Made it back to Australia mostly unscathed, but a serious case of the sleepies got me good.
Saga didn’t really have a mid-term break, and the semesters don’t line up 1:1 between Japan and Australia so I got back to my home university during week 2 of semester 2.
Hey party people.
Study abroad seems to have worked out after a year of Paperwork Hell™ and I landed safely in Japan at the end of March.
Conceptually aeroplanes are way more fucked up than cars, however, cars are still functionally scarier on account of I’ve never been expected to drive a plane.
Horrible news, everyone:
Life hack: You can just go down to the hardware store and buy a soldering iron and nobody will even try to stop you.
The speaker transplant was a huge success.
Fun fact: 1998 Furbies don’t have an off switch.
Congratulations on surviving another year. It’s a little ways into 2024 now and things are more or less alright so far.
When the university reopened for the year I got in contact with the study abroad team regarding enrollment, as aside from confirmation that the application was received, I have not heard back from the exchange partner as of yet and was uncertain if I needed to cut my losses and enroll at the home university. However, I’ve since been informed that I should expect a formal response early next month so do not need to stress myself out about it just yet.
For the better part of 2023 I’ve been occupied with what has officially been termed Paperwork Hell™. For every slab of paperwork I get approved, I am rewarded with another, proportionally more convoluted, slab of paperwork (which also needs to be approved).
Semester 2 has been off to an entirely less turbulent start than semester 1, which is nice- especially having taken on a 3rd subject. Apparently a 75% course-load counts as full-time so I was worried about holding up but it’s already midterms and somehow I’m still alive.
Great news, everyone:
The casual intimacy of sitting slightly too close to another human has cured my depression enough to update the gallery for the first time in about three years!
Well, either that or being back on iron supplements means my brain isn’t deprived of oxygen any more so I’ve stopped being insane? Seems unlikely though.
It’s 2023 now, I guess?
Claude died at the start of the year and I’ve been pretty deep in the Depression Zone™ since then. It was the week before uni resumed and I couldn’t really focus on anything at all until after getting results back from midterms. Probably haven’t failed 1st semester but won’t know the full damage until early July if my calendar is to be believed.
It was a genuinely harrowing experience, but I managed to brave the anxiety and take a peek at the university results when they were released earlier this week.
Somehow… I passed. Despite my fears, all subjects managed to remain above 80 for the year. No idea how the linguistics final was even legible at all, but maybe the teacher charged with grading it felt bad for what was clearly the incoherent ramblings of a dying man?
COVID-19 got me, lads. It finally got me.
The fatigue and chest pain are so real right now.
Given my track record with mononucleosis and shingles, I’m also facing down the very real possibility that I may never make a full recovery from this. But I’ve been managing fatigue for well over a decade at this point, so I’m basically a professional at long-term illness.