How was all of this been only two days?
Mar. 23rd, 2018 08:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistI knew this week was going to be hard on me. And it was. (I know it's still Friday but Fridays are pretty easy uni-wise and at the end of this one I plan to be in Brighouse trying cocktails so I think it's warranted to talk about this in the past tense.) I wrote about the terrible Lib Dem immigration consultation and the anxiety attack over (mercifully briefly) losing my bus pass and railcard which takes us up to Tuesday night, so here's how the last couple of days have been.
Wednesday was a listening exam in my Arabic class that I just couldn't possibly have prepared enough for. It's still too hard for me to pick out words to answer questions. We only got to hear the recordings three times each and for each recording we had to do two different things: answer true/false questions and fill in some missing information from a table, or that kind of thing. Though to be fair by the end I don't think hearing it more would've actually helped me any more. It was so depressing.
My only consolation is that everyone seemed to hate it. Even B, who does not belong in a beginner's class because he knows a bunch of stuff, looked traumatized for like the first time ever afterwards. He's so used to knowing everything and being first to answer, but when our teacher expressed surprise at his reaction he said "But I'm used to being able to see everything written down!" Haha.
A few of us determined we'd go for a bite to eat afterward to celebrate being done, and I talked to my buddy V and we both seemed to have problems with exactly the same stuff. Then O, who was also going with us, came back from the loo and said almost verbatim the same things. So I think we all felt a little better then.
The three of us went with our teacher to curry mile; she suggested a place (Jaffa, which I'd seen but I don't think I'd been in before? it's hard to remember; a ton of the curry mile was different to me because I never go that way any more, which made me feel very old considering I used to get the bus through there every day!). We talked about everything, some deep heavy stuff actually because she started with telling us she's pregnant again after a couple of miscarriages.
The others had shawarma and I had spinach فطاير (my teacher recommended it so I had to look up later how to spell it in roman letters: fatayer), which is spinach cheese bread and since those are all my favorite foods it was yummy.
Wednesday evening Lib Dem Immigrants also wrote about how unfit-for-purpose the Lib Dems' consultation on immigration is: it's asking all the wrong questions, pre-compromising our policy with not just the Tories but UKIP in a misguided attempt to be "what people will vote for" and we want a better one. A lot of the comments are good, surprisingly, but there are quite a few who tell us that we are too idealistic, that we should have policy on more popular things, that I don't know what I'm talking about, etc. It's hard to hear that stuff from the party I joined because it was the only one who welcomed immigrants (at the time...this was 2008 or 9? Dunno what I'd have thought if I moved here in 2014 or something).
I tried to take heart from the many people who Get It and the people who at least addressed the article on its substantive point about the consultation rather than those who just wanted to spew their same old boring rhetoric about immigration whenever the word is mentioned for any reason. But of course the good comments never have nearly the impact of the bad ones on your mental health, do they.
I snuck too many looks at the comments, reacted emotionally too many times, and generally filled in all the gaps in my day yesterday with stress about that, which I know is a really dumb thing to do.
Also yesterday, I continued to fail to get an appointment with a disability advisor. I've been trying for more than a month now. I didn't even know how to do it, so I had to e-mail and ask and it took them almost two weeks just to get back to me to say "you can come in or ring at 10am on Thursdays." It's like getting a GP appointment only even worse because it's only once a week. The next Thursday I was busy at precisely 10 o'clock, and the next one I forgot: both times I called around 11 only to be told "appointments all gone for this week, try again next week." Part of the problem was that this is coming up to the deadline for people to sort out exam support. I did that as soon as I was assessed last September though, so I just have unrelated things to talk about. We were all told in doomy voices that yesterday was actually that deadline for sorting it out so yesterday I was more hopeful.
I wasn't busy, I set myself three reminders, and I called them at 10am and left a voicemail. They called back when I was in the shower and told me to ring them back. I did, but just kept getting the same bloody voicemail and didn't want this to go on indefinitely. I couldn't talk to them once my lecture started anyway. So I went to that and since I had time before my next seminar I just went to the office and asked about it.
