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cosmolinguistI know the after-effects of Saturday night's anxiety attack were still with me yesterday -- I found myself a little nervous to be getting a bus to work, even though it's a different bus a different stop, and I've had pretty good experiences in that situation. Then the bus was late and I got wobbly about it where before I would've just been fed up.
And today, I started crying in my first lecture because I was so overwhelmed by all the stuff I couldn't see -- this lecturer doesn't use slides so I don't get recordings of her lectures, and it's an incredibly complicated and abstract subject so I feel totally lost in all the syntactic trees scrawled on the whiteboard, with important differences marked only by subscripts and that kind of thing. This subject is totally new to me and it's clear my classmates are confused at times too but I just feel so intimidated and in-over-my-head that...well apparently that I had to cry. A little, silently, so no one noticed but me. But it was halfway through the lecture so it was really tough to stick around.
I did though and just about managed to talk to my lecturer about it at the end. This was overdue anyway: she was away last week or I'd have done it then. She was surprised to hear I'm not getting lecture recordings and is going to look into that, and has offered to meet up with me once a week to talk with me about what's been covered in the lecture.
So it'll be fine. I just was not feeling assertive or extroverted enough to have that conversation just then, but I didn't want to wait and do it by email so I just had to suck it up and chase her at the end of the lecture. And I'm glad I did.
It's exhausting, though. I'm starving but still too tired to get my lunch out of my bag and eat it before my next class. (That kind of thing has been happening a lot lately too: both buying/making food and eating it have proven such insurmountable challenges lately that I'm having to force myself to do them. With variabke success.)
I am just feeling particularly disabled today, because I have been -- by the lectures, by the buses, by my screenreading software not reading a single goddam pdf so far this academic year -- and I'm upset and tired and resentful.
And today, I started crying in my first lecture because I was so overwhelmed by all the stuff I couldn't see -- this lecturer doesn't use slides so I don't get recordings of her lectures, and it's an incredibly complicated and abstract subject so I feel totally lost in all the syntactic trees scrawled on the whiteboard, with important differences marked only by subscripts and that kind of thing. This subject is totally new to me and it's clear my classmates are confused at times too but I just feel so intimidated and in-over-my-head that...well apparently that I had to cry. A little, silently, so no one noticed but me. But it was halfway through the lecture so it was really tough to stick around.
I did though and just about managed to talk to my lecturer about it at the end. This was overdue anyway: she was away last week or I'd have done it then. She was surprised to hear I'm not getting lecture recordings and is going to look into that, and has offered to meet up with me once a week to talk with me about what's been covered in the lecture.
So it'll be fine. I just was not feeling assertive or extroverted enough to have that conversation just then, but I didn't want to wait and do it by email so I just had to suck it up and chase her at the end of the lecture. And I'm glad I did.
It's exhausting, though. I'm starving but still too tired to get my lunch out of my bag and eat it before my next class. (That kind of thing has been happening a lot lately too: both buying/making food and eating it have proven such insurmountable challenges lately that I'm having to force myself to do them. With variabke success.)
I am just feeling particularly disabled today, because I have been -- by the lectures, by the buses, by my screenreading software not reading a single goddam pdf so far this academic year -- and I'm upset and tired and resentful.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-15 11:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-15 01:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-15 02:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-15 10:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-15 05:21 pm (UTC)Am in awe you managed to speak to lecturer. Has anyone suggested a camera system so you could focus it on the screen during the lecture and see it on your laptop? Or providing a screen in the lecture theatre for you to get a closer output of the lecture as it goes? Both those are things I've arranged (albeit with kicking department twattery of course cos implementation)... The camera system might be easiest...
Would the recording include the board if the lecturer sorted it out?
I am hoping to visit my mum soon. Would a visit by me to see if I can poke your sodding screenreader into submission be any use if I combined the two?
Offers of me nobbling your PDFs to word still stand.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-15 10:12 pm (UTC)She says it would. She's looking into it.
camera system so you could focus it on the screen during the lecture and see it on your laptop?
I was given a piece of DSA kit that I think does this? I don't really know how to use it and it's ankther massive heavy thing to carry around and get set up which is all a bit intimidating at nine or ten in the morning, heh. I suppose I will have to swot up on it.
Would a visit by me to see if I can poke your sodding screenreader into submission be any use
Possibly! I think it's a problem with Adobe this time as some of these pdfs should definitely be OCR. But I have no way to tell and no idea how to even go about asking who I should ask for help, IYSWIM. This is why I haven't asked you to fix pdfs for me lately; I don't think that's the problem. But I have no idea.
And it's always lovely to see you anyway. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-15 10:41 pm (UTC)Yeah the kit to focus on screen is that + the laptop which will be MASSIVE to hoik around with you. Hopefully lecturer can sort recordings for you.
Happy to plan a visit when I can diary my brain and even if we don't prod PC it'll be lovely to see you. In the meantime I may be able to convert PDFs to word if that's any easier for you.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-16 08:00 am (UTC)Yeah, laptop is bad enough because mine is huge. I have a big screen so I can still use it when it's magnified. I envy the kids who can just shove their netbook-sized laptops in their designer satchels and be all cool and collected. :)
This is where I start to wish I had a PA to lug stuff around and set it up for me. I can't mess with that when I'm supposed to be paying attention to the lecture. And we've only got about five minutes after the previous lot leave the room before our lectures start. It's just too overwhelming and spikes my stress levels.
Anyway, yes it'll be great to see you even if you can't fix Adobe. :) I've tried making one or two of the pdfs into word documents but it fucks up the formatting so much.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-16 11:09 am (UTC)Fucked up formatting is a pain. Maybe send me one and see if what I do makes it work but yeah I wonder if you'll end up needing to phone Batty Sodding Bennett again which sounds dull and difficult. Gah.
Will try and work out plans at some point today.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-16 07:24 am (UTC)