I'm a Jacqui of many trades, and while I've gotten to try out lots of things over the years, in terms of actual specialisation it's low-key looking like it might be more computer-based work than field work, which is a Twist but only because my fool ass didn't see the pattern in the classes I've been taking the past uhhhh many years.
In summary, lots happened and 2018 was possibly the longest year of my life. I think I'm in a good place now, but this morning I woke up with an ear ache so unpleasant it made eating cereal unpleasant, and programming class was so out of control that the lecturer had to tap out halfway through, so basically what is reality but also what are places.
My teeth are on edge but I think I'm gonna be okay (probably). Hope all you guys are doing well, and hope even more you'll do even better (if there's anyone out there who's still on LJ lmao) as the months come on in this year of our Lord 2k19.