I was, foolishly, thinking I could get an appointment since I'd gotten myself on the list at ten o'clock, but they told me all the appointments were gone and that I'd have to wait for next week. I probably looked so fed up at hearing that again that the woman at reception said "unless it's something that could be resolved by email" and she actually told me who to email (it's never been clear who "my" advisor actually was) and I'm kinda thinking I might just start with that really. Rather than have to try to remember my laundry list of things and hope to get them all dealt with at a face-to-face appointment.
I don't know. But the whole thing also left me feeling very gloomy.
And then we had a mock transcription exam in phonology (the real thing is after the break). We had a lecture for the first hour, then this for the second half but no one thought to turn the lights up after the lecture and my eyes have already been so sore all week (that's a long time for them to be bad; I'm sure it's because of the sheer amount of reading and lectures and stuff I've had this week) that I could hardly concentrate.
At least this was better than the Arabic exam: each line we were supposed to transcribe was repeated five or six times, which huge big pauses in the middle so it took about 40 minutes to hear the eight or ten lines of text. In the pauses between, as soon as I'd finished writing whatever I could, I just rubbed my eyes or kept my hands over them to rest them because they were so burny and stingy. It was miserable.
Also I am incredibly terrible at transcription because we missed all the lectures telling us how to do it and helping us revise. I am very glad that my disability accommodation for this makes it a take-home exam, and I need to remember not to stress about it because I won't be doing it in the same way as the mock exam (certainly not in a dark bloody room and hopefully not with sore eyes to begin with). I need to check my answers though; we were given the model answers as we walked out of class and I didn't even have the spoons to look at the paper.
Anyway, time to go see the well-being lady who I haven't had time to ask to be replaced yet with someone who might actually extract some information about my well-being from me. I wonder if she'll have any idea how my week has gone.
Wednesday was a listening exam in my Arabic class that I just couldn't possibly have prepared enough for. It's still too hard for me to pick out words to answer questions. We only got to hear the recordings three times each and for each recording we had to do two different things: answer true/false questions and fill in some missing information from a table, or that kind of thing. Though to be fair by the end I don't think hearing it more would've actually helped me any more. It was so depressing.
My only consolation is that everyone seemed to hate it. Even B, who does not belong in a beginner's class because he knows a bunch of stuff, looked traumatized for like the first time ever afterwards. He's so used to knowing everything and being first to answer, but when our teacher expressed surprise at his reaction he said "But I'm used to being able to see everything written down!" Haha.
A few of us determined we'd go for a bite to eat afterward to celebrate being done, and I talked to my buddy V and we both seemed to have problems with exactly the same stuff. Then O, who was also going with us, came back from the loo and said almost verbatim the same things. So I think we all felt a little better then.
The three of us went with our teacher to curry mile; she suggested a place (Jaffa, which I'd seen but I don't think I'd been in before? it's hard to remember; a ton of the curry mile was different to me because I never go that way any more, which made me feel very old considering I used to get the bus through there every day!). We talked about everything, some deep heavy stuff actually because she started with telling us she's pregnant again after a couple of miscarriages.
The others had shawarma and I had spinach فطاير (my teacher recommended it so I had to look up later how to spell it in roman letters: fatayer), which is spinach cheese bread and since those are all my favorite foods it was yummy.
Wednesday evening Lib Dem Immigrants also wrote about how unfit-for-purpose the Lib Dems' consultation on immigration is: it's asking all the wrong questions, pre-compromising our policy with not just the Tories but UKIP in a misguided attempt to be "what people will vote for" and we want a better one. A lot of the comments are good, surprisingly, but there are quite a few who tell us that we are too idealistic, that we should have policy on more popular things, that I don't know what I'm talking about, etc. It's hard to hear that stuff from the party I joined because it was the only one who welcomed immigrants (at the time...this was 2008 or 9? Dunno what I'd have thought if I moved here in 2014 or something).
I tried to take heart from the many people who Get It and the people who at least addressed the article on its substantive point about the consultation rather than those who just wanted to spew their same old boring rhetoric about immigration whenever the word is mentioned for any reason. But of course the good comments never have nearly the impact of the bad ones on your mental health, do they.
I snuck too many looks at the comments, reacted emotionally too many times, and generally filled in all the gaps in my day yesterday with stress about that, which I know is a really dumb thing to do.
Also yesterday, I continued to fail to get an appointment with a disability advisor. I've been trying for more than a month now. I didn't even know how to do it, so I had to e-mail and ask and it took them almost two weeks just to get back to me to say "you can come in or ring at 10am on Thursdays." It's like getting a GP appointment only even worse because it's only once a week. The next Thursday I was busy at precisely 10 o'clock, and the next one I forgot: both times I called around 11 only to be told "appointments all gone for this week, try again next week." Part of the problem was that this is coming up to the deadline for people to sort out exam support. I did that as soon as I was assessed last September though, so I just have unrelated things to talk about. We were all told in doomy voices that yesterday was actually that deadline for sorting it out so yesterday I was more hopeful.
I wasn't busy, I set myself three reminders, and I called them at 10am and left a voicemail. They called back when I was in the shower and told me to ring them back. I did, but just kept getting the same bloody voicemail and didn't want this to go on indefinitely. I couldn't talk to them once my lecture started anyway. So I went to that and since I had time before my next seminar I just went to the office and asked about it.
I was, foolishly, thinking I could get an appointment since I'd gotten myself on the list at ten o'clock, but they told me all the appointments were gone and that I'd have to wait for next week. I probably looked so fed up at hearing that again that the woman at reception said "unless it's something that could be resolved by email" and she actually told me who to email (it's never been clear who "my" advisor actually was) and I'm kinda thinking I might just start with that really. Rather than have to try to remember my laundry list of things and hope to get them all dealt with at a face-to-face appointment.
I don't know. But the whole thing also left me feeling very gloomy.
And then we had a mock transcription exam in phonology (the real thing is after the break). We had a lecture for the first hour, then this for the second half but no one thought to turn the lights up after the lecture and my eyes have already been so sore all week (that's a long time for them to be bad; I'm sure it's because of the sheer amount of reading and lectures and stuff I've had this week) that I could hardly concentrate.
At least this was better than the Arabic exam: each line we were supposed to transcribe was repeated five or six times, which huge big pauses in the middle so it took about 40 minutes to hear the eight or ten lines of text. In the pauses between, as soon as I'd finished writing whatever I could, I just rubbed my eyes or kept my hands over them to rest them because they were so burny and stingy. It was miserable.
Also I am incredibly terrible at transcription because we missed all the lectures telling us how to do it and helping us revise. I am very glad that my disability accommodation for this makes it a take-home exam, and I need to remember not to stress about it because I won't be doing it in the same way as the mock exam (certainly not in a dark bloody room and hopefully not with sore eyes to begin with). I need to check my answers though; we were given the model answers as we walked out of class and I didn't even have the spoons to look at the paper.
Anyway, time to go see the well-being lady who I haven't had time to ask to be replaced yet with someone who might actually extract some information about my well-being from me. I wonder if she'll have any idea how my week has gone.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-23 10:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-23 04:44 pm (UTC)(The disability advisor process is straight out of Kafka).
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-23 08:23 pm (UTC)My thoughts on getting appt/help from disability services is unprintable - them not you! FFS.
Grr to exam and lighting, hard to feel able to say "can haz more light pls" and I massively sympathise on sore eyes and so on. Hope you can get eye breaks over Easter as much as everything else.
Hope wellbeing lady was better than feared/expected. If not, add to the list of things to do with me when I visit ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-23 11:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-03-24 12:23 am (UTC)