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?

It was actually a creative project, to develop a constructed language (or, at least, the basis for one) as a practical means of demonstrating the linguistic concepts learned throughout the year. This may have, ultimately, played out in my favour; because I’m nothing if not great at making shit up.

It’s based on the idea that domestic cats retain meowing into adulthood in order to better communicate with humans so could feasibly, if we suspend our disbelief for a hypothetical future scenario, develop languages of their own.

Sort of toying with the idea of cleaning it up into a presentable state and displaying it on the site somewhere, but we’ll see how the ol’ motivation fares on that one.

_{A charming and hilarious excerpt from my conlang assessment.}

Subjects are lined up for next year and, outside of that, I’m still doing my best to recover from COVID-19.

Ended up speaking to the GP about the chest pain. Heart and lungs seemed fine but apparently the ‘rona has basically mulched all the cartilage in my ribcage which is a thing it can do, I guess?

Not his exact words, those (after absolutely manhandling my cartilage- arguably the most intimate human contact I’ve had since that time during lockdown in 2020 when the optical technician fitted my glasses and said I looked “very cool” while touching my face) were more along the lines of:

“Costochondritis.”

The symptoms for which are accurate to what I’m experiencing, so the offer for an ECG was turned down on the condition that I follow up for one if the symptoms change.

Blood pressure was also kind of high but, aside from the four shots of espresso I’d slammed mere moments before the appointment, that might’ve been an anxiety thing which is, y’know. Par for the course ’round these parts